AngryPets.com is kind of... angry some times...
I do a lot of *cough* bitching on my blog.

So, over the next week or so, I'll be doing some posts on what I consider to be some killer solutions and services. These are all services or solutions that I use, and that I just plain love. For the most part, most of these have NOT been actively blogged about ad nauseam (that I know about), though they really deserve it.

Unless otherwise noted, these solutions/services are not:
a) free (i.e. they cost something) - but they're worth it.
b) products that I've been paid (or kick-backed) to blog about. They're simply sweet products that I feel deserve some major kudos. (Hopefully that will make up for some of the bitching...)

Code Conversion. It's teh SuX0r.
When I'm not bitching about software 'sins' or ranting about the end of the world, I have to pay the bills. Happily I do that by engaging in something I absolutely love: technical evangelism. But, while I love solving hard problems and then 'showing' devs how to do that in their own environment, I typically find myself needing to convert lots of code for demos, keynotes, hands-on labs, sample-apps, articles, and other projects.

To be honest, code conversion sucks. It's not at ALL glamorous. And while there always seems to be a number of problems to solve when converting code,  they're always PESKY problems that I hate dealing with.

My kids, on the other hand, love code conversion. That's because, every time they hear swearing come out of my office, they get $$$. And code conversion makes me curse like a drunken pirate bereft of Rum.

Instant VB - Conversion Software that pwns
Enter Instant VB. It's from the fine folks at Tangible Software Solutions. It slices, it dices, and it does a wicked-good job of converting C# to VB.NET. (Instant C#, a separate product, converts VB.NET to C#).  The interface is insanely simple to use, and code conversion takes place very quickly.

Better yet, the conversion is actually REALLY good. In the past I've a number of other converters to 'help' me with the conversion process, but they all invariable choked on basic syntax issues such as some forms of casting, use of the ternary operator, unwiring delegates/event-handlers, and using Generics. Instant VB plows through all of those 'issues' without a single hitch.

The product is awesome. It lets you convert:
- Snippets
- Projects
- Folders
- and ASP.NET snippets

It's very easy to use, and provides you with a number of spiffy options, and the interface is very intuitive.

The product costs $179, but I found that not only did it pay for itself quickly, but the product actually made me money. See, I had budgeted about a day for my normal C# to VB.NET 'slug-fest' on a recent project where I had a Solution with 5 projects. With Instant VB, I was able to convert the entire solution in a matter of minutes.

I did run in to one small glitch in my '5-project' solution conversion, but that's just because VB.NET can be asinine at times. You see, if you implement an interface in VB.NET, you have to explicitly mention that member xyz specifically implements interface.member. (It's not enough that the friggin' signatures are the EXACT same and would cause any other compiler to throw an error if you actually had two members with the exact same signature. Lamest of all? VB.NET's Intellisense doesn't believe that "Implements" is a word - so you have to type it in all by yourself if you don't let Intellisense stub-out the initial implementation code for you.)

(And spare me the "this guy is dissing on VB.NET and doesn't know crap" replies/flames/comments. I'm not dissing the intelligence of VB.NET users, or bitching about the language - just complaining about something that is obviously amiss (or the IDE would at least treat "Implements" as a key word).)

Anyhow, Instant VB DOES handle those implementation issues - within the same project, but not across projects. (I had a 'base' library that defined the interface, and 'consuming' projects (using a Plug-in architecture) that implemented the interface.) That said, without having to pause and complain to anyone who would listen about how dumb VB.NET was being (my wife can be soooo unsympathetic some times), the whole conversion process was the hands-down easiest thing I've ever done in my life.

Heck, I, um, found myself converting old projects just for the heck of it.

Moral of the story: If you spend ANY time at all doing code conversion, Tangible Software Solutions has the solution for you. They're very responsive to customer inquiries, and their tool flat-out rocks. I can't recommend it enough. And I'm not the only one...

Though I should mention that my kids aren't all that happy about Instant VB though...