VB version questions

[fblair301]

I have VB 6.0 Professional. When I look on the Microsoft sites it shows VB 6.0, VB 2005 and then a VB.Net. What is the sequence of these products and what is the differences? What is the latest product?

Thanks,
Fred

[RhinoBull]

VB6 is exactly 10 years old!
VB 2005 is one of the MS .Net programming languages and currently is most recent.
New version is due next year.

If you're planning on getting your hands in programming I suggest you download MS Visual Studio 2005 Express edition - it free and quite powerfull.

[RobDog888]

Yup VB.NET is just them specifying all versions of VB.NET instead of specifying one of the three versions out (2202, 2003, 2005).

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/ex...b/default.aspx

[Hack]

Moved

[bgmacaw]

Just for reference, here's the release history of VB

VB1 - May 1991
VB2 - November 1992
VB3 - May 1993
VB4 - August 1995
VB5 - February 1997
VB6 - June 1998
VB.NET 2002 - January 2002
VB.NET 2003 - April 2003
VB.NET 2005 - November 2005

Some of these dates are rather fuzzy by a month or so since there was often a lag between release to manufacturing and actual availability. People and organizations who were on the beta or had MSDN subscriptions usually got a release copy earlier than others.

[Hack]

I didn't even know there was a VB2.

[bgmacaw]

I didn't even know there was a VB2.

As you can tell from the time line it wasn't around very long. Functionally, it was very much like VB3 except it did not have any database connectivity support. There were a few third party controls around that provided DB support but they weren't that good. Imagine making a databound 'grid' from a control array of dozens of textboxes. Most of us who were around during that time (and VB1) wrote our own DB support using ODBC API calls. VB3 with it's Access/Jet Engine and RDO support was great.

[RhinoBull]

Yea, I remember trying VB1/2 but both were not good enough to get my attention.
VB3 was first that actually did. That version was (like VB5 and VB.Net 2002) a major break through.
I still have few clients running VB3/MS Access 2 applications on Win95 and they can't be bothered with anything better...

[RobDog888]

Pfft! I remember DOS and BASICA (Extended BASIC).

[bgmacaw]

Pfft! I remember DOS and BASICA (Extended BASIC).

These kids today have it so good. Back then we just had zeros and we considered ourselves lucky to find some ones.

One way you can tell how long someone has been using MS-BASIC is if they ask where the DATA, PEEK, and POKE commands are in VB.NET.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Pfft! I remember DOS and BASICA (Extended BASIC).

Whenever I used to go into a computer store as a kid, I wrote a quick program that looped from 1 to some really big number over and over. Since a loop like that took real time back then, this left the screen with a scrolling bunch of numbers. I figured that most of the sales folks wouldn't know what they were looking at and would freak out.


By the way, that VB 2202 you mentioned was a really innovative language, too bad it wasn't released until two centuries from now after Microsoft had been bought up by McDonalds. Those McObjects were pretty versitale, though they did lead to bloat.

VB4 was the first 'modern' version of VB, with the VBA syntax built into Excel95. I actually didn't learn VB as a standalone, but learned the Excel macro language, which was a VAST improvement in performance over the existing Quattro Pro macro language. However, the Quattro Pro language was basically ASM with a HUGE number of registers to work with. To do anything significant, you had to understand pointers, and pointers to pointers, which was useful when I learned C. That language also taught me the importance of comments, even though comments in Quattro Pro were virtually impossible.

[Hack]

Pfft! I remember DOS and BASICA (Extended BASIC).

I wrote my very first program in BASICA simply because it was free (it came with DOS). I don't remember when IBM first came out with a compiler for BASIC but I was a very happy camper. In addition to BASICA I also used dBASE II, III IV, Clipper and did my spreadsheets using Lotus 1-2-3.

[RobDog888]

I had spreadsheets indexing my comic book collection using SuperCalc. It was probably one of the first "Excel-Like" apps in DOS.

We had a IBM clone that was running an 8086 processer with the 8087 math co-processor, (2) 10 MB hard drives and a 5 1/4" flppy drive. Oh and audio cassette tape backup