Over 100 Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) have signed an online petition that demands Redmond resume development and support of “classic” Visual Basic, a-k-a VB6. The MVPs are calling for all VB developers and IT leaders to review and consider signing the petition.
I can’t believe this. It just goes to show how much incompetence there is out there. VB6 and its predecessors are responsible for so much bad code. I rejoiced when it was dumped, and now these retards want to bring it back? MVP my ass.
IIRC Visual BASIC 6.0 is an horrible product. Slow, unflexible and bloated. A perfect tribute to Microsoft. I wish it would have died sooner, at version 4.
Unlike the open source community, which would never dream of fundamentally changing the make-up of something like C++ for instance, Microsoft seems intent on burning bridges and destroying their work and the work of others for the sake of change. I’m not a programmer, so I can’t comment on the supposed advantages of the .Net platform. But for Microsoft to simultaneously kill Visual Basic and to promote .Net as a direct successor when it really isn’t is an atrocity.
I liked it, easy to learn for a beginner. When one of you make something better let me know.
There are serious applications out there written in VB6. I develop and maintain a 50,000 line CAD/CAM program written in VB6. Trying to convert to VB.NET will incur enormous cost. Far more than say the jump from VB4 to VB5 to VB6 ever did.
Most of what is developed in VB are vertical market and in-house applications that rarely see any press. And with one stroke Microsoft has imposed on us enormous costs if we want to move on.
Considering the existance of F# (a OCaml .NET langauge), Java .NET, C++ for .NET, there is no reason other than arrogrance or lack of vision for Microsoft to drop the ball on this.
> VB6 and its predecessors are responsible for so much bad code
that’s a terrible misconception.
A crappy programmer will write crappy code in just about any language, and you can write good code in any language.
I’ll agree that my vb is a bit rusty and if I used vb today it would result in bad code, but that goes for my java too.
I don’t agree vb is responsible for crashy apps, if you don’t know what memory management is about, your c program will crash as well, if you don’t understand vb, your program will suck.
I could agree that vb makes it easier for crappy programmers to have a almost-decent attempt, but that’s not really vb’s fault. Rather the company’s that hire those dev’s or the schools that hand them their diploma or something.
AWESOME RETRO REVOLUTION!
Anyone want to sign my petition to bring assembly back in style as the main development platform for Windows?!
“There are serious applications out there written in VB6. I develop and maintain a 50,000 line CAD/CAM program written in VB6. Trying to convert to VB.NET will incur enormous cost. Far more than say the jump from VB4 to VB5 to VB6 ever did.”
All things considered, and with the benifit of hindsight, was using VB in the first place for such a large application a good idea?
The way I see it, you’re locked into a single vendor’s product line. You always run a risk of them not doing what you want or expect.
Note that I’m lobying to re-write an application built in TK/TCL. It was chosen because the boss (who wouldn’t write the code or use it) knew TK/TCL. It was the wrong tool for the job, and the rough spots constantly have to be repaired and tweaked.
My current alies want to use Java while to me Python seems like it is more appropriate; a forms processing system: moderately complex, maintained by a variety of people with different skill levels (most are programmers but do not have current Java or Python skills).
AWESOME RETRO REVOLUTION!
Anyone want to sign my petition to bring assembly back in style as the main development platform for Windows?!
You mean its not?
@ Chad
I liked it, easy to learn for a beginner. When one of you make something better let me know.
Go download Borland Delphi. I didn’t make this but it’s light years beyond Visual BASIC. Flexible and fast like C++ yet simple and easy to pick up like BASIC and COBOL.
RealBasic is syntax and/or source compatible with VB6 if i recall correctly and can even run on Mac and Linux as well. Maybe they should look at it.
Unlike the open source community, which would never dream of fundamentally changing the make-up of something like C++ for instance, Microsoft seems intent on burning bridges and destroying their work and the work of others for the sake of change. I’m not a programmer,
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki
It seems that VB is judged in the same way java was ; just because peoples wrote a bunch of bloated java applets doesnt mean java is bad. Same for VB … if your programmer writes poor code, the application will, of course, be poor.
Thank you MS, you will now FORCE certain companies to either use “OLD” os’s and computers where internet access can be dangerous.
