September 1997 brought the announcement by Microsoft of its upcoming release of a new add-in for Visual Basic 5.0 that will allow programmers to leverage their existing knowledge of Visual Basic towards the Windows CE operating system. This new product brings more than just another toy to add to the Visual Basic programmers collection, it ushers in a whole new realm of development possibilities for the Visual Basic programmer.

    What do I mean? I'm glad you asked, it means I'm not writing this article for nothing (grin). The advent of Windows CE 2.0 brings the familiarity of Windows and the resources of win32 programming to the embedded operating system world. Currently there are about 10 million processors a year sold for the desktop PC community. The embedded OS market is calculated at about 1 billion processors per year. This means the potential job opportunities for Visual Basic programmers increases many times over.

    What makes me think that Windows CE 2.0 will take off? The processors for these embedded systems have a major drawback as compared to desktop PC processors - there are just too many operating systems for them and too many programming languages required to develop for them. Standardizing the operating systems (to Windows CE) and leveraging the existing development knowledge of C/C++ and VB programmers will dramatically decrease the cost of implementing these embedded systems into devices such as VCR's, microwave ovens, clothes washers, anything that needs an intelligent electronic processor.

    For manufacturers of these items, building a new product is as simple as putting the needed components of Windows CE on the processor, and grabbing a developer to create the application that will run the device. The component based nature of Windows CE makes this very economical and decreases the development time considerably.

    For the Visual Basic programmer, developing an application to be the interface for these devices is extremely fast as compared to developing a C/C++ application. Imagine creating an interface for a VCR that runs on Windows CE. The VCR could have a little touch sensitive LCD screen, about an inch high and 3 inches wide. The programmer simply creates a simple wizard like interface that walks the user through the steps required to record a TV broadcast. Step 1 - Select the channel, Step 2 - Select the start time, Step 3 select the end time. Sure would beat pressing all those buttons!

   The same technology could be applied to microwave ovens, cloths washers, digital cameras, camcorders, bread making machines, industrial equipment, medical equipment - you name it, the list goes on and on.

     Windows CE more than just an operating system for handheld computers, it's the future of anything that is computerized. Watches, PDA's, pagers, cellular phones, television sets, etc.

    The fun is just beginning, and the opportunities are just opening up. The next few years will be a wild and exciting ride on the technology roller coaster! Think I'm excited about this new technology? You betcha!

mike@vbce.com