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

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Originally Posted by baka

i wonder, can u run vb6 programs in wine?
what api, components, audio dll works in wine?

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According to my tests everything works. I have an application made with Visual Objects (Win32) that uses lots of 3rd party components (some home made VB6 DLLs and OCXs, FP Spread, Active Reports 2, TXTextControl, Codejock ActiveX, vbRichClient5, vbWidgets, and a few more ) and it works fine without registering anything. The only issue I feel is with DateTimePicker calendar.

I fully agree...

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Originally Posted by Carlos Rocha

There's some work to replace android with linux too.

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Just a bit of "nitpicking" - since Android does run on a Linux-Kernel already (with modifications from Google though).

What's attempted "every other half a year or so" comes basically in two categories:
- a kind of "jailbreaking" the underlying Linux-Kernel (from the quite restricting "Android on top", thus making stuff more accessible from "Userland")
- but also attempts with ARM-based mobile-devices which work "with a normal distro on top of the Linux-Kernel" (similar to what's common practice on a Raspberry Pi currently)

I guess it's the latter point you meant with what I quoted above...

Olaf

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Originally Posted by Carlos Rocha

I suppose "Linux is the language of the future" was a typo and you meant "Linux is the OS of the future".

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Yes, corrected.

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Originally Posted by Carlos Rocha

I believe it is. It's the OS for servers for a long time, and the desktop is almost there. There's some work to replace android with linux too. OSX is already linux (or a kind of).

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May be... or something new could appear too.

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Originally Posted by Carlos Rocha

The fact is that windows future doesn't seem promising, does it?

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Nothing is forever in this world.
I myself don't like MS and Windows, but I'm forced to use Windows today because I work in programming in VB6.

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Originally Posted by Carlos Rocha

I have 3 PCