What Would You Change About VB6 if You Had The Chance? (For Novices and Experts)

Native Unicode support for all controls would be very nice.

I'd give VB6 a box of matches, some dry logs, a big chunk of meat and a bearskin coat, after all that's what people living in the dark ages really want :D

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Originally Posted by wossname

I'd give VB6 a box of matches, some dry logs, a big chunk of meat and a bearskin coat, after all that's what people living in the dark ages really want :D

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If there's no advantage, then there's no advance.

That must mean that you, Wossy, must be Cro-Magnon man. I'm happy being in the dark ages, whilst you still hunt deer, and live in a cave.

;)

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Originally Posted by Merri

Native Unicode support for all controls would be very nice.

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All of VB's controls have native Unicode support. It's unfortunate that the VB runtime doesn't know this, and keeps converting everything to ANSI . . .

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Originally Posted by Dnereb

1) Bound Checkboxes and Radiobuttons
2) A build in way to backpoint at a parent class without having to worry about circular references keeping an object alive forever.
3) A better Isnumeric function
4) Api complient variable set.
5) Pointers
6) Adding 1 to a var with ++ (Like C++ has)

Need I continue?

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1) Ok
2) What?
3) Whats wrong with it?
4) Can you explain.
5) Already on our list.
6) Already on our list.

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Originally Posted by Joacim Andersson

"Click a fix button".... LOL! Why not add a voice interface where you simply need to say "Write program" and it does it for you. :)

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I don't appreciate sarcasm

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Originally Posted by Devion

What would I change?

1) Real stand-alone applications (no MSVBVM60.DLL) We are considering this. It may be possible for apps that only use the default library, but if possible we want to allow DLL support which means installing/updating DLLs on the system the app is being installed on.
2) Memory handling by the coder not VB. Can you explain?
3) Structured error handling (not Try/Catch :x) What kind of error handling would you have?
4) Option Explicit hard coded into the IDE :) Agreed.
5) Increased Stack space for recursive code Shouldn't be too hard.
6) Ability to dump the stack. Ok.
7) Replace all the $ functions (Dir$, Mid$) to the normal ones and remove the variant return ones. Definitely
8) Banish Variant. Already on our list.
9) Support for Std C callback functions without the hassle I'm not familiar with too C. What do you mean?
10) LoadObject/CreateObject that actually allows enumeration of it's functions without the hassle
11) CallByName that actually works decently without a variant array :X
12) Array 2 Array copy actions and merge and such. In other words; Array functions. Definitely
13) Safe Multithreading support with extension support for COM Objects.
15) Memory Pool support within multithreads (if the multithreading is done outside own scope (COM))


That's about it I think.
VB.NET in a VB6 shell without all the DHTML crap would work (and the 26MB framework :x)

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Bold stuff is my reply.

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Originally Posted by paralinx

I don't appreciate sarcasm

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It arguably wasn't the nicest the nicest way of saying it, but I'm afraid he had a point.

In order for the IDE to fix your code, it needs to know exactly what you meant. This means that the people who write it need to work out how to deal with billions of potential issues (typographical and otherwise), and in most cases will probably make different assumptions to you.

A twist on your idea could be useful tho.. having the error line highlighted along with links to the Help for the functions etc that you have used (or summaries for them shown), this would help with ensuring that you know what the parameters are supposed to be.

It could also be a good idea to have bracket colouring like Excel has for formulas, so you can see which "open" bracket goes with which "close".

I would like everyone to know that my book "Writing Compilers and Interpreters" has arrived, and currently in my possesion. This book will teach me how to create my own programming language and compiler from the ground up, correctly, step by step. :thumb:

Now it's time to really work on LightFusion.

Advanced commenting capabilities...
- Floating Comment boxes seperate from the code itself.
- Ability to draw diagrams and insert them into the comments.
- Toggle show/hide comments

How about, as a Tool, a code snippets library.

How About Hot buttons to insert code snippets.

How about a printable skeleton {Treeview, NestedView?} of subs and functions, and their child calls to other Subs and functions {withe the calls of those childrens child calls, etc...}

How about a cleaner function, to remove all subs that have nothing activating them? ie... removes old, dead code that you used for development purposes but have long since abandoned.

How about a higher math module?
Matrix methods,
simultaneous integer/floating point linear equation solver/presolver,...

How about a GCD function?

