No troll. What are the (legitimate) reasons people are still using VB6 ?

Threads like this one are always fascinating. Sometimes it seems like you are listening to a conversation with two people speaking different languages (which with VB6 and VB.Net I guess we are).

The title of this thread is "What are the (legitimate) reasons people are still using VB6 ?".
Yet many posts seem to be from VB.Net advocates. You needn't be so defensive, no one from the VB6 'camp' is calling for VB.Net to be abandoned.

VB6 users have their reasons for using VB6. No doubt VB.Net users have their reasons too.


To pick up a couple of points mentioned:-

Web development - Yes, not VB6's strong point (though it is certainly possible). But it isn't really something you should be using .Net for either.
Front-end (client) development really needs to be in JavaScript now (as MS acknowledges with their support for JS in VS and with Typescript).
Back-end (server) development is more open, but node.js seems to be the way to go.
If you wish to retain a VB-like language you can use NSBasic which transpiles to JS.


Mobile development - there was a (underdeveloped) VB for Windows CE (Embedded VB). It wasn't good enough but did show VB on mobile was possible. Microsoft replaced this with VB.Net. I used (and still use) VB.Net for developing for Windows Mobile 6.x (yes, you can still buy new WM6.x devices). Microsoft lost their way after WM6 and eventually abandoned mobiles.
For a VB-like language on Android and iOS you can use B4A/B4i (for native development) or NS Basic (for hybrid development, and yes it handles multiple changeable screen sizes).

Just think what Microsoft could have done with versions of VB6 for mobiles and web. The B4X and NSBasic products are good but Microsoft (or at least the Microsoft of old) could have done far more.


For me (and I guess many other VB6 developers) I'm just sad that Microsoft are no longer a leader in IT technology and have been just followers for many years now.

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See - it's not us, who go over into the .NET-subforums to "stir things up" - it's always you guys who come over here -
and I wonder why...

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We dont most of us are just looking at the New Posts list and see the thread from there.

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Whereas companies who (without need - often triggered by management-decisions, not by developers free choice)
re-implemented an already well-working VB6-App in .NET, wasted huge amounts of developer-time (and money).

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Technically, there was never a reason to use .NET - it's only "advertisement-driven business-decisions"
which led to the situation we have now... (although MS is finally trying to correct its mistakes with .NET-core).

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Having worked for large Software houses most of my career this is generally not what happens.

The push to newer platforms comes generally from the customers not internally. When competitors are coming out with fresher looking products then you with new UI working on new technology, if you dont respond you hemorrhage customers. Its just a different landscape than small business and small dev houses.

Business customers particularly large businesses are often driven IT wise by what there competitors are doing, for example i worked at a law firm back in the day that was using GroupWise for its email, All there competitors were using Outlook and eventually the partners of that law firm spent over £1 million migrating there email systems across to Outlook. Groupwise worked very well but looked dated and was considered not modern so it had to go.

Sticking with VB6 which was considered dated and not modern was just not an option at most Software houses if you wanted to remain in business.

The people in charge at Large Software Houses stick with applications and platform as long as they can make money out of them, its only when the economics change that there decision making changes.

This has happened with other languages not just VB6, in fact many Micro Focus COBOL systems were replaced by shiny new VB6 systems back in the day.

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Web development - Yes, not VB6's strong point (though it is certainly possible). But it isn't really something you should be using .Net for either.
Front-end (client) development really needs to be in JavaScript now (as MS acknowledges with their support for JS in VS and with Typescript).

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I disagree with you here, at my work we are writing web MVC apps in .Net (C#) which also utilise JavaScript for the front end. MVC is a nice model to use and you can create good modern web apps using it. Its not your only choice but its a perfectly good option, i am not seeing other web development options that have stuff i cant do using .Net MVC just as well.

In fact there are a large number of businesses near me all using .Net MVC for there core web development and there is a very strong jobs market for it too.

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Mobile development - there was a (underdeveloped) VB for Windows CE (Embedded VB). It wasn't good enough but did show VB on mobile was possible. Microsoft replaced this with VB.Net. I used (and still use) VB.Net for developing for Windows Mobile 6.x (yes, you can still buy new WM6.x devices). Microsoft lost their way after WM6 and eventually abandoned mobiles.

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No they haven't they have just taken a different path, they have abandoned Win Phones because no one was buying them as they were bad, but they have bought Xamarin and they have spent time and money improving the Xamarin cross platform mobile stack.

It's what i use at my work to write mobile apps, its not something you would or could use for games or stuff like that but for business apps it works really well, and crucially the time it take to develop and release apps is less. There are other alternative to Xamarin which is good we need competition but it is really starting to become a good platform.

In my opinion with Steve Balmer in charge MS did make some questionable decision with it's dev tools and they seemed to have no joined up strategy, but since Satya Nadella took charge they have had a far clearer strategy and there development tools have improved as a result.

