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As technology steams forward at an ever faster rate, there are a number of sophisticated Windows-based applications coming on to the market that allow you to create specialist programs of your own.This is probably a positive development since many businesses are finding that they cannot simply pick up a piece of software off the peg that suits the job perfectly.
One of the market leaders is Microsoft's Visual Basic. We looked at the latest Enterprise edition - the version intended for business users who want to develop their own business-orientated applications. Like many of today's advanced 32 bit Windows applications, Visual Basic is very demanding on computer power.
The prevailing, yet often unpublicised wisdom amongst leading software houses is that an entry-level PC should be a Pentium with at least 32MB RAM, and a CD ROM drive. This muscle is needed, not merely to run the application itself, but also to handle the on-line documentation. A trend followed currently by many software houses, manuals are included on the CD rather than in conventional book form.
Software manufacturers claim that on-screen documentation is easier and faster to use than looking up a technical query in a stack of manuals. What they don't tell you is that printing manuals is a very costly business, and software houses save lots of money by cutting the documentation onto CD instead! This trend is also good news for hardware suppliers. In order to see more information at once you really need a bigger monitor screen, and a more powerful graphics card in your PC to drive it.
Even if you don't use the on-line documents, I would still recommend a bigger screen, at least 42 cm / 17 inch. Visual basic has a number of toolboxes and windows within it, and you need a big monitor to see them all. In some respects, Visual Basic is probably more complex that the business user really needs. It's certainly not the sort of development software you can learn in five minutes. However, Microsoft has built in a series of Wizards - sort of mini-helper-programs that help you to create the basic framework of your own program.
Unfortunately, you still have to fill in the middle bits - which can take a great deal of time and patience to get right. However, it boasts some incredibly powerful tools to help to achieve this - if you can spare the time to learn how to use them! The documentation is well written, explaining everything from the principles of designing business programs, through to "how to do it" type instructions for VB's vast toolbox.
There are a number of ways you can purchase Visual Basic. If you have plenty of cash to splash around - and lots of time to play with computers then you'll consider Visual Studio Enterprise - Microsoft's latest top-end suite of application development software. This retails at a walloping £1889:00. Far more affordable - and simpler for the novice user - Visual Basic Standard on its own will set you back a mere £74.75. There are also a number of special deals around, so as always - shop around for a bargain.