World record VB!

My most recent project deals with databases (actually my first Database app) and has 1 form. Instead of using multiple forms I just used 1 form and a control array of Frames. Each frame contains a bunch of information, grouped logically so that each group contains a similar catagory of information. The frames are accessed through the hotkeys of the Toolbar, only the active frame is visible and the rest are not.

It's getting up there in size, but it's only about 2 megs so far. Granted it's not completely finished yet. It's going to commandeer Word as an object to print out results and the routines for that are a little lengthy. I've tried to keep to the short and sweet style of programming we all love so much.

Thus far it has only one code module, but there will be a few more since I try to compartmentalize my code as much as possible, and there will likely be 1 more form which will be used to display configuration options for the program itself.

Eiredrake

Here's a cool way to make an app only one form:

Use the TabStrip control in the Comctl32.ocx file. Set your tab height to 0, and the caption of each tab to a null string. The tab height of 0 makes it so there's no place the user can click to change tabs. (Note: You can keep the tab height higher while designing, then have code change it to 0 at runtime!) You must have blank captions otherwise the text will appear on the border between the tabstrip control and the form. You can change tabs by changing the Tab property (while desigining and running). For example, have a Next and a Back button on the form that goes one page forward and backward, or if you need more flexibility, make a list box that has several items that when clicked will change to an appropriate tab. Place different controls on each of the tabs. This is also a cool way to make your own "wizards"! (Make sure you set the enabled property to false in code on either the next or back button depending on whether you're on the first or last tab; otherwise errors will result if the user tries to go beyond the last or first tab! :) ) You can also have the program change the caption of the Next button to Finish if the user is viewing the last tab.

Why not make a program to generate **** load sof useless code that could be compiled into the biggest most useless VB prog ever. You could leave the generator running overnight, then compile the code over about a week and then see how big the program is. Pretty funny, though bloody useless and sad.

Later

REM

Well, I'll be the guy you love to hate. I created 148 exe's as a single, integrated application that uses a launch pad display of 20 basic exe's icons (exe's outside the twenty are launched from options within the basic exe's). It includes 53 data files and has stand-alone help files along with integrated help from within the exe's. It involves orginal research in an attempt to find solution involving mathematical combinations in the millions ... graphs galore. Almost all files are compressed and it uses on-the-fly decompression. Development time: 1 programmer (me) = 5 years full-time, would I do it again ...hehe... VB RAD for large projects is gobs of programmers. Btw, when fully decompressed the app is about 12Mb, compressed (or not in use state) is about 4Mb

smallest: about 30kb/s (withouth all activex stuff i needed, the setup was about 8mb)
Largest: it's 3mb so far and by far not finished. 50 forms so far, about 50 classes. Runs like hell, even on a p133 with 16mb (which is our test machine). I guess the end product will be 6mb, but I won't see that cus I'm gone at the end of the month....
Oh and I had an app that was about 4mb, which was almost code only (except for 200kb of icons). Runs very fast too.

It's easy (and stupid) to create large exe's with a lot of pictures etc. A large app doesn't mean it's slow. However, a large app with a lot of pictures and wave files *is* slow.

What I'd like to know is how many LINES you've written. That'd be more accurate I think. You can just put loads of Combos and ListBoxes and TextBoxes and OLE things on your form which'll pump up the size. What's the longest project code you've written?

Me: 2932 lines
(When I didn't know how to use modules, literally. I just copied and cut code from one proc to the next)

Me: 1018 lines
(If you have IE you'll see that the menu is like a toolbar, I'm making that from scratch, plus menu support. And it's not any old menu, no, it's an owner-drawn menu which adds about 700 of those lines of code. At the moment I have to make the program recognise the Alt key (that makes it DrawEdge itself) and I have to find how to make the TrackPopupMenu return a value.

I've inherited a 45 form app' which is a load of !*&@)(.

I hope you +10 form people out there have EVERYTHING documented in minute detail or you are sunk when your client asks for maintenance/upgrades/debugging etc (or you can run away v.fast).

Re-writing crap code with NO documentation is a right pain in the arse.

Number of lines?
Geez... I dunno.. I'm walking thru a project I did to add extra comments 'cus at the end of the month I'm switching jobs... I think I've seen 20000 lines of code so far and I'm not at the end :-( (about 2500 at max in 1 file).
Oh and with my last job, I had to add custom solutions to programs written in C, and the average nr of lines was around 5000+ in 1 source :-( Damn that sucks... (and it took about 3 or 4 sources at least to make 1 exe)

Dear collegue-programmers,

I've been writing VB for a few years now, and I've just been looking at the sizes that the EXE's have and I see that they varie between 48 KB and 1 MB and the number of forms varies between 4 and 16. Hope this will help you to make up and average score.

Peter.

Well as for the smallest working VB EXE. I think the one that I having running in the car playing MP3 files is about 60K.

Just thought I'd stick the 70th post on this thread, 69 is such a rude number.

1300 forms, 30 dills, 60 OCX, 1115 custom TIFF (Class4) images, controls out the but*, 328 dynasets, 2313 custom bmps, 1100 custom wave files, 833 modules in only 3 years development time. For a grand total of 1 GIG. Try not to choke on that.

Had you fooled. That's my programming Net worth to this date. MANDRAKE 7.1 however is a 1 GIG OS, even though it's outside the scope of this convo it's worth choking on. Very GUI ..very nice

Guys (and Gals),

Try not to make one huge exe file...its a pain, like the other post somewhere up there said, break the program up into separate exes or dll file etc...that's what I had to do with the crap that i'm working on here...the smallest app i've made is 23kb and it was designed to delete large programs from the network drive....heheheheheh David kills Goliath!

is it just me, or is this a post that was just revived?

My current app have 34 forms, 26 modules and 15000 lines of codes for an exe of 684Ko (size of the code's files : 1170Ko)

[Edited by kwell on 09-26-2000 at 04:06 AM]

Why not just create one form with one of every type of control you ever want on it. Set them all to control arrays and then you can have one form in the app and just create new instances of it when needed and add controls and align them as you need them.

Course you could end up with a 400,000,000 line module file....