I have used .Net for development at work for some time and its been fine, however in recent years its been quite a bit better

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So why on earth did MS come up with .NET-Core + VSCode (bundling stuff up in much leaner incarnations)

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This is exactly the kind of stuff i am talking about, Xamarin, .NET Core, ASP.Net MVC 5 there recent strategy over development tools is much more joined up and gives you a set of tools as a developer where you can create modern apps across pretty much any type of device all out of Visual Studio.

Also things like VSCode and making the VS Community edition (which basically has the same features as the Professional edition, unlike the old Express editions which had a lot of restrictions) completely free for individuals and very small businesses was a good move.

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Originally Posted by dz32

I hate .NET but there actually is a cool small IoT offering with the .NET micro framework

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.NET micro framework is primarily used for IoT (embedded occasions), not for web-apps and mobile-apps.

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Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

The push to newer platforms comes generally from the customers not internally. When competitors are coming out with fresher looking products then you with new UI working on new technology, if you dont respond you hemorrhage customers. Its just a different landscape than small business and small dev houses.

Business customers particularly large businesses are often driven IT wise by what there competitors are doing, for example i worked at a law firm back in the day that was using GroupWise for its email, All there competitors were using Outlook and eventually the partners of that law firm spent over £1 million migrating there email systems across to Outlook. Groupwise worked very well but looked dated and was considered not modern so it had to go.

Sticking with VB6 which was considered dated and not modern was just not an option at most Software houses if you wanted to remain in business.

The people in charge at Large Software Houses stick with applications and platform as long as they can make money out of them, its only when the economics change that there decision making changes.

This has happened with other languages not just VB6, in fact many Micro Focus COBOL systems were replaced by shiny new VB6 systems back in the day.

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A big problem now is that Olaf has not commercialized his technology and solutions. If his solution can transform a large old VB6 project into modern Apps (PWAs) at minimal cost, I believe many companies are willing to pay a high price to purchase his technology and solutions.

For Olaf and his company, VB6 is clearly a much better development tool than .NET, and VB6 can not only develop better products, but also save millions of dollars in development costs. jpbro should also be like this.

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A big problem now is that Olaf has not commercialized his technology and solutions. If his solution can transform a large old VB6 project into modern Apps (PWAs) at minimal cost, I believe many companies are willing to pay a high price to purchase his technology and solutions.

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Why do you think this?

Most companies are creating web and mobile application nowadays and there are a bunch of different good tools already available to do this that are supported by large organisations.

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Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

Why do you think this?

Most companies are creating web and mobile application nowadays and there are a bunch of different good tools already available to do this that are supported by large organisations.

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Because I know the development costs of VB6 and .NET. Of course, for the companies that are willing to spend £1 million to update Outlook, these costs are not a problem.

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A big problem now is that Olaf has not commercialized his technology and solutions

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And given the extra latitude we've given him over the forum advertising rules, he'd better not.:rolleyes:

Personally, I think all the "my language is better than yours" is pretty pointless when applied to VB6 and VB.Net. If you want my opinion, both are dead or dying. You might as well argue over whether your Canon Fax machine is better than my Dell.

I thought the OOP debates were interesting but often boiled down to "I tried it, there was some stuff I didn't understand so I decided that the paradigms was broken and gave up". Attacking OOP because you don't like inheritance is particularly daft because a purist will tell you that you should never use it. I don't see how that invalidates the paradigm, though, it just means you need to learn a different OOP technique. Personally I'm a pragmatist rather than a purist and I feel inheritance produces simpler code when the structure is reasonably small and unlikely to change so I use it when I want to favour simplicity over flexibility. E.g. I'll probably use inheritance if I'm building a framework but I'll use composition when I'm implementing business rules and domain logic.

Olaf's brief discussion about delegate programming was also particularly interesting to me because it sounds like what he's doing is awfully close to Functional Programming. I'd urge anyone interested in that sort of thing to try out some tutorials using a proper functional language (F++ seems an obvious suggestion given that we're on an MS forum but there are others around). For a start it might get across to some that Procedural Programming (or 90s style functional decomposition) is not Functional Programming and those articles your reading that compare the two are not advocating that you ignore OOP and go back to putting all your code in modules. Functional Programming succeeded OOP, not preceded it. It's about injecting methods into other methods because that allows you to define behaviour in a top down approach but consume it in a bottom up one and, yes, it has many advantages over OOP. Particularly determinism in my opinion. It requires way more abstract thinking than OOP, though, and you're REALLY going to have to check your old procedural thinking baggage at the door and be open to new concepts.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

Personally, I think all the "my language is better than yours" is pretty pointless when applied to VB6 and VB.Net. If you want my opinion, both are dead or dying. You might as well argue over whether your Canon Fax machine is better than my Dell.

