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-
- About The Young Software Works, Inc.
-
- I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you about The Young Software Works,
- Inc. It was founded in 1991 to develop products specifically for Visual Basic
- developers. I've been in the computer consulting and PC software development
- business since 1980 working on projects such as stock market charting and
- technical analysis tools and expert systems, BBS and communications programs,
- and advanced full-text search and retrieval applications. Along the way I've
- learned that a developer is only as good as his tools. There's nothing that
- hurts productivity more than not having the appropriate tools. This was made
- quite obvious to me when I came in on a project that was running late and
- having a lot of problems with keeping the source code straight among the 3
- programmers working on the project. Apparently they had not been using any
- kind of version- control tool, nor were they even backing up the source code!
- As the new project manager, I quickly cleaned up the mess and made sure that
- the appropriate tools were not only made available, but were used. The result?
- The project was finished successfully 3 months later.
-
- That brings me to why I formed The Young Software Works. When I first started
- working with Visual Basic in 1991 as a beta-tester, I realized that it was
- going to revolutionize the way Windows applications would be developed.
- However, I soon found that while there were many, many tools available for
- Windows C programmers, there was practically nothing for Visual Basic
- programmers, except a lot of custom controls. While custom controls are
- probably one of the best things about Visual Basic, they aren't enough to help
- developers manage Visual Basic projects. What was needed was support tools for
- the programming process. That's why the VB Project Archiver was written: to
- help me organize my Visual Basic projects. I use it everyday, and it's saved
- me from disaster countless times. I use it to store the current state of a
- project once I've made a change so that if I found that I made a mistake, I
- can always go back.
-
- I also use the VB Project Archiver when I'm distributing my Visual Basic
- programs. It makes sure that all of the necessary custom controls and DLLs
- that I use (isn't it amazing how they add up?) are included along with the EXE
- file. Before I had the VB Project Archiver, I used to always forget at least
- one DLL or VBX when giving my applications to others. This was especially
- embarrassing when attempting to show a client a program, only to find that I
- left an important DLL back at my office! The VB Project Archiver has also come
- in handy when I need to work on the project at another location (such as on my
- notebook on a business trip) by making sure that all of the code and form
- modules are included, along with the design-time custom controls I need.
-
- We will continue to produce tools that help you become more productive. The VB
- Project Archiver is just the start of a whole series of development tools. I
- hope you will try a copy and let me know what you think and also what you'd
- like to see in future products.
-
- Sincerely,
-
- Ted M. Young,
- President
-
-