Printable View
Hi all
I am new to VB I wonder what will suit me more to start VB6 or VB express for desktop .
Main usage will be doing small databases for my csutomes ,
The main question is : is VB express coding (for databeses apps) more hard to learn the VB 6 ?
I used in the past DELHI .
Vb express
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/p...xpress-vs.aspx
Thanks
Elico
It might be argued that VB.NET is a bit harder to learn but not excessively so. Regardless of what other pros and cons each may have, I don't really know why you would choose to go with a language for which the last version was released almost two decades ago and is no longer officially supported by its creator. Apart from that, you still can't legally get the VB6 IDE for free while both the Express editions and the Community edition of recent VS versions for .NET are free.
In short, I can't ethically recommend starting with VB6 to a professional. It should scare you that the answer to, "Will the Windows that comes after Windows 10 support VB6?" is, "We have to wait until Microsoft confirms." Moving from VB6 to VB .NET is actually a little harder than just picking up VB .NET to begin with, because you have to unlearn a few things that will be a real drag to "lose". My opinion as a 10-year .NET developer is many of those features are great for small, easy projects and horrible traps on large, hard projects. For some reason we only use the small ones when comparing languages.
But, more importantly, time has marched on. We've learned a lot about programming in 15 years, and VB .NET has new features like lambda functions that represent what we think makes a modern programming language effective. VB6 will never get new features. It still represents the best of 1999's software engineering. That is still good, but the best of 2015's engineering is better.
As to which is "easier", I don't know that it should be a concern.
VB6 is good at getting you able to produce programs rapidly. You don't have to learn a lot to start doing work, and I'd probably quit after 3-4 chapters of a book and learn as I go after that.
VB .NET is a little stricter in how it wants you to write code, and that means reading a few more chapters about things like Object-Oriented Programming before you're unleashed. It also means as you write code, you'll have to stop to ask a few more questions than a VB6 developer.
In both languages, once you get to 2-3 months of experience, you will hit a wall. Your projects will be difficult to manage, and every time you add a new feature, it will seem like you break an old one. The answers to, 'How do I manage large applications?' are in books, but the last 20 years of them focus on OOP languages like VB .NET. It's not that VB6 can't do it, it just turns out when a language like VB6 starts to organize itself, step 1 is implementing a lot of features VB .NET gets for free. That doesn't make VB6 bad. But it means relatively experienced modern developers would rather not use it.
It's a silly discussion. Once you reach a certain complexity, all programming is hard. To that end, you may choose to work in VB .NET, but spend some time picking up books about ideas like Design Patterns. They'll have code in Java or C# mostly, but they're really just speaking the language of Object-Oriented Design. Learn to use those tricks properly in VB .NET and you'll code circles around others who haven't. Or, if the worst happens and you want to jump ship to another platform, more of your knowledge will carry over and you'll spend less time learning.
Unless you need to support VB6 applications, there's no advantage to learning VB6. If you are a new programmer (but sounds like you have some experience) then any of the .NET development suites would be the best idea for future development. As already noted, the latest Express tools are free, and the Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition would be a good tool to use to learn Visual Studio and the .NET framework.
Waiting for the vb6 pitchfork crowd to show up in 3...2...1.....
"Shhh be vewy vewy quiet."
- Elmer Fudd