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Yes, it's somewhat correct to say that both VB6 and VB.NET(or .NET) are dead. Just as Olaf said:

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Originally Posted by Schmidt

Doesn't change what I said though:
- .NET-Desktop-Apps are to 90% based on a WinForms-GUI
- and every single one of them is "dead in the water" already (has the very same lifespan as VB6-Apps - and needs to be rewritten soon)

Olaf

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

I thought the OOP debates were interesting but often boiled down to "I tried it, there was some stuff I didn't understand so I decided that the paradigms was broken and gave up". Attacking OOP because you don't like inheritance is particularly daft because a purist will tell you that you should never use it. I don't see how that invalidates the paradigm, though, it just means you need to learn a different OOP technique. Personally I'm a pragmatist rather than a purist and I feel inheritance produces simpler code when the structure is reasonably small and unlikely to change so I use it when I want to favour simplicity over flexibility. E.g. I'll probably use inheritance if I'm building a framework but I'll use composition when I'm implementing business rules and domain logic.

Olaf's brief discussion about delegate programming was also particularly interesting to me because it sounds like what he's doing is awfully close to Functional Programming. I'd urge anyone interested in that sort of thing to try out some tutorials using a proper functional language (F++ seems an obvious suggestion given that we're on an MS forum but there are others around). For a start it might get across to some that Procedural Programming (or 90s style functional decomposition) is not Functional Programming and those articles your reading that compare the two are not advocating that you ignore OOP and go back to putting all your code in modules. Functional Programming succeeded OOP, not preceded it. It's about injecting methods into other methods because that allows you to define behaviour in a top down approach but consume it in a bottom up one and, yes, it has many advantages over OOP. Particularly determinism in my opinion. It requires way more abstract thinking than OOP, though, and you're REALLY going to have to check your old procedural thinking baggage at the door and be open to new concepts.

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For OOP, I am not extreme at all. I can use OOP very well, because I never use class-inheritance.

I only use OOP in the following situations:
(1) The overall framework of the software
(2) Very complex business logic and algorithms
(3) Core Data Model
(4) External interface of the software
(5) User Controls
(6) There may be other aspects, I can’t remember it for the time being.

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Originally Posted by TTn

In the words of Alan Cooper:
Attachment 164581

I vote that we close the thread. We've all said our peace.

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I have a bad joke, but the discussion caused by this joke is very valuable. There are a lot of useful knowledge points in it. This is the meaning of discussion, not simple love and hate, not quarreling and opposition.

People who know my style of questioning should know that I like to compare different solutions and choose the best (most suitable for myself) solution.

I often ask questions like "Things that .NET is easy to do and VB is very difficult to do" or "What excellent software developed by .NET that VB6 can't do". I don't want to despise .NET, but instead I'd like to learn some valuable ideas or solutions from .NET. But I've never got any satisfactory answer from the supporters of .NET. Maybe those real .NET experts are not interested in browsing vbForums.

So far, in this discussion, the only .NET advantage that can be accepted and acknowledged by me is one: stack trace. (VB6 does not have this feature, but it's available in VC6)

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Originally Posted by DEXWERX

I think the only thing I prefer from VS debugging experience is the stack trace.

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I often ask questions like "Things that .NET is easy to do and VB is very difficult to do" or "What excellent software developed by .NET that VB6 can't do". I don't want to despise .NET, but instead I'd like to learn some valuable ideas or solutions from .NET. But I've never got any satisfactory answer from the supporters of .NET. Maybe those real .NET experts are not interested in browsing vbForums.

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Once you go away from the desktop, (where essentially VB6 and .Net are trying to solve the same problems in the same way and so you will find little of anything one can do that the other can not do), and your looking at Web Mobile and Cross platform then i believe my statement from a previous post is valid here

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This is exactly the kind of stuff i am talking about, Xamarin, .NET Core, ASP.Net MVC 5 there recent strategy over development tools is much more joined up and gives you a set of tools as a developer where you can create modern apps across pretty much any type of device all out of Visual Studio.

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In the latest Visual Studio (2017 and up) i can create Desktop, Web & Mobile apps all using C# (.Net) all with a single IDE. I can create native Mobile apps that are cross platform and even do IOT dev and Unity game development if i so wished.

Also With .Net Core you eliminate the .Net framework as it packages the libraries you use with the app and so you dont need a framework installed.

The ability to target all sorts of devices and platforms with a single language (with the addition of JavaScript in Web & XAML in Mobile) is a powerful thing IMO.

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"Things that .NET is easy to do and VB is very difficult to do" or "What excellent software developed by .NET that VB6 can't do"

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I'll try and answer those without coming across as confrontational.