OR
People can begin using Wine + their application. Can’t wait to see all the new linux converts.
Many devices use a visual basic-created front end, such as Audio Precision’s APWIN software for their $10,500 hardware.
Bloated? How is a very-high-level language not bloated? It can not be compared to C or assembly. It can be compared to say, Delphi.
I use VB 6.0 a lot for frontends and find it pretty useful, easy to use and easy to read.
Why don’t they help Gambas or any other basic/Vbasic like language and use it instead… and get involve in improving them. I know it is not as easy to get them to use alternatives but they would not lose the language because a megacororationmonopoly wants to force them to upgrate… they will have the control…
I hope to see programing classes were you can learn any language instead of the present situation were you learn Mocoshaft’s OS, MS’s programing language, MS’s Office… it is plain easy to make a monopoly when the only thing been thougt is MS’s products…
Imagine them (MS) as a car maker they would find a way to make roads diferent so that only their cars would be allow in the roads where anyone was once able to get to with any car… then they force you to their new car on their up an comming road plan… all old roads will be eliminated… they don’t care.
I am maybe just trolling… or insane… but not to far from reallity…
… just fork VB6!
Oh, that’s right… you can’t. You might consider RealBasic instead.
Good luck on that petitioning a-corporation-whose- profitability-is-predicated-on-obedient-upgrading thing. I’m sure it will all work out.
Incidentally, I work in an industry where VB is considered the hallmark of a poorly designed system. Not because of the language itself per se, but because there’s very broad neglect of sticking to good design patterns among VB coders in the industry. I blame some of that on MSDN and schoold that teach VB. Microsoft frequently encourages bad design and coding practices in their development products and I think that problem has saturated a lot of VB development. Also, it’s fairly simple, using VB, to code up something that is superficially impressive, which means less experienced and less deliberate coders get the impression (and give the impression) that they are good coders when they are actually not so great.
Just an observation.
No one said VB6 apps are just going to stop working just because VB.Net exists. It hasn’t happened yet has it? It isn’t going to happen with Longhorn either.
The only real problem here is that MS has made it more difficult to move existing VB codebases to the new tools and platforms.
There are places where MS chose to make VB.Net dissimilar to VB6 without good reason. For example, renaming the “Long” variable type to “Integer”. What was the point? And some of the Interop is a nightmare – couldn’t MS have wrapped a bit more of their API? That would have made the transition a lot less painful.
On balance I think that VB.Net is a great product – I intend to build my career on it – but it is far from flawless, particularly re: backward-compatability.
On balance I think that VB.Net is a great product – I intend to build my career on it – but it is far from flawless, particularly re: backward-compatability.
The technical community, in general, confuses technical and and business motivations.
GAMBAS is free and open, I certainly recommend moving over to it ( http://gambas.sourceforge.net/ ), they can support it in any way they want and support it for ever and ever on any platform they choose.
GAMBAS is the future!
Stick a fork in it. VB6 was dead before it arrived. Every single method it uses to do anything is outdated. Move on to .Net. VB.net is a real language with a real framework. It is also easy to use. Also, you probably can rewrite whatever application you wrote in VB6 in under a week, regardless of how complex it is. It’ll come out much cleaner, more robust, and much more stable.
And why not asking for bringing back ZX81 Basic …..
Of course one of the big reasons of Microsoft’s success has been VB, but that doesn’t stop the groupthinkers from forming their own unreality.
“All things considered, and with the benifit of hindsight, was using VB in the first place for such a large application a good idea? ”
In 1998 yes it was a good choice as the edit and continue feature of VB6 allow for very rapid testing and debugging. It allow to preserve our code base in visual basic 3, while taking advantage of the object oriented feature of 32-bit vb.
In 1998 looking at the history and changes in MS Basic we felt it was a good way to go. As code that didn’t rely on I/O, graphics, or files were easily tranferable between quickbasic and vb. So we figure as long we kept everything separated i.e model-view we would be ok.
About the only thing that I remember getting seriously broken outside of graphics, I/O, files was the DATA statement being axed. I thought it was pretty stupid to have done that. In VB.NET we have that problem magnified a hundred fold.
