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Thread: Old School coder with questions

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    Old School coder with questions

    Hello
    My username reflects my skills as a programmer. I come from a quaint time when I did quite a bit of VB6 coding and was quite happy with it. My needs were simple, coding personal tools to help with specific tasks.

    I was quite comfy with the old school commands for creating opening and reading/writing data into and out of sequential and random access files, creating text databases. I loved arrays, and could manipulate a 3d array handily.

    Then .net revolutionized the language.
    I never could quite wrap my head around more complex sql database coding and writing a simple text file was no longer simple. Plus, They took away my arrays :-(

    Additionally, due to job changes I stopped coding eventually with no real incentive to continue. The last I did was using VStudio 8.
    So now, years later I have a couple projects I am considering.

    I considered the Visual Studio.net community thing available for free from MS website, but I loath spending 10gb HD space to install a mess of stuff I will never use. My needs are still simple. I don't think I need .net functionality. Plus all the digesting of new things since VS8. So I want to go back to VB6.

    However, I found out last night my old copy of VB6 will not install on my Win8 machine.

    My question(s);
    Is there a free copy of VB6, (Pro at least so I can compile to .exe), that runs on Win8?
    What run-time will I need with Win8? Does VBRUN.dll still work?

    Or am I relegated to having to try to digest the latest and greatest stuff I don't really need or want to know?
    Thanks for any help whatsoever!

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    No. No free copies of VB6 available.
    Search this forum for WIn8.
    I think you will find that when you install your legal VB6 program you will 'hang' near the end...however, just stop, reboot, and I believe you will find it works okay. But, anyway, look on this forum for hints/suggestions on Win 8. I (along with many others) are using VB6 (Visual Studio 6.0 Pro-in my case) on Win 8.1 with no issues.

    I'm not Old SCHOOL, but am OLD!

    :-)

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    I have near 5 decades too. I think that you can get that http://www.monodevelop.com and use it for free. But you can use M2000 interpreter for working with files and arrays, and you get an environment thar can use any font size as a basic font, so you can make big displays, that all old people love...Not needed for run time dll because already exist ..In 8. It is not a product but a tool to make some nice piece of code.

    You may love the Form command that make the text display...Form 80,25 make in any computer just an 80 chars wide and 25 lines, inserting line space if needed.
    Last edited by georgekar; Nov 25th, 2014 at 09:36 AM.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions


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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    VB 6 will install under windows 8

    I find the OP a bit funny talking about Old School and VB6 seeing that many newbies are using VB6.

    I am a bit of an old school programmer but I come from the days when you booted up your PC and were presented with A:\ or C:\ if you were lucky enough to have a HDD.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Quote Originally Posted by MikiSoft View Post
    Thank you all for the prompt replies!
    I didn't expect so quick a response, and I'm happy VB6 is not yet dead!

    When I get home from work I will try again.

    With persistence I may be able to get this old dog barking again! And coding is a game of persistence isn't it?

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    I start computing on a Texas TI94/A from a friend of mine and then I bought an Acorn Electron with the nice BBC Basic, and a cassete recorder...with an amazing 32KB Rom...double from a Spectrum....In university, we had 8088 XT and one IBM AT, with pascal inside and GW BASIC. But I make my final work in a BBC Model B, with 32Kbyte Ram, a database for Water Analysis Data, with drop down menus and Istogram printing on screen and in an Epson FX printer. Nice time then...But sure now we have excelent pc, with a variety of languages free to use, giga for memory etc.
    So my question are...what applications you think to do, OldSkool..?

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    My first attempt at programming was on an old Timex 1000 with 8kb ram and some keys that did not work

    My first real foray into programming was on a C64 back in the late 80s from there I moved to the PC and GW Basic

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Quote Originally Posted by georgekar View Post
    I start computing on a Texas TI94/A from a friend of mine and then I bought an Acorn Electron with the nice BBC Basic, and a cassete recorder...with an amazing 32KB Rom...double from a Spectrum....In university, we had 8088 XT and one IBM AT, with pascal inside and GW BASIC. But I make my final work in a BBC Model B, with 32Kbyte Ram, a database for Water Analysis Data, with drop down menus and Istogram printing on screen and in an Epson FX printer. Nice time then...But sure now we have excelent pc, with a variety of languages free to use, giga for memory etc.
    So my question are...what applications you think to do, OldSkool..?
    I like hearing about the old days thanks for sharing yall's experiences

    I started with the Tandy COCO, (Color Computer) w/Motorola 6809, casette recorder, and was in high cotton when I got my first 5-1/4" floppy drive lol and GWBASIC, then went to VB3.0 when I got access to my first PC at work.

    I used VB to parse data from an old comma delimited database- "Datastar" to crunch numbers, migrate data to newer apps, and various other little time saving apps.

