In December 2001, .NET effectively replaced (D)COM(+)/ActiveX. It would still take a few years for the rest of Microsoft to get on board, and the rest of the tech industry can’t turn on a dime; but VB6 was the last ActiveX VB (the first was VB4!)
2001 was also the year that a bunch of west coast software people meeting in Utah decided that the influx of engineering project managers trying to Gantt-chart their creativity meant that a Great Worker’s Revolution needed to occur.
I gravitated towards one, and avoided the other.
One has had its ups and downs, being villainized, open-sourced and ported to a variety of runtime environments despite having some warty proprietary hiccups along the way, but ultimately becoming something that if you didn’t use it, you at least could accept you could get some serious stuff done.
The other spawned consultancies, certifications and bullet points on job-descriptions and roles-responsibilities lists that amounted to what recruiters see as “soft-skills” or “best practices” and other people more directly affected by the practices see as software design religion (generously…for want of a more apt secular word).
Anyways, I ramble…here is part 1 of part 2 (so part 2.1?).
Pursuit of Value 