The vb3 to vb6 transition was a rewrite because the older application was based around array to manage data which were capped at 32,000 elements. In vb6 we changed over to collections and classes which allow for much larger files to created and edited.
In 1999 we learned about Design Patterns and was very successful in applying it to our project. One of the more successful addition is that we separated out the execution of commands from the forms. This allows us to totally rework our UI for different setups yeah continue to use 80% of the original code. We basically adapted a pattern called model-presentation-view. The view communicate thru the presention layer to execute commands on the model.
Doing this is why we are totally dead in the water when it comes to VB.NET. We could covert but it would be costly but not impossible.
“The way I see it, you’re locked into a single vendor’s product line. You always run a risk of them not doing what you want or expect. ”
I expected any major changes would be on the order of the change from vb3 to vb4 or in the worse case from quickbasic to vb. Those I could have dealt fairly quickly and a high degree of reliability due to our adoption of design patterns, refactoring and other modern techniques.
But instead we get very little backwards compatibility and total rewrite of the language.
“My current alies want to use Java while to me Python seems like it is more appropriate; a forms processing system: moderately complex, maintained by a variety of people with different skill levels (most are programmers but do not have current Java or Python skills).”
My experience that good design, being able to quickly test (see Fowler’s refactoring), are the critical elements not the actual langauge used. There are situation where langauge does make a difference (like speed, real time work, string processing) but for most general purpose languages (Java, VB, C++, Python, etc). Good design and ease of testing are the paramount consideration. Good design will ease manitance of your software, easy testing will allow you to reliabily refactor a bad design to a good design.
Perhaps I have bias here, but I have been involved maintaining the same software from 1986, when it ran on a HP 300 series workstation using Rocky Mountain Basic (science and instrumentation oriented basic) to VB 6. I have done two major conversion, one from Rocky Mountain Basic to VB3 and another from VB3 to a object oriented design in VB6. Plus a slew of minor conversions on the suite of utilities we maintain along side of our main applications.
The conversion between VB6 and VB.NET is onerous and hard, akin more to the Rocky Mountain to VB3 conversion than the vb3 to vb6. It would like having a Java application and converting it to C#. Simple apps will convert well, but add anything of complexity and you are facing a monster of a job.
I was one of them. The writing was on the wall. Technology changes. Sink or Swim. Read a book once in a while and groom your skills. With the bad economy and outsourcing etc, I can’t believe someone would not be versed in something else by now.
—You didn’t keep your skills sharp.
—You became totally dependent on a proprietary solution (from Microsoft!!)
Shame on you
You didn’t read my comments too well. I said we could do the conversion it more costly. It possible because designed for being able to change long ago.
In addition I do program quite a bit in C++ (http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit), as well as delphi pascal, and assembly. VB6 is by far the most easy and productive langauge I use. VB is not god’s gift to mankind. You need to be intelligent in using it when you base designs around vb.
It is a legitmate complient to say that microsoft made arbitary changes in VB that were not needed to in order to make the language work with the .NET runtime and framework.
If you sucked when you used VB6, you have great chances of sucking in DotNet too. The tool increases the output of suckiness that is generated. VS.Net is such a tool.
There are so many Basics for Windows out there, and sometimes even better than VB (some are even available for multiple platforms…)
Commercial: PureBasic, RealBasic, IBasic/IBasicPro, B++Basic
DualLicense – Commercial/Free: eXtremeBasic
OpenSource: FreeBasic, BCX, vsBasic, wxBasic
Most of these Basics produce nice little exe’s, while others are compiling to byte-code.
Forget the old VB and go with .NET or another Basic compiler mentioned above (suppose there are even more… for Windows).
Forgot to mention, there is Lemick:
What’s Lemick?
Lemick is a programming language with BASIC syntax, it’s a typed and a compiled language, its source is compiled into a platform-independent virtual machine assembler that is later transformed into a platform-dependent representation by the just-in-time compiler. Lemick supports concurrent and distributed programming (multi-threading and distributed multi-threading). Rendezvous are used for message passing; replicas and ultra-weak consistency model implement distributed shared memory simulation. Extension of exception handling mechanism, including distributed version is being developed now. Lemick favors mixed procedural and object-oriented programming style.