    Hey georgekar,

    I also coded personal apps for gaming, I play role playing games with friends, which tend to be heavy with lookup tables, charts and cross references, as well as number crunching.
    Dice rolls determine the outcomes of any given set of tasks during the game.

    Flipping through the books looking up charts and number crunching takes time, is boring and distracts from game-play. So back in the day I wrote a number of menu driven apps to help with these tasks, which were worth their weight in gold in time savings for us.

    I use text boxes to collect dice rolls from the players, and for my rolls I had the option of rolling dice or just use a random number gen to generate the dice rolls automatically.

    Wherever possible I hard coded the tables into arrays or variables and then generated a simple screen display of results or output simple text files or clipboard I could then simply paste into my game notes.
    I hard coded data charts etc., that way I had a stand-alone app with no support files, only output files. No install, just drop it in a folder and away I went.

    Here is the last one I wrote some years ago using VS8; check out ENCOUNTERS to get an idea of the complexity of generating a single random battle encounter!

    TERRAIN is an app I developed myself with my own charts for generating random terrain feature descriptions very quickly during travel.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/qeptd7k709...oject.exe?dl=0

    Well, now we are playing a completely new game system with new rules and charts, and most of my old apps are unusable for this and we are back to page flipping. So I want to write some new apps.
    Last edited by OldSkool; Nov 25th, 2014 at 02:21 PM.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    You make data for some games..(I don't play games..any more. Happen this when my son beat me...hard in Xbox...Now my son is 23). So You need something to perform fast...and Vb can do that. But you can do the same with any of free editions also...
    (some forms eat labels..give some space....or use font metrics)

    That I wrote before I see your program.
    Maybe M2000 can you help you, because you can place graphics using text coordinates or graphic, and you can use 32 layers as "hardware" sprites, I call that Players, and you can use "software" sprites, I call them Sprites, also. The hardware sprites are simple pictureboxes but with transparent bits. Ypu can also use SPEECH command to hear sentences. You can use any kind of data storage, the new Document is very easy to use, or you can create Mdb files and Tables with MEMO. Also you can play video and sounds, and finaly you can use midi by sending notes...

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Quote Originally Posted by georgekar View Post
    You make data for some games..(I don't play games..any more. Happen this when my son beat me...hard in Xbox...Now my son is 23). So You need something to perform fast...and Vb can do that. But you can do the same with any of free editions also...
    (some forms eat labels..give some space....or use font metrics)

    That I wrote before I see your program.
    Thanks georgekar
    All I do with VB is to write apps to make data to optimize time at the game table.
    My friends are so restless now I have spoiled them with apps lol

    I will remember text metrics, I did have problems when going from desktop PC to laptop for game day

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Hey OldSkool,

    As far as I'm concerned, VB that's COM architecture based (i.e., VB6) will NEVER die. In fact, it's still quite alive and well in the MS-Office VBA, even a 64-bit version in Office 64 bit. They even got a LongLong (8 byte integer) going. And you'll always find me around shaking the trees to get them to strip it out of Office and turn the interpreter back into a compiler so we can have an updated stand-alone product.

    In fact, I try and make the case that they should just include it WITH Windows. Can you imagine a native VB-COM-based integrated development environment, right out of the box in Windows? I wonder what that'd do for their Surface and Windows Phone sales?

    Ahhh, and find Navion's posts if you'd like to see VB6 running on even the new Windows 10. It's a relatively recent thread, and he says it runs just fine. Personally, I do all my VB6 development on a Win7-64 bit machine, but also have a Win8-64 bit machine with VB6 installed on it, and it works fine. You do always have to "kick" it a bit upon the first installation and project load. However, after that, it runs just fine.

    Also, don't forget to install the VS6SP6b (i.e., service pack 6) to get all of the latest "fixes". This is absolutely one of the most integrate, bullet-proof, and full featured languages in existence.

    Just another old scooler's thoughts.

    You take care,
    Elroy

    p.s. If you don't have a legal license, they're fairly easy to get on eBay. Be sure you're getting VB6 with CDs though.
    Any software I post in these forums written by me is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, and permission is hereby granted, free of charge and without restriction, to any person obtaining a copy. To all, peace and happiness.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Quote Originally Posted by Elroy View Post
    Hey OldSkool,

    As far as I'm concerned, VB that's COM architecture based (i.e., VB6) will NEVER die.

    Also, don't forget to install the VS6SP6b (i.e., service pack 6) to get all of the latest "fixes". This is absolutely one of the most integrate, bullet-proof, and full featured languages in existence.

    Just another old scooler's thoughts.