The second is real easy: Nothing. If you can develop it in VB.Net you can develop it in VB6. You can develop it in C, machine language or even binary if you're masochistic enough. Ultimately everything ends up as ones and zeros and, from the end user's point of view, it shouldn't matter what tools were used to define them (although, as NSA pointed out, it often does and drives their purchasing decisions - customers are rarely rational:rolleyes:)

The first is trickier and it strongly depends on how you define "VB6" and "VB.NET". I would argue that multi threading is easier. Olaf will come on here in a bit and post some code snippet that contains a reference to RichClient or some other lib. I'll point out that that, strictly speaking, is not VB6. He'll point out that "who cares? It's readily available for anyone to use. Use it". We'll both be correct in our arguments and we'll both be missing the point.

The only real difference in this regard is that .Net has a lot more stuff built in "out of the box", but most of it's been implemented by someone, somewhere as a third party lib for VB6. There's probably a few edge case features that haven't been but I bet we'd have to search real hard to find them. And there's probably some natty features in third party libs for VB6 that never made it into VB.Net, though again I bet they'd be hard to find. So the "who's got the best features" debate really comes down to whether you want to pick and choose from third party libs or the pre-packaged one Microsoft provide. There's issues of trust, reliability, transparency and control tied up in that but they can be thrown both ways easily enough. I personally prefer pre-packaged as I trust MS and they've done a pretty good job of making there stuff extensible. But I can fully understand why another programmer would baulk at that and reach the opposite decision.

If I was to push one thing that .Net offers over 6 it's in the stuff it won't let you do, or at least, strongly discourages and hides away. It tries real hard to get rid of pointers because of the damage a simple mistake can do. It tries to take care of memory management for you because relying on the dev to manually handle that stuff is unreliable and leaks are a nightmare to debug. There's dozens of little things in there to make your life easier and I deliberately chose the memory management one because I can already hear you warming up your "ah... but... performance" counter. And you're right. If a dev handles all their memory management correctly and strictly they will get better performance than any generic solution ever could. All these things come with compromise and the debate shouldn't be about "better or worse" but rather about "better or worse for the problem you're dealing with right now"

I guess the other argument I'd throw up would be career prospects. For the last couple of decades VB.Net probably made it easier to find a job than VB6 did. It's the main reason I switched way back when, it's the main reason I then switched to C# and it's the main reason I've focussed more and more on the database side for the last 5 or 6 years. It's so I don't have to compete with all you annoying devs who grab the contracts before I get to them:p) This one's a pretty weak argument coming from me though, because at this stage I wouldn't be recommending either flavour of VB as a career choice.

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Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

Once you go away from the desktop, (where essentially VB6 and .Net are trying to solve the same problems in the same way and so you will find little of anything one can do that the other can not do), and your looking at Web Mobile and Cross platform then i believe my statement from a previous post is valid here



In the latest Visual Studio (2017 and up) i can create Desktop, Web & Mobile apps all using C# (.Net) all with a single IDE. I can create native Mobile apps that are cross platform and even do IOT dev and Unity game development if i so wished.

Also With .Net Core you eliminate the .Net framework as it packages the libraries you use with the app and so you dont need a framework installed.

The ability to target all sorts of devices and platforms with a single language (with the addition of JavaScript in Web & XAML in Mobile) is a powerful thing IMO.

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The problem is that we needed web-apps and mobile-apps eight years ago.

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The problem is that we needed web-apps and mobile-apps eight years ago.

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really?, So you saying they are not needed now?

FunkyDexter has many good points and i agree with most of that.

for me, as a hobby programmer i want:
- a language that i enjoy using
- a good community, many sources/examples.
- IDE that helps me find bugs

without the community VB6 would lose. most of them are in here, giving new features, that actually MS would had implemented if they continued, now its the community that do that.
is it inferior? sometimes, but not always, the "open-source" is important and push the language forward, making it more complex and better.
if we think of Direct2d, would MS add that to VB6 if they continued? do we have Direct2d in .Net?
The trick created a typelib to access Direct2d. is that inferior?
and this is just d2d, theres much more that we have because of members here.

so, using vb6 as a base, we can extend that to do anything, the only thing is time and effort and expertise. should we invest time to build something in vb6 or move on to another language?

as for me, the only reason i would move is to make it cross-platform, but as a hobby programmer, theres no much gain to do that, the time to learn a new language just to give non-windows user the possibility to run my tools/games are not worth it.
i actually dont need 64bit, the speed, the memory what 32bit can give me is enough for anything im doing. sure its appreciated if i could, but not needed.

so, right now, i stay in vb6 because it has everything i need to do tools, im not professional, so i dont need to please any clients, i give my tools free and nobody has complained so far, contrary, they appreciate what i give.
from time to time i get a question if theres an alternative for mac users, and some bugs in different windows versions, but most of the time the tools are robust, and even my 10 years old programs still works, they are long abandoned and i dont give support, but they are still around and people using it.

if i where a professional, i believe i would not use vb6 at all.

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Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

really?, So you saying they are not needed now?