Haven’t used it yet, but maybe it’s worth testing…
I’m not a fan of VB, even though GW-Basic was my first language.
At our company we have a lot of old code written in VB (almost every language under the sun… developers are given a lot of leeway with this). Within the last few months I’ve had the ‘opportunity’ to fix bugs in this old code. I would first be happy as I thought it would be a great opportunity to convert those projects to ‘real’ languages. Sadly, every project got upgraded to VS.Net without a whole lot of hickups, the tool in VS.Net studio worked pretty sweetly. There was no point in rewriting it. The project upgraded just fine. My rewriting time for all the projects probably totalled about 10 minutes, 8 of which were trying to remember VBs syntax (; is a habit).
I would like to see a project that did not upgrade well. The ones I’ve worked with did everything custom under the sun from serial port communication, to COM, db access. What are in these projects that people claim are unconvertable? Crappy code is my guess. Although I don’t like the predecessor to these projects choice in language, the code itself was well designed.
That said, my bigotry is that I wish MS would drop VB altogether. The reason is that it’s too easy for idiots to start writing code, which end up in production, and become unmaintainable. Bad code can be written in any language, but VB just encourages sloppiness.
You’ve been warned.
I’m a VBA/VB/VBScript programmer by day and a REALBasic programmer the rest of the time (oh yeah I use Python too). REALBasic rocks, yes it compiles to MAC OS X, MAC 9, all versions of Windows and Linux and in as many foreign languages as you want in one compilation. It compiles all libraries into the one exe so you don’t have to worry about runtime errors where libraries are missing or out of date. I reckon MVPs should take up the REALBasic challenge and sh@ft MS’s focus-group developed try-hard interpreter .NET Java rip-off language.
As for Java and Python, most people seem to learn Java because companies push for it thinking the more complicated a language is the better it must be. Python can do just as much, if not more, than Java can. I once wrote a program that had to create patterns of various complexity; what took me three months of pain to build in Java took me one week in Python and a damn site better product at the end of it!
Oh yeah, and RB comes with an application that converts your VB products into REALBasic. How’s that for incentive? 🙂
VB6 can make a good programmer write bad code, because the language sucks. It’s a bug-enabler. It’s not valid to defend VB6 by saying a bad programmer will make bad code in any language. Stricter language semantics and some semblance of an enforced, STRUCTURED syntax would help immensely.
I consider myself a good programmer. I can program in C, C++, Java, x86 and ARM assembler, PL/SQL, and to some extent Lisp. I follow design patterns and avoid antipatterns. I encapsulate and proceduralize. But I have NEVER made such buggy software, made so many elementary language mistakes and logic errors as when I took a course in VB6. The language makes it OBSCENELY easy to whip out unstructured, buggy crap. It’s almost a given. The fact that you can change language behavior via pragmas is insane too.
I don’t care if VB6 goes away, or how much pain it’s absence causes: convert it all. If it’s in VB6, it’s either crap, suspected crap, or crap waiting to happen in a future revision. Replace it with something good. You deploy and maintain and run crap, one day you will pay for it.
VB6 has a built-in safety valve that overcomes it’s junkiness: it’s easy. That’s it’s only redeeming factor. But don’t _ever_ confuse “ease of use” with “safe” or “Good” or “structured”. Or, in this case, “supported”.
even bill gates has signed it!
Businesses, in my experience as a software consultant working at several companies over the past decade, are conservative. They know that VB is simple, and they want simple solutions. As much as the developers beg and plea to use more technically elaborate solutions, the managers just want things that they believe people will be more productive on. If their IT shop started churning out apps with VB3 and the powers that be believe they minimise their risk by moving to VB4 etc…and the same can be said with VB6 and VB.NET. They believe it will be less difficult for their staff to pick up….usually the staff are competent enough and eager enough and have a great enough understanding to pick up whatever you throw at them, so they do IT staff a great disservice in this area. But since when did businesses care about their staff. And then you lot have the gaul to lump all VB programmers as crap. Its like rubbing sold in our wounds.
Only just recently that I discover my first IT shop that did care and I was actually shocked. Then they went and overengineered the damn app to the point where adding a field requires me to write code in 30 different places. And you could see from their code they were competent techos….just insane.(anyway I digress). OOP gone mad.
