Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 11th Jun 2012 00:38 UTC, submitted by judgen
"Microsoft recently extended 'It Just Works' compatibility for Visual Basic 6 applications through the full lifetime of Windows 8. Visual Basic 6 first shipped in 1998, so its apps will have at least 24 years of supported lifetime. Contrast that with the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 (2002), which is incompatible with Windows 7 (2009)."
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Member since:
2006-01-25
No. It has everything to do with the middleware - and VB6 doesn't have any worth speaking of. Sure, you can add some - but it is harder than just wiring things up with ADO/RDO. Obviously that isn't an option, since the whole argument against moving off the now 15 year old dead end platform is that .NET is too hard.
I hear ya though - making your app scale is the DBA's problem...
Not modern ones. There is virtually no reason to "run" UI code on the server anymore. You may host it and serve it to clients, but you certainly don't need to run anything except your data layer. It is the same thing as putting a VB6 executable on a network share, except:
1. It can work on different platforms.
2. It works over the internet.
3. It at least can work on mobile devices if you bother.
3. Pick a language you like - there are hundreds.
4. Supports virtually any database known to man.
5. Performs extremely well when done right.
6. Scales much better than monolithic desktop apps using connection oriented, archaic things like ADO/RDO/ODBC.
7. Has the largest developer community on earth.
8. Is the way Microsoft is moving anyway...
No they don't. But 15 year old database connection components do...
There are RAD tools for the web too you know... But if web frontends don't float your boat there is WPF, Silverlight, QT, GTK+, etc. etc. etc.. At least those technologies have parts that were actually written for Operating Systems newer than Windows 98...
I know I am sounding like an ass at this point. I don't care, it's frankly infuriating. I honestly cannot understand how any rationale person can defend continued use of a 15 year old product built on extinct technology on the sole basis of "it's easy"... When I was 12 I wrote TIBasic programs for my TI99/4A - compared to modern development in practically any language it was certainly easy - but it is also irrelevent now. The world has moved on. The vendor of the tool has moved on (and then some). It's time to move on.