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Perp is gone. Post needs another kick or two.
Cheers,
Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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I don't think that he was happy being told to rewrite the app. While VB6 may be outdated tech, we shouldn't try and impose views on people and tell them that they are wrong. Where do we draw the line? Telling people that they should use node.js because ASP MVC is so last year? Or how about telling people that they should use Scala instead of Java? Or Clojure?
The point is, telling him that he should use a different technology for an already written piece of software isn't always the best option. I'm not surprised he was angry. I'd probably have been a bit peeved as well.
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Thank you for your opinion, Pete. Although i disagree with you. No one have got right to shout on the others, even if i told Him to rewrite application using .net programming language. My comment wasn't abusive and i don't attacked Him personally. Don't you think so?
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To be fair I've seen far more abusive comments directed to users of VB6 than ML's comment. The guy was a bit very OTT in his reaction ... but then fear and panic will do that to a soul, as will realising that he shouldn't have left it so elephanting late to do something about his legacy software! I've been in the same position. At least my excuse was that I wasn't high enough up the tree for the elephants to hear my shouting ... got me a couple of contracts afterwards though 
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Maciej,
I do agree with you and strongly disagree with Pete and Dave. First of all, you did not tell this guy anything wrong. Dave's and Pete's (the guy was disappointed with your suggestion to rewrite the code; but this is only for the good of this inquirer, and is only a suggestion!) comments are ridiculous. You only gave some idea, and you never allowed yourself some personal characteristics.
I'm not sure it was worth reporting though. Almost every time I report things related to behavior of some inquirers, many members object against calling it an abuse. I personally make a big difference between criticism and rudeness, and between manners (which are always a matter of style and social agreement) and direct manifestation of unacceptable attitude and low morale. I can see many facts that in modern Western civilization, criminals and other low-morale people get more and more benefits over honest people under the mark of "tolerance". A person can rob you, but you can be arrested for calling this person rude. The tolerance is intended to protect weak people, but many weak people often develop low morale. A no-good engineer (weakness) spoils everyone's work but when you just tell him his work is no good, he will run to complain to your supervisor. On this way, decent people are going to be eaten by morons. (I'm not just going to discuss the usual objection "who decides who is moron and who is not?" I just won't.)
Look at the very last example example, pretty simple. I only told a person to move the code from comment to the body of the question. Look how much aggression it created:
how to draw a graph from an xml file[^].
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Like I suggested in my comments, he's getting aggressive because he is panicking. I guess if I'd been the "sole developer" for 10 years of XP with VB6 and 350k lines of code to convert I'd be panicking too ... oh, hang on a minute, nope - I DID know it was coming 10 years ago, wasn't in a position to influence the management ... ah, and it wasn't my own company :-P
I have to say that I never thought all of those compulsory "understand different cultures" *training* courses I had to suffer when I worked for a multi-national company, would ever come in useful. But here I am, thought the Russians were bad, then I came across the French, and now it's the Yanks! (Just kidding guys!)
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Thank you for you nice and wise comments. Your description of aggression under the feeling of panic is very accurate. (Speaking of which: remember the "tradition" of killing a messenger who brought bad news?  )
As to the cultural difference. They are essential (and very interesting to me), but there are even more essential common human invariants. Speaking of which:
Every day, I receive standard daily package from Russian site of anecdotes: 10 new anecdotes, few new real stories, a block of aphorisms, and something else; I read only anecdotes and real stories. I want to tell just one of the brilliant anecdotes which I slightly adopted to the topic of the Q & A forums:
Ask a question on American Q & A forum, and, instead of an answer, you will receive… a short instruction on what buttons do you have to press.
Ask a question on Israel forum and, instead of an answer, you will receive… another question.
Ask a question on Russian forum, and instead of an answer, you will receive a well-grounded explanation of why your question characterized you as a complete moron. And I must admit that I've been in the situations when all sorts of such "answers" mentioned above (no exclusions) were really useful for me.
Conclusion: remember that our site is international. Always keep your sense of humor.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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I really did "Laugh Out Loud" at that brilliant anecdote 
SA: Always keep your sense of humor
... absolutely!