VB6 is great for event driven GUI windows apps, and decent enough for middle tier stuff(although it probably ain’t the fastest). Managers believed, and I haven’t decided whether it was rightly or wrongly, to move their IT shops from VB to VB.NET believing it to be just as simple and similar. If anyone can really tell me that there is a great difference between C# and VB.NET I’d like them to explain it to me, because I practically don’t notice the difference apart from semi-colons. I thought ASP.NET was pretty good too.
I think you’re all exaggerating when it comes to VB6 and VB.NET. It really isn’t as bad as you all state. Of course, I’d rather not be using it, merely because I want to broaden my horizons in other technical areas that pay more. So its a business decision on my part to move to another development platform. Although, VB has been my bread and butter for years….and if there are good paying jobs, you can’t really argue.
And yes, I’ve programmed in C++, C and Java before, and I’ve hardly seen greater productivity there from their proponents either.
VB is accessible, and BASIC is FOR beginners. People start on it and a few never get better, but for the most part true programmers will shine anywhere. Basic and VB got a lot of people into programming….and it did a lot of things right too. You’re focusing on the negative and then taking it to the extreme. It really isn’t that bad.
Ok. Going back to my happy place now.
Why would you want all of your libraries compiled into one exe?
oh jeez, thats just too much. i once saw a senior developer who had never seen vb, looking over someones shoulder who had to do some small thing, and he’s like “Why are you writing psudo-code?”.
really? didnt know there was a j2ee equivilent in python…
I liked it, easy to learn for a beginner. When one of you make something better let me know.
Sorry hon, but many of us who learned to program, remember using PASCAL back in the good old days. Some universities and polytechnics even to this day use Delphi to teach basic programming skills.
Personally, Borland should use this as an opportunity to push Delphi as a quick ‘n dirty RAD solution that many businesses look for.
pushed Kylix too.
but it let die for almost 3 years now.
Shame real shame.
I wanted to learn that.
You can’t even get it to install now on most modern Linux distros.
lets see… full dhtml with an emphasis on javascript and the dom would be great to teach to a beginner. xml style navigation, java style syntax, and a familiar graphical environment, while being not too complex. php would be another good one. perl was the first language i learned, and quite a good one. theres python as well. havnt used delphi, but aparently it is quite pleasent, and does the same sort of thing as vb. same with ruby.
all of these languages are fairly easy to pick up, and all of them teach better (im talking teaching proper perl and javascript here) programming techniques then vb.
“Personally, Borland should use this as an opportunity to push Delphi as a quick ‘n dirty RAD solution that many businesses look for.”
I’ve been wishing that for 9 years now….nothing on the horizon yet, unless you live in Europe (where delphi has been king for years).
Most people like VB because it is an effective Rapid Application Development solution. The problem is that VB is tied to a product line which has moved on.
I think that open source is at the stage where there are enough good quality servers and tools where you can take a language like Python or C++/QT and develop a good in house solution that will last longer than a vendor product line, and that will be supported, not by a more decentralized organizational design consisting of open source vendors, academia, govenments, and the community. Python is probably the best choice, but not the only choice.
It’s worth a try to go the open source route rather than go through the same process of being forced to upgrade. I had heard suggestions that .Net was being phased out by Avalon. So how long is .Net going to be supported?
(Quoted from Receding Hairlines)
“Anyone want to sign my petition to bring assembly back in style as the main development platform for Windows?!”
It would be faster that what is used now! 😉 Haha.
How about a petition to bring back Windows 3.1? (hehe)
–EyeAm
Microsoft adopted a new product line because Java was converting too many developers, and Java was based on an OOP framework API and a virtual runtime. It could run on Windows and Microsoft could not mess with it very much, they could not easily control it.
Microsoft could say that they can move .Net to a new platform because it is decoupled from the platform by an interpreter. You can make changes to the platform and it’s API and hide those changes, they do not affect .Net’s API and unlike a wrapper, there are less code changes and they are also more contained/encapsulated.
The newest programming model however involves a revolutinary new way of programming, where data is reusable through a DBMS file system. This is a dramatic change because the applications will be more dynamic regarding data.
