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