How about, when you call to a sub, function, whatever, the name of the procedure is a hot link, and if you doubleclick it, you either jump to that procedure within the scope of the call, or if non-existant, a helper window pops open, which allows you to help define the new procedure, such as select that it will be a boolean function, or an asynchronous sub,whatever...
And it will also let you choose the module that this new procedure should attach itself to.


How about, when you're inside of a procedure, an "Add New Input Variable" Button, that prompts you for the name, type, ByVal/ByRef, whatever...

So that you don't have to move from where you're at to edit it.

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Originally Posted by yrwyddfa

All of VB's controls have native Unicode support. It's unfortunate that the VB runtime doesn't know this, and keeps converting everything to ANSI . . .

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Add word "working" somewhere in to my sentence and no need to repeat what I know already :) Too bad I haven't seen anyone to hack the support to the native controls.

Array functions are good idea. I have a set of functions for VB6 that I will be porting to C++/ASM for the library, and some more that I'm sure can be thought up :)

NotLKH, I like the idea of matrices and other not so basic Maths classes/functions. The suggestions in your second post I feel are more geared toward the IDE so those will be things for Jacob to think about :)

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Originally Posted by NotLKH

How about a higher math module?
Matrix methods,
simultaneous integer/floating point linear equation solver/presolver,...

How about a GCD function?

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There is a nice assembly language GCD algorithm in Knuth.

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Originally Posted by NoteMe

I would have changed it to C syntax..:)


- ØØ -

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i notice that this is in the VB6 forum. not the c# forum. :)

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Originally Posted by tr333

i notice that this is in the VB6 forum. not the c# forum. :)

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Your point is :p I still value my own opinion about VB..:)


- ØØ -

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Originally Posted by NoteMe

Your point is :p I still value my own opinion about VB..:)


- ØØ -

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I value my opinion above everybody elses ;)

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Originally Posted by Phill64

if i could change anything in vb6 i would make it vb.net :D

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Damn, I wanted to say that. :(

I would change the copyright to my name. That way I would make a lot of money. :)

Overloading Functions

The new language project seems great. But why use vb6 as a template? (or any type of source) All the questions unanswered in vb6 are answered in VB.NET (or C#).

Yipperdeedoodaa :afrog:

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Originally Posted by grilkip

The new language project seems great. But why use vb6 as a template? (or any type of source) All the questions unanswered in vb6 are answered in VB.NET (or C#).

Yipperdeedoodaa :afrog:

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We aren't using VB6 as a template. I posted a thread similar to this for VB.NET, C++ and C#. The point of this thread is to get an idea of what people feel they are lacking in their current programming languages/experiences. We (the LF team) hope to include as many of these things as possible.

need +=, -=, *=
if you are also including other language stuff please dont make me put ; at the end of most of my lines

I planned not to add the semicolons anyways ;)

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Originally Posted by notquitehere188

need +=, -=, *=
if you are also including other language stuff please dont make me put ; at the end of most of my lines

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please don't forget /= and \=

And Mod= , Abs= , in otherwords most mathamatical stuff with an equal behind it stores the result in The variable and the second number is placed after the ....= like
[CODE="LightFusion"]Dim I as integer
I = 234
I Mod= 5[/CODE]
And
Fixed length integers, longs and doubles so you won't need to format them over and over.

Declared like
Dim I as integer *10
or
Dim D as Double * 8.3
results in double always showing in 00000000.000 format without ten bytes extra

variable Arrays of arrays
Dim Arr as Array()()
where te first and second dimension can be redimmed. (the second for eahc element explicit as wel)

[CODE="Lightfusion"]redim Arr(0 to 10)()
redim Arr(0)(0 to 100)
redim Arr(1)(0 to 50)[/CODE]
or
[CODE="LightFusion"]Redim Arr(0 to 10)(0 to 5) 'for all not explicit defined elements or
Redim Arr(0 to 10)(0 to 5) Enforce 'for all second dimension elements [/CODE]

We are not gonna use the Dim, As, and ReDim statements to declare variables. It's gonna be like this:

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Int32 MyVarible = 5

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Formatting variables only makes sense when you are displaying them. Not when storing/declaring them.

I agree with the arrays - jagged arrays they are called.

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int myArray()()

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Operators will represent single machine opcodes. I think all will have the = variant.

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int Val
Val += 500
Val -= 200
Val &= 100    // And
Val %= 5      // Mod

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A random error generator?

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Originally Posted by space_monkey

A random error generator?

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Brilliant?

:D