All of this is tired to a product line which consists of external systems and services and their interop through XML.
You can rapidly develop complex vendor solutions.
The hardware architecture that will support this is not 64 bit stand alone processors but it is decentralized co operative infrastructure like “cell” or grid technology, because it is more flexible, but they have to sell their 64 bit stuff, it cost money to make it, but it is a dead model.
The thing that businesses need to do is use open source technology as a foundation because it is less expensive and supported over a longer period of time, but where you need to invest in a breaking edge solution, you have to choose a vendor, and be under their control; that might be okay if it meets some short term goal. Diversify by using open source, but don’t sell out to it, just use it, use every thing you can to your advantage, find what works, find it yourself.
Decompilation! I am a VB6 programmer and I am thinking of moving to VB.net. But, in VB6 I tend to sleep better at night when it comes to my fears of hackers decompiling our company code (as compared to interpreted languages). I would love to move to .net but I’m afraid I wont sleep as well. VB.Net, great improvements over VB6, BUT!
I don’t think the porting itself is impossible but testing the result is where things get a bit hairy on non-trivial projects. I thank QBasic for getting me into programming so that by itself justified its existance to me. I believe in tools and VB6 can be a great tool to some and not so great to others. Depends on your requirements. Thus we all differ around here
VB6 allows to do in 5 mins things that take hours in another languaje, it is a very handy tool for automation, and doesn’t require a heavy weight runtime.
It is an imperfect language and prone to make mistakes…
…just like any other language
It is a very handy tool that makes life easier on Win32 for many many people, including many seasoned C++ developers.
.NET is simply a different world.
I started my programming carrier back in the 80’s with BASIC. After a few years Microsoft started bragging about something called Visual BASIC (they even had a version for MSDOS). My first reaction was: but, but, why?!? Next 10 years were marked by a flood of apps written with this crap – some of them good, but mostly just pure horror!
I *strongly* disagre with all those who claim that language does not matter. Sure, you can code good and bad programs in any complete language – but there is this strange mentality factor. It is untangible, but it is there. There is something about VB that does irreversible brain damage to young minds and tends to invite the type of coding that really sucks. And those certified “MVPs” are probably the poster children for it.
I cannot explain it why, perhaps this language is saturated with bad karma, but it is there! Let it rot in hell!
and continue to say that anyone who releases an application written and VB, and claims to be a ‘professional’ should be drawn and quartered. The “Compiler” (yeah, right) and ‘required libraries’ generally result in such bloated nonsense that a simple per-file calculation editor… handling MAYBE 4k of data per file and could be replicated in <32k as a html/java cgi ends up being a 32 meg distro…
While showing some value as a learning tool, anyone who writes business apps using it should hang their head in shame.
If you are VB developer and prefer “classic” VB to VB.NET you may want to give REALbasic http://realbasic.com/
REALbasic claims to be able to convert VB6 to REALbasic. Its object oriented less expensive, and the latest version REALBasic 2005 runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. This way if you have a burning desire to migrate your apps to one of the other platforms you can provided you buy the Pro Version.
Its worth a look.
Does anyone realize that if this was OSS, there would be a fork right about now?
Also about “ease of…”. Isn’t it a bit humerous that no one expects surgery to be easy, or racing in the Indy 500, but we expect programming computers to be?
Mat: Sure, you can code good and bad programs in any complete language – but there is this strange mentality factor. It is untangible, but it is there. There is something about VB that does irreversible brain damage to young minds and tends to invite the type of coding that really sucks.
Oh please… That is so incorrect its not even funny. I haven’t worked much, but I’ve been at various colleges/universities for a long time (forever it seems like) collecting different degrees and doing some teaching. (As a personal note, I entered “higher education” way early and decided to spend a lot of time there) Anyway… This gave me lot’s of time to observe students who have started with various languages…
The best ones I worked with started with Visual Basic (or some other Basic) and then demonstrated the flexibility to be able to move to another language. Simple as that.
Am I saying they were perfect? No. Am I saying that it was VB that did it and made them awesome? No. Am I saying that this only applies to Basic? No. I’m sure there are other really good people I didn’t get to meet. But it sure doesn’t cause “irreversible brain damage”.