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We certainly need web-apps and mobile-apps now, but after so many years of observation of .NET, .NET has lost my trust (in fact, I have never trusted it).

I always like to find the best(most suitable for me) solution, .NET is never an option for me.

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Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

really?, So you saying they are not needed now?

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Are you saying that people who have been developing web apps and mobile apps should now switch to C# ?

That isn't going to happen any more than people developing in VB6 are going to switch to VB.Net. Unless there is a real technological advance offered by switching development tools it simply isn't worth the time and effort involved.
Rewriting all that source code. Throwing away all the skills built up over the years. Wasting all the accumulated knowledge.
As a business decision that can't be justified unless there is demonstrable benefit in doing so. (Though it is often done for reasons of 'fashion' or 'FUD').

VB.Net didn't offer anything significant for desktop development. C# doesn't offer anything to experienced web and mobile developers.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

I'll try and answer those without coming across as confrontational.

The second is real easy: Nothing. If you can develop it in VB.Net you can develop it in VB6. You can develop it in C, machine language or even binary if you're masochistic enough. Ultimately everything ends up as ones and zeros and, from the end user's point of view, it shouldn't matter what tools were used to define them

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The only problem I have with this argument is that it completely ignores any productivity gains from newer or better tools. We would never have the kinds of software we have today if it all had to be hand coded in 0s and 1s.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

You might as well argue over whether your Canon Fax machine is better than

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I tried to use a Canon to send a fax one time, but I think I did it wrong. The paper didn't go very far, and it ended up a bit burnt.

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Originally Posted by baka

FunkyDexter has many good points and i agree with most of that.

for me, as a hobby programmer i want:
- a language that i enjoy using
- a good community, many sources/examples.
- IDE that helps me find bugs

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Totally agree.

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without the community VB6 would lose. most of them are in here,

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I have a somewhat off-topic question about this: Is there another community for VB6 that is as active as this one?

The reason I ask is that I was at a dev conference a few years ago, and the topic of VB6 was mentioned. I forget the context, and it was a very brief mention, but the speaker said there weren't many resources left for VB6, to which a pair of members in the audience replied that there was one good community. I meant to ask them if it was this one (solely because I have never met, in person, a single person from this forum), but got distracted. So, were they talking about this place?

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Originally Posted by dreammanor

If his solution can transform a large old VB6 project into modern Apps (PWAs) at minimal cost, I believe many companies are willing to pay a high price...

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At the place where I work, we have developed specific tools (with VB6), which interact with and generate/upload serverside VB6-Code
(parts of the serverside-code is generated as VBScript-snippets in a serverside DB, rarely-changing-stuff is sitting in VB6-COM-Dlls,
then interacting with an MS-SQLServer and also SQLite - on the same machine which hosts also the IIS-Webserver-instance) ...

The clientside stuff (the javascript-snippets) is for the most part declarative and auto-generated
(targetting the OpenUI5-js-framework, which supports Read/Write and ReadOnly JSON-Model-bindings)

If you look at this little Fiddle here: https://jsfiddle.net/vnw96jfu/embedded/result,html,js

... there you can see the OpenUI5-stuff in action.

The fiddle does not contain any "hidden js-libs" - everything is in "plain sight" in only two parts:
1) the static (basically never-changing) HTML-content for this type of SPA (Single-Page-Application) - basically only acting as the loader for the Core-js-framework)
2) and then the (here hand-written) javascript-code, which demonstrates the DataBinding-capabilities of OpenUI5-controls in a little "hello-world-like" example

If you look at the few lines of js-code, you can easily see - how well that could be "automated" via a (VB6-implemented)
declarative Designer+Generator which then puts out the appropriate js-lines (after assigning the proper Model-Field-Mappings)...

Perhaps when I find a bit more time, I'll post a SubSet of what we use at work (making it "more generic") -
but feel free, to explore the OpenUI-Widget-classes yourself - there's no need to wait for me...
https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#/api
In the top-left-corner of the able linked page, you can filter the tree (e.g. for the mobile-namespace, by typing: sap.m )
...
or for a concrete widget-class inside the sap.m namespace, you could type sap.m.input... which should then offer:
https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#/...Input/overview

But make no mistake (despite the elegance which my example hopefully brought across) -
the paradigm (in the js-part, that later runs in the Browser) is heavily based on JSON-DataBinding.
Only VB6-Apps which make heavy usage of DataBinding in each and every Form they contain, would have a chance with some kind of semi-automated porting.
Though most VB6-Apps are not written that way - and thus "the Forms" are faster developed, when you do it from scratch (against the same DB-data).

The thing where we had to make only very few code-changes, is our DataLayer-Dlls (where we talk to the DB, and which all run at the serverside).