    You take care,
    Elroy

    p.s. If you don't have a legal license, they're fairly easy to get on eBay. Be sure you're getting VB6 with CDs though.
    Hey Elroy
    Your reply galvanized me to be persistent and I am excited to say I have VB6 running on Win8 64x!! SP6 is also installed.

    It's nostalgic to re-explore it, that familiar interface. I think I will put on some old music I used to listen to while coding back when and start coding!

    I appreciate all the feedback, and will try not to be a pest lol. After all, I managed so many years ago with only the MSDN for reference.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Quote Originally Posted by OldSkool View Post
    I appreciate all the feedback, and will try not to be a pest lol. After all, I managed so many years ago with only the MSDN for reference.
    lol, showing my age. Internet wasn't available for self-teaching, but at least F1 was only a keystroke away
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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Quote Originally Posted by LaVolpe View Post
    lol, showing my age. Internet wasn't available for self-teaching, but at least F1 was only a keystroke away
    F1? That wasn't available for me either. Just had the hard copy of the manual and whatever books I had on the shelf.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Compuserve was a nice source of knowledge before Internet.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    I was on Prodigy back in the day [2400bps ;(] and then AOL. There were some groups on AOL that I took part in but by then I knew enough that I ended up answering questions rather than finding answers.

    I did manage to learn a lot on my first real job as a programmer though. I was lucky in that there was a guy there that really knew his stuff and enjoyed talking about it.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Quote Originally Posted by DataMiser View Post
    F1? That wasn't available for me either. Just had the hard copy of the manual and whatever books I had on the shelf.
    The abacus?
    Fortran was high school & first use of coding via punch cards for me. Then, GW-Basic user manual was my paperback teacher for Basic, all several hundred pages of it. Still have it. Graduated to coding on tape, then much later came VB, via F1. Coding on a real computer is awesome
    Last edited by LaVolpe; Nov 25th, 2014 at 09:32 PM.
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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    When Windows 7 came out, I thought that there would be no problems installing Visual Basic 6 on Windows 7,
    but after trying I realized that there was a problem, but quickly I found a way to install it without getting any
    errors or problems. then the same with Windows 8, now I am using Visual Basic 6 Pro in Windows 7 and also
    Windows 8 without any problems at all.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    I can't say I miss having to either print out the code or doing a series of List commands to try and look over the code.

    After GW-Basic I bought a copy of VB For Dos and fell in love with it. I barely touched the visual part of it but just having the word processor type editor, being able to define subs and functions and being able to search for a word or phrase in the code were huge not to mention being able to make a real stand alone exe. I still have the programmers manual for it on my desk even though I haven't written a line of VBDos code since the 90s. After VBDos I picked up VB3 and used that for a while then VB4 which I barely touched. VB5 is where I really started using VB for Windows. I used that every day for about 5 years before moving totally to VB6 and then VB.Net.

    I also worked a bit with Turbo Pascal, Turbo C/C++ and Visual C++ and more recently a bit of C# and Java

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    DataMiser good programming biography

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    why cant you install it on windows 8 ? you can get around the compatibility issues easy. if you need help id be more than happy to

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Quote Originally Posted by xaden View Post
    why cant you install it on windows 8 ? you can get around the compatibility issues easy. if you need help id be more than happy to
    ???
    He has it running just fine on 8....read all the threads.

    Ah, 'punch cards'! Recall dropping a whole box of them on my way back to the dorm and had to reorder them...thankfully there were little numbers to help. And of course, that whole box was for drawing a simple line graph! Let's see, college in late 60's, early 70's when punch cards (and bell bottoms) were in style....kinda hints at MY age.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Quote Originally Posted by SamOscarBrown View Post
    ???
    He has it running just fine on 8....read all the threads.

    Ah, 'punch cards'! Recall dropping a whole box of them on my way back to the dorm and had to reorder them...thankfully there were little numbers to help. And of course, that whole box was for drawing a simple line graph! Let's see, college in late 60's, early 70's when punch cards (and bell bottoms) were in style....kinda hints at MY age.
    My very first computer I ever encountered was in 1975, the Univac 1218 at Mare Island, Calif. I was training as a Data Systems tech at the Navy Data Systems training center. Basically a refrigerator with discreet components, flip flops on plug-in circuit boards, no LSI, not even TTL, and magnetic core ram. At that time, "chips" were not even part of the conversation, not in the circles I was in at least.

    Serious! no bs. Tiny donut beads with hair fine wires ran through them. I actually have one of the ram boards that were scrapped. I keep it as a conversation piece. It has 8k ram, thats a LOT of tiny donuts, and must have cost thousands to make.