What it DID appear to do (as other simple languages do) is enable the programmer to build up their confidence and interest.
They could EASILY put together a program and get results. Which encouraged them to try more complicated things. As the complexity rose, their desire to improve their abilities also rose. As a result, their abilities did rise. When they became dissatisified with the results of their programs and it was due to the “language” rather than their ability (for example the program being bloated as some people here have mentioned) they then would go out and seek a new language. Knowing what they could already do and having a great deal of confidence, they did not care how hard it was going to be because they believed they could overcome the challenge.
Meanwhile, the people I knew who started with other languages, for the most part at almost the same level they started at. They started stinky and they ended stinky. Is that true for all of them? No. But all the people I worked with who were really good, all started with Basic. They all had confidence, they all had skill, they were all motivated, they were all cooperative, and they were all happy.
Will my opinion change when I more solidly enter the “working world”? Who knows?
Personally, I think that Microsoft should have never made VB .Net. I haven’t worked with it much, (most of my work is in Assembly, C, C#, Java, and Python) but so far it seems to me, to not really be a good replacement.
I can’t remember what it was exactly that threw me off. But when using it, I had the feeling that it wasn’t really “Visual Basic”. But then maybe I just haven’t gotten used to it yet.
BR: Also about “ease of…”. Isn’t it a bit humerous that no one expects surgery to be easy, or racing in the Indy 500, but we expect programming computers to be?
Well… For beginners I think its somewhat important to have things be “easy”, that way their confidence and interest gets built up.
Also, the task can only be so difficult before it becomes impossible or unrealistic. So we should try to keep the difficulty level reasonable.
Also, the easier programming is, the easier it is to make bigger projects.
But most importantly, it seems like a number of the people I have worked with in higher education, seem to like to avoid programming if at all possible. A number of them seemed to prefer “paperwork”. And some others… They programmed… But they weren’t very good.
For them we need to keep the difficulty level really really low otherwise they can’t do anything of value. (As far as I’m concerned though, they shouldn’t be allowed to program.)
And you/some still write in .net
)
The real problem with VB.Net is not that it is in any way inferior to VB6. IMHO, VB.Net it is technically better, but even if it were not, that is not where the transition really hurts.
Neither is the real problem with VB.NEt that it difficult for VB6 programmers to learn. The truth is that it is really quite similar (although I agree that it could have been very much more so). Of course, some programers might not be willing to re-learn, either because they don’t like the the way that VB.Net “feels”, or because they can’t / don’t want to invest the resource required to do so. Nevertheless, the cost of transition is actually relatively small.
No, the *real* problem is the investment that has already been sunk into the millions of lines of code that are written in classic VB. The unfortunate truth is that most applications won’t port easily to VB.Net – neiter wholly nor in part. Sometimes, with considerable investment, it is possible. Sometimes, however, it is simply impossible. This leaves their developers and the busines that relies on this code with a very difficult (=expensive) problem.
Unfortunately, none of the other versions of Basic are really a solution either: they all involve some form of porting, and none of them fits Microsoft’s vision of the future, ie. is a .Net-based solution.
Now, some of us are really sold on the idea of .Net and managed code. But not everyone sees things that way. But that whole debate is really beside the point. The reality for many VB developers is that we need to maintain VB6 code for future present and versions of Windows, but we have no easy way to port our code to MS’ new development environment.
The bottom line is that MS have left us in the lurch.
Isn’t it interesting, whenever MS is discussed, feathers fly. I think the best comment so far is “Superficially impressive” – I think an apt expression for most of that company – if you took away the monopoly what exactly would one be left with. Software that has been around for ages, either bought in or developed in-house. Nothing really exciting after how many years 20 years of “rapid” development – we still think the height of cool is Office?
God help us.
Excellent post!
If one is basically worried in any way about security why choose MS?
How many years has their OS been in Beta? XP is still full of holes out of the box.
And we base our business decisions on this O/S?
God help us again.
Kramii “The bottom line is that MS have left us in the lurch.” – did you expect anything else??????????
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gb/
This project is dead now, but if you want a maintained VB6, why not revive this project?