Olaf

a site that i used a lot x years ago was www.xtremevbtalk.com not sure its even around anymore.
in addition i visited planetsourcecode.com, i rarely do that anymore.
i knew about vbforums.com and i think it was because of LaVolpe that i became a member here, that is why i joined that late.
i remember looking for some gdi+ help and found his gdi masterpiece, and from there i found this forum.

if u asked me 10 years ago i think i would have told you that xtremevbtalk is the number one forum.
nowadays its vbforums.com that is number one, as a community, we still have planetsource and other source/help sites but they are more like archives and source help, not much for discussions and a place to grow as a member.

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I tried to use a Canon to send a fax one time, but I think I did it wrong. The paper didn't go very far, and it ended up a bit burnt.

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Now, your mistake there was in your choice of medium rather than tools. You needed to go with a more conventional medium like, say, stone or iron. That way the message travels much further and has a much greater impact upon receipt. Indeed, the right medium can result in your co-respondent requiring a medium.

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The only problem I have with this argument is...

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I think you missed my point there, probably because I didn't make it clearly enough. I wasn't trying to suggest that, because you can use binary, you should. Rather I was trying to dismiss the "What can you produce in X that I can't produce in Y" question. You see that asked wherever folks are arguing over whether one technology has supplanted another. Those arguing for the apparently supplanted tech will ask that question because it appears to show that there's nothing to be gained from the new tech but it's a smoke screen. New technologies rarely allow us to produce something new, they just allow us to produce the same things quicker/better/more reliably and that's where I felt the debate would be better focussed.

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Originally Posted by Schmidt

At the place where I work, we have developed specific tools (with VB6), which interact with and generate/upload serverside VB6-Code
(parts of the serverside-code is generated as VBScript-snippets in a serverside DB, rarely-changing-stuff is sitting in VB6-COM-Dlls,
then interacting with an MS-SQLServer and also SQLite - on the same machine which hosts also the IIS-Webserver-instance) ...

The clientside stuff (the javascript-snippets) is for the most part declarative and auto-generated
(targetting the OpenUI5-js-framework, which supports Read/Write and ReadOnly JSON-Model-bindings)

If you look at this little Fiddle here: https://jsfiddle.net/vnw96jfu/embedded/result,html,js

... there you can see the OpenUI5-stuff in action.

The fiddle does not contain any "hidden js-libs" - everything is in "plain sight" in only two parts:
1) the static (basically never-changing) HTML-content for this type of SPA (Single-Page-Application) - basically only acting as the loader for the Core-js-framework)
2) and then the (here hand-written) javascript-code, which demonstrates the DataBinding-capabilities of OpenUI5-controls in a little "hello-world-like" example

If you look at the few lines of js-code, you can easily see - how well that could be "automated" via a (VB6-implemented)
declarative Designer+Generator which then puts out the appropriate js-lines (after assigning the proper Model-Field-Mappings)...

Perhaps when I find a bit more time, I'll post a SubSet of what we use at work (making it "more generic") -
but feel free, to explore the OpenUI-Widget-classes yourself - there's no need to wait for me...
https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#/api
In the top-left-corner of the able linked page, you can filter the tree (e.g. for the mobile-namespace, by typing: sap.m )
...
or for a concrete widget-class inside the sap.m namespace, you could type sap.m.input... which should then offer:
https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#/...Input/overview

But make no mistake (despite the elegance which my example hopefully brought across) -
the paradigm (in the js-part, that later runs in the Browser) is heavily based on JSON-DataBinding.
Only VB6-Apps which make heavy usage of DataBinding in each and every Form they contain, would have a chance with some kind of semi-automated porting.
Though most VB6-Apps are not written that way - and thus "the Forms" are faster developed, when you do it from scratch (against the same DB-data).

The thing where we had to make only very few code-changes, is our DataLayer-Dlls (where we talk to the DB, and which all run at the serverside).

Olaf

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This information is extremely useful to me, PWAs will be a direction of my efforts, I'll do my best to transform our old VB6 project into PWAs, thank you very much, Olaf.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

New technologies rarely allow us to produce something new, they just allow us to produce the same things quicker/better/more reliably and that's where I felt the debate would be better focussed.

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Not every new technology is like this, especially when it comes to a new technology that is pieced together under a stupid decision.

For the same thing (such as desktop software development), is .NET quicker/better/more reliably than VB6? Obviously not.

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Originally Posted by dreammanor

For the same thing (such as desktop software development), is .NET quicker/better/more reliably than VB6? Obviously not.

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Not obviously, but you shouldn't be expecting it, either. ASM can do EVERYTHING that can be done with any other language. However, almost nobody writes in that anymore, except maybe some driver writers. ASM doesn't even have loops. You have to do your own looping. C is just a bit above ASM, and you can drop into ASM particularly easily with C. What C offers you is constructs like loops, and better names for things. It frees you from some of the awkwardness in ASM without adding all that much overhead. It did add SOME overhead, though, and could be a pain (header files).