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Thank you, Caroline 
There are nothing like "bad nations", but there are tons of "bad people", where "bad man" does not means bad because of his nature, but ill-mannered person.
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Thank you, Sergey.
By The Way: OP isn't disappointed with my suggestion... He start rewriting code in VB.NET!
Aggression is between us, surrounds us: TV, radio, internet. It's sad, but true.
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Great. Such things happened on CodeProject several times. Sometimes, when some person started to respond aggressively, it turns out to be possible to convince him that no one wished anything bad for such person and everything was told to help him. Everyone deserves a chance to check oneself and fix some mistakes.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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So, you think that giving a poster a solution that is not a solution is the correct thing to do? Of course you do. What was the point of someone saying that the correct solution is to rewrite the application? Seriously, how did this add anything? How does this make CodeProject a place that someone would want to come and visit again? How did that actually answer the question that had been asked?
Rewriting a project that works only because there's a newer and shinier framework available is not always a sensible idea and to present it without understanding the reasons and motivations behind the posters having to use the tooling they have is simplistic, naive and shows no understanding of commercial realities. Rewrites cost money. Generally they cost a lot of money. They are also incredibly risky enterprises because you are, after all, creating a completely new application - with the complication that users have an expectation that the new version must do everything that the old version can do. Certainly, if the original language was no longer available or could no longer run, then you would have no choice, but as the language is still alive and kicking, it's pure snobbery to suggest that it has to be thrown aside.
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I partially agree with you.
I have been by customers that have 30 years old PLC-controllers. You can not buy the software in any shop (only from privates), you can not buy any hardware of that serie anymore at any shop (only from privates), but they are still with the opinion "it works and my maintenance men are used to it"
When something stops working and they don't find replacement quick... the full production will be idle.
Conclusion: They still don't want to hear about the new techs and I have to invest 500% more time (minimum) to make the same I would do with the currently standard versions
I would get pissed off as well, if in this situation I ask something and I get the answer, you have to rewrite everything.
- The difference is: One can always say: "I can't: Customer rules and they want it like that, impossible to rewrite" or something similar, keeping low profile and good manners.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Nelek wrote: The difference is: One can always say: "I can't: Customer rules and they want it like that, impossible to rewrite" or something similar, keeping low profile and good manners.
You were absolutely spot on! I really appreciate it!
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Pete,
This is all the matter of opinion, and the matter of discussion of the quality of a comment and so on. You could have written it all on the page of the question. Commercial reality and other real-life circumstances. Snobbery and all the sins you may intend to find. Anything can be discussed and criticized. It's a matter of opinions. But you are discussing it on the page of abuse report, where we discuss rudeness and aggressive behavior.
I think you, being correct and polite yourself, follow the thinking of some our rude inquirers: thinking that some people are more free than others. They rudely tells us that out comments are negative; and they only needs help; so, if you don't have a solution for me, don't comment, leave. If is repeated from time to time. That is, they have a right to say really bad words (sometimes), but people who write correct but negative comment did not have that right.
In your case, you are comparing diplomatic negotiations with war, saying that diplomatic suggestion was offensive, so the was is an adequate response. How about some thinking at this controversy? 
—SASergey A Kryukov
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I think we should be graceful on this one - He seems to be stressed, and maybe your opinion was the little drop which made the pipe burst.
It's legacy code, and after all he has posted a well-formed question...
I will never again mention that Dalek Dave was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel.
How to ask a question
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I never claimed that He posted not well-framed question
Even if pipe is full, it shouldn't burst. There's no excuse for such of behaviour.
Thank you for your opinion, Marco.
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Maciej Los wrote: There's no excuse for such of behaviour.
Of course not, and I don't want to state that his outburst can be justified - People behave differently under stress, and sometimes we need to step back take a big breath - And in comparison to other offenses on the site that was a minor incident, we should give him a second chance.
I will never again mention that Dalek Dave was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel.
How to ask a question
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Actually, i did it
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Marco Bertschi wrote: we should give him a second chance
and this was his last one...
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly"- SoMad
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This Dude[^] (Click the link in his Bio)
I know that links to a personal homepage are allowed, but his personal homepage looks a lot like the Apple Website...
I will never again mention that Dalek Dave was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel.
How to ask a question
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