    Interfacing with the 1218 was basically lighted switches for registers and accumulators and things and it read and punched paper tape.
    I didn't do much programming, only enough to load a tape and run routines to troubleshoot it. They would introduced flawed circuits and we would have to find them.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~
    Yes VB6 is working...basically.
    The MSDN disks are not reading. I just built this puter and have a cheapo dvd the case came with and I suspect some issue there. During install it simply wouldn't read and I had to abort.
    So I don't have MSDN but I do have Google until I put in a better drive.

    I seem to be missing some tools, namely the Tab Strip control among others. As if I have only the very basic tool set. I remember something about Active X controls but my memory is vague.

    I have 21 tools, 11 on the left and 10 on the right, but I remember there were more

    Please remind me, How do I populate my tool box? What am i missing and THANKS!!!
    Last edited by OldSkool; Nov 27th, 2014 at 01:28 AM.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    My first books was about IC TTL, and I bought the 1980 and 1981 books. I used to read electronics, and I found in Elektor magazine some ideas about microprocessors. SO I realize that machine code is easy to follow. I started to combine in paper TTL IC to find If I can make a processor, defining some actions like load and store. When I realize the cost for preparing a prototype..I turn to micros in that ERA and I find BBC Basic with 6502 Assembler the right choice for me. In high school I ask some day the professor of mathematics what the command DATA do. I didn't get an answer, there was no educators for that field in any school at early 80's, in Greece. In university I had a professor that he wrote books for Pascal and do the input file, manipulation, output file. That was the scenario for all programming activities. He wend mad when I make my own drop down menu system and a screen editor for storing and editing data stored by a key (like a form in access). That era Lotus 123 was the best for this...but for PC. My solution was to use all BBC Model B with 2 disk drives from CNC machines laboratory. Perhaps professor was right, using the latest software you get the most. So I said that we all are specific set of mistakes, and that mistake, to use machine capabilities to the maximum and not move to a brand new, defines me.

  26. #26
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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    "V=Please remind me, How do I populate my tool box? What am i missing and THANKS!!!

    Don't want to insult an Old School Navy programmer (per se), but did you go to Components and add some already, and STILL only have 21?

    EDIT: Right Mouse on the tool bar, Select Components, add from that list (YOu should have groups of them in ".....Common Controls VX..." as well as a host of individual ones.
    Last edited by SamOscarBrown; Nov 27th, 2014 at 07:58 AM.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    There is also an option when you create a new project to start with more controls loaded. if you look in that little window that pops up when you start a new project there is a template for VB Pro Edition controls. Using that to start your new project will give you many more controls in the toolbox, including flexgrid, mscom control, common controls and others. I count 54 total as compared to the 20 that are there using the default standard exe project. Note that there are 21 icons but the first one is not a control so I am not counting that. 20 controls are loaded at startup.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    RE: #27. I (personally) steer away from that (although that may be your cup-o-tea) because oft times I only want MY small customer base to have an Executable without Packaging the whole thing. When 'other' components are added, I find I must register them on others' systems, and some of my 'customers' don't have Admin Privileges, so I generally stick with the basic controls. But, like I say, if you desire to always package your programs for others and want more functionality, by all means, what DM suggests is a good idea. (But also note, SOME of the controls in some of the Common Control packages may or may not work on all systems....I have found several bugs in some of the controls (don't recall which ones off the top of my head).

    EDIT: !!!But, on the other hand, I have not tried to copy my executables that do not include those 'extra' compos, even though they are in my toolbox. I suppose that if not included in the executable, but simply in the Project IDE, I wouldn't have any problems...just never tried it. Hmmmm. Might just be a GREAT idea, DM.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    I generally either use the basic standard exe template or one of my own making. I don't really like having all of those controls in the toolbox as I am not likely to be using most of them and they just male it a little harder to locate the one I want. Just thought I would throw it out there in case that is what the OP is thinking about.

    btw by creating your own templates you should be able to have whatever controls you want in the toolbox at startup as well as staring references. I find I use ADO a lot so I have a reference to that in my template.

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    Its awesome to have this great resource. vbforums has already got me back on track after so many years away, and I am enjoying doing things in VB again and it's coming back fairly quickly.

    I also don't like lots of tools I won't use, and add them as needed, I just couldn't remember how to add them!

    In the 90's there was a school, New Horizons, and I took some basic classes in VB6 and other MS Office products. They were mostly focused on the ADO Data tools and I remember loading a toolbox full of things I never used.

    I have been looking through some old boxes to find that New Horizons stuff, I haven't seen it in years, though most of it was working with the ADO it would be a good refresher.
    Thanks again everyone!

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    Re: Old School coder with questions

    New Horizon's is still out there, but 'probably' they aren't teaching this 'ancient' language any more. (I say that tongue in cheek, as I LOVE VB6....still having some difficulty fully comprehending the .Net language, but I', tryin'.)
    Sam

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