VB6 is one of several languages that were above C. They offered better organization, and hid some things (not so utterly dependent on pointers, for example, though you can still use them) that caused lots of bugs. This made writing better and easier. Of course, the most significant gain was the ability to build forms so very easily. You didn't have THAT in C, and things like MFC and OWL, while attempts to make Windows forms easier, just couldn't compete for ease of use.

That's how languages work. If it was only a question of, "what can I accomplish with this language" nobody would have ever left ASM, because it can do EVRYTHING, and if you are smart enough, no other language can do anything better. What every other language added was making it easier to do a specific thing, or a set of things. Fortran has its goal in its name. Lisp kind of does. R certainly does not, as far as I know. The name "R" doesn't say "use this for statistics" to me, yet it's gaining somewhat unreasonable levels of popularity in scientific communities (it's math...EVERY programming language can do that).

People pretty much know what the point of .NET was: Compete with the shining (and unrealized) goal of Java as it was thought to be in the late 90s. .NET didn't get there, probably due to a weakness in leadership (Bill G had an unrepeatable name for a project to allow writing native Linux apps in .NET). The language may get there yet, though. The goal is write once, run anywhere. If you look at the changes in .NET over the last few years, you can see that things are moving in that direction. It does have the potential to achieve that goal, it's just that a few hurdles have to be crossed. Those hurdles are not small, and may be insurmountable at the moment, but we shall see.

There are reasons why Java tends to float to the top of all language popularity lists: it was (and is) successful. Perhaps not as successful as polls created with a heavy thumb on the scales might suggest, but popular enough nonetheless. More popular than .Net can hope to be.

We may even be in the "end times" for .Net right now. Only time will tell but as Microsoft continues to run away from Windows .Net could easily be another casualty.

Microsoft has insisted that Java is a "first class citizen" on Azure since at least 2010.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/develop/java/

There has probably never been a better time to move away from .Net even on Windows.


I can use hyperbole too. ;)

No doubt. You've been predicting the demise of .NET for nearly a decade, now.

There WAS a better time to move away from .NET on Windows, though, which was the period between 2002 and 2005. That probably would have done it in, kind of like the widespread adoption of Windows phone prompted MS to keep developing along those lines.

At this point, it may well be wise to move away from VB.NET, but only to C#. I'm annoyed by the C syntax domination of programming languages, and that includes C#. MS showed that you definitely don't need semicolons to write programs, but none of those languages has yet thrown away that crutch, to the best of my knowledge. The semicolon is kind of important in JS...maybe...due to minification, but even there it probably isn't necessary.

What can I say?

I'm a hopeless romantic, an incurable optimist.

And as good at predicting the future as the rest of us. Even predicting the past can be dicey.

What is this thread about?

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Originally Posted by Code Dummy

What is this thread about?

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That's a really good question. I suppose there are many ways to answer that.

If we attempt to answer it from the content, it has certainly devolved into a bunch of us trolling (including myself), despite Rip's original request for this to not happen.

Urban dictionary (Troll): "as it relates to internet, is the deliberate act ... of making random unsolicited and/or controversial comments ... with the intent to provoke an emotional knee jerk reaction from unsuspecting readers to engage in a fight or argument."

I'd say that well over half of the above posts fit into that category, as the "legitimate reasons people are still using VB6" question was well answered in the first page of posts.

Another thing (closely related to trolling) we could say it's about is everyone being defensive about their own position/preferences/choices/career in life, and for no sound reason. I suspect we somehow feel threatened when others have differing opinions about the choices we've made, so we start going a bit crazy, building one-sided arguments for our position, sometimes bending objective facts such that they're almost unrecognizable.

A related question would be: "Why does it matter what others think of the opinions we have and choices we've made?" I doubt anything discussed here is going to change Microsoft's or Oracle's or whomever's position about programming languages. Therefore, if we're happy with where we're at, what does it matter what others think?

In a certain sense, I suppose these discussions may reveal tidbits of information we previously didn't know. However, it seems that this thread has devolved far below that.

Anyway, that's what I see.

Take Care,
Elroy

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Originally Posted by Code Dummy

What is this thread about?

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it started about VB6 and ended about .Net

I think the Adims should move it to the .Net Forum :rolleyes:

Its not strange that the debate will eventually involve .net
MS replaced VB6 with .NET and we are trying to figure out (impossible) if VB6 is still worth using, if VB6 has any cons or pros against .NET, if .NET is a bad choice, if any other languages should be "the next" after VB6, if we decide to move on.
private use or professional use, also a distinction worth mentioning, as most of the time its about customers, maintaining, cross-platform, server etc that has very little to do with private use.
VB6 is old, very old, but still working, but not always and sometimes buggy if we are not using API and workarounds.

but if we think about it, VB6 should be stalled, nothing new should be presented for us to use, thats what an abandoned product usually is. even so, we are still getting stuff.
Olaf's rc5, different typelibs (as I also mentioned many times, Direct2D). but we could get even more. we could have directx10-11 (a site offer that, but you need to use his OCX for that)

so VB6 can evolve even more, VB6 could be a top language right now 2019. the issue is .NET, a lot of professionals moved on and we lost knowledge and expertise.
if all of those people stayed, im sure we would have all the typelibs, workarounds, replacements to enchant VB6 to be so much better than .NET. but we are not far behind, we have a couple of genius in here and that gives hope.

