VB6 functionality in .NET

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Apr 5th, 2001, 01:58 AM
onerrorgoto

Good to hear that they listen to us :D

MS Restores VB6 Functionality to VB.NET

Microsoft announced today that it's making changes to Visual Basic.NET to make it more compatible with VB6.
While VB.NET includes many features developers have long requested, including inheritance, better threading, and structured error handling, the new features come at the price of changes to VB's core syntax.

Given the tremendous pressure felt throughout Microsoft to ship .NET Framework and Visual Studio.NET, making fundamental changes at this point is a significant concession to core VB users.

These changes will all be implemented in the Visual Studio.NET Beta 2, Ari Bixhorn, Microsoft Visual Basic Product Manager, informed VBITS and VBPJ. Changes include:

*The Value of True: In VB6, when True is coerced to a signed integer, the result is -1. For consistency with other .NET languages, VB.NET was going to change the value of True to 1. Instead, it will be left at -1. Note that when a True value is passed from VB.NET to other .NET
languages, it will be passed as 1.

*Behavior of Boolean Operators: Microsoft intended to change And, Or, Not, and XOr to logical-instead of bitwise-operators, with new operators taking over bitwise duties. These have been restored to their previous functionality, both logical and bitwise, as has operator precedence. In addition, a planned short-circuiting capability has been removed from these operators, and has been reassigned to new operators: AndAlso and OrElse.

*Declaring Arrays: For consistency with other languages, Microsoft intended to change the way VB declared arrays, so that you would specify the number of elements in the array: Dim a(10) As Integer would
create a ten-element array, with an upper bound of 9. This conflicts with the VB style of declaring arrays, where Dim a(10) As Integer creates an eleven-element array with an upper bound of 10. The traditional declaration technique has been restored.

Says Bixhorn, "These changes are really for [developers] maintaining an existing code base and doing new development. They want consistency.
They don't want to have to look at a line of code and have to remember whether it's correct for .NET or VB6."

According to Bill Vaughn, President of Beta V Corporation "Microsoft is delivering a very powerful toolset in Visual Basic.NET. By responding to feedback from the Visual Basic community, they will provide a more seamless transition from programming in VB6 to Visual Basic.NET."
Apr 5th, 2001, 08:35 AM
Cander

Im not a part of this us you mention.

This is dumb. They keep it up and VB will be pushed right out of the .NET initiative because it wont be compatable anymore.
Apr 5th, 2001, 10:00 AM
hayessj

Dead right Cander.
The array dimensioning in VB always really irked me, this is a really good opportunity to get rid of some of the crap from VB & I hope they use it properly ....
Apr 5th, 2001, 10:04 AM
Cander

Not to mention -1 = TRUE. That i retarded and I cant believe some VB users bitched about changing it to 1.

no wonder VB programmers get laughed at by other language programmers. alot of us are little whinny babies that dont want to learn and grow.
Apr 5th, 2001, 10:16 AM
plenderj

In relation to the boolean true, I always just used Abs() to make sure the value ends up as either 0 or 1.

Simple.

- jamie
Apr 6th, 2001, 01:33 AM
onerrorgoto

Me not part of this either

I just posted this to point out that there sadly enough still are developers who fear progress. I completely agree with you that arrays should be 0-boud and that vb.NET should be pushed in the new direction that they started with.

The

Quote:

Good to hear that they listen to us

part is what was stated in the mail that I received with this information.

The :D was just to ironic.

I hope that MS return to the path they set up when creating .NET
Apr 11th, 2001, 06:59 AM

I think that in most cases we'll be forced to rewrite the existing projects in VB6.
So, I think that the recent announced changes will not affect us.

best regards
grig
Apr 12th, 2001, 07:24 AM
kedaman

disappointing

I wonder how much theyre going to change, i don't want another vb6.

Quote:

This conflicts with the VB style of declaring arrays, where Dim a(10) As Integer creates an eleven-element array with an upper bound of 10. The traditional declaration technique has been restored.

I've always been against this idea with upper and lower bounds, amount of elements makes a lot more sense, and each time you assign a variable the upperbound, you have to use -1 as a value for no elements, which is sick. For loops still the same i guess, or have they changed them?

Quote:

Instead, it will be left at -1

I can't think of anything more annoying.

Quote:

Microsoft intended to change And, Or, Not, and XOr to logical-instead of bitwise-operators, with new operators taking over bitwise duties.

I'd say this would have been better, users many times mix boolean logics with bitwise operations, and often can't determine which is applying from case to case because of implicit convertions that you can't clarify but with testing. A huge source of bugs to developers.

Quote:

In addition, a planned short-circuiting capability has been removed from these operators, and has been reassigned to new operators: AndAlso and OrElse.

What were they intending to do with And and Or operators earlier? They couldn't have replaced them because Or and And are nessesary for processing functions that might change values used later, which will not if included in short circuit operators.
Apr 12th, 2001, 07:36 AM
hayessj

Re: disappointing

Quote:

Originally posted by kedaman
I wonder how much theyre going to change, i don't want another vb6.

I had a quick, and I mean quick, look at the Beta and it does seem radically different. I remeber being mightily impressed with VB5 when it came out and there seems to be an even bigger change coming now.
I was wondering are there any others here with Java experience and if so what they make of .NET. Having moved over to Java over a year ago I am very interested in seeing how this progresses, I wonder will I be back in the MS camp doing VB or C# anytime soon ...
Apr 14th, 2001, 07:06 PM

I like the fact that Microsoft finally found their brains with the array thing. That was one of my main concerns with the .Net version of VB. Recoding all my apps, which use an extensive number of arrays, would have been a real pain in the you know what.
Apr 16th, 2001, 12:41 PM
kedaman

I don't expect it to be less than radically different, i'm just conserned that Microsoft prefered backwards compability
Apr 17th, 2001, 09:44 AM
jeroenh

It doesn't matter

What ever Bill can come up with, wther we like it or not, it doesn't matter for the success that VB.Net is going to be.

It might be a problem with the other .Net tools, but the plus of VB is the easy syntax.
I work for the goverment and I alone make about 50 seperate programs a year in VB. I couldn't have done it in any other language, beacause of the ease to develop.

Maybe C# will take this problem away, being a combination of VB and C, but when VB.Net doesn't become a success then VB6 will keep running in it's place. This way Microsoft has a backup and programs can still be made quickly and with ease.

I personaly think I will go over to C#. Providing it is stable enough.

:D :rolleyes:
Apr 20th, 2001, 11:13 AM
simonm

Boolean TRUE value

I generally agree with all other things VB.NET is improving upon from VB6 with the exception of boolean TRUE value becomming 1 (instead of -1).

OK, many other languages use 1 for true but mathematically speaking, -1 is true, not 1.

Not that it's a big problem anyway, using 'True' and 'False' constants when working with boolean expressions is much more 'user friendly' anyway.
Apr 21st, 2001, 11:02 AM
kedaman

mathematically speaking? correct me if i'm wrong, but I don't think you do combine boolean and numeric aritmetics but in programming languages?!
Apr 23rd, 2001, 02:14 AM
plenderj

I dont think ive ever seen -1 as true in maths ...
Ive always used +1...
May 14th, 2002, 10:08 PM
OsirisX

Hm

True being -1 always made sense to me...
Ever since I saw it in an INI file...I forget which one, but this was a long while back...it was like...

DoTimes=5
;Set DoTimes to -1 to go forever.

Hm...And...It made sense...except.. you can't always do something an infinite number of times in VB though...but it still means "ON"...
0 means to do it none times, and that makes sense for boolean...and -1 does it infinite times...because their counter will never = -1 (it keeps adding)...I hope everyone follows.

I realize it doesnt follow other languages, but I think it makes sense.
May 15th, 2002, 12:45 AM
csnyder

Re: Hm

Quote:

Originally posted by OsirisX
True being -1 always made sense to me...
Ever since I saw it in an INI file...I forget which one, but this was a long while back...it was like...

DoTimes=5
;Set DoTimes to -1 to go forever.

Hm...And...It made sense...except.. you can't always do something an infinite number of times in VB though...but it still means "ON"...
0 means to do it none times, and that makes sense for boolean...and -1 does it infinite times...because their counter will never = -1 (it keeps adding)...I hope everyone follows.

I realize it doesnt follow other languages, but I think it makes sense.

Huh. This doesn't make any sense to me. It sounds like you're saying that in VB you can do something like this:

dim DoTimes as Integer
DoTimes = -1

while (DoTimes)
'do stuff
wend

That will loop forever, but it will also loop forever if DoTimes is any number other than 0. Which makes the whole question of -1 = True or 1 = True moot. They're both true in VB6 (uh, ok VB5 actually - I assume it's the same for VB6), and it's probably true for VB.NET.

Microsoft pulled a fast one on that!
May 15th, 2002, 12:48 AM
OsirisX

Just...nevermind..
May 15th, 2002, 01:03 AM
csnyder

sorry...