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Are you saying that people who have been developing web apps and mobile apps should now switch to C# ?

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I feel you cant really have read my posts if that is what you think i have been saying, i have said clearly that C# is a good option but not the only one and good alternatives exist, and if you already developing web and mobile apps successfully and your invested in a platform why change that unless your not happy with your tools or they dont do everything you want.

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VB.Net didn't offer anything significant for desktop development. C# doesn't offer anything to experienced web and mobile developers.

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Now here you are just plain wrong and it seems to me that you cant have used C# for web and/or mobile development to be making that statement.

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Originally Posted by baka

MS replaced VB6 with .NET and we are trying to figure out (impossible) if VB6 is still worth using, if VB6 has any cons or pros against .NET, if .NET is a bad choice, if any other languages should be "the next" after VB6, if we decide to move on.

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But why should "we" decide that? YOU should be deciding that. Seriously. At the end of the day two things are true: 1: it has to work; 2: it's just data being manipulated
Does it really matter what I think of VB6 or .NEt or Java? Does it matter whether I think desktop development is dead or not? No, it doesn't, because that should have no bearing on what YOU decide. And what ever you decide will have zero bearing on what I think about those same things as well. So there shouldn't be a "we" here... there should be only an "I" ... "Do I think VB6 is still viable for development?"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by baka

private use or professional use, also a distinction worth mentioning, as most of the time its about customers, maintaining, cross-platform, server etc that has very little to do with private use.
VB6 is old, very old, but still working, but not always and sometimes buggy if we are not using API and workarounds.

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And that's part of the problem when it comes to the discussion about where/how to take it to the next level... everyone has their own different needs/wants of what they would like to see... and until there is a single group with a common vision willing to put aside all differences and act cohesively, these kinds of debates and fractionalization will likely continue.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by baka

but if we think about it, VB6 should be stalled, nothing new should be presented for us to use, thats what an abandoned product usually is. even so, we are still getting stuff.
Olaf's rc5, different typelibs (as I also mentioned many times, Direct2D). but we could get even more. we could have directx10-11 (a site offer that, but you need to use his OCX for that)

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For all intents and purposes, VB6 has stalled. For the last 20+ years. It's not going anywhere. That's actually part of the beauty of it at the moment, it's essentially frozen in time. The only new additions anyone's going to get from it are going to be new libraries, which is exactly what has been going on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by baka

so VB6 can evolve even more, VB6 could be a top language right now 2019. the issue is .NET, a lot of professionals moved on and we lost knowledge and expertise.
if all of those people stayed, im sure we would have all the typelibs, workarounds, replacements to enchant VB6 to be so much better than .NET. but we are not far behind, we have a couple of genius in here and that gives hope.

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You're optimistic... but think you're fighting an uphill battle there that's just not going to be won, in any meaningful way. I just don't see VB6 making a comeback. I'm not saying it'll die out completely, as I suspect it'll be the cockroach of languages, but I just don't see it gaining the widespread adoption levels it once had.

I think Elroy's summed it up best for me:

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A related question would be: "Why does it matter what others think of the opinions we have and choices we've made?" I doubt anything discussed here is going to change Microsoft's or Oracle's or whomever's position about programming languages. Therefore, if we're happy with where we're at, what does it matter what others think?

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One other thing I've noticed in following this thread, alot of the heated debated has absolutely nothing to do with the language itself, but is related to the IDE... often the one is related to the other, but if you're going to knock the hammer because the tool box is rusted shut, you might want to pick a different argument.

-tg

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What are the (legitimate) reasons people are still using VB6 ?

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- easy to code simple things.
- no dependencies needed (like .NET, MS VC++ ...).
- wide range OS compatibility in one EXE (Win 2k-10).
- little size of program.
- fast execution.

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- easy to code simple things.

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- easy to code complicated things too.

This IS a dependency needed, too, it's just been built into the OS for a very long time and hasn't changed. The .NET runtimes have been built into the OS, as well, so they aren't needed if they are already installed, but since they are being constantly improved, there's a whole version issue that VB6 hasn't had since about 1998. It's a real advantage to a static language.

Let's be clear. Every program is dependency needed, e.g. kernel32.dll
So, if it is "been built into the OS" as a part of fresh (not updated) OS, we can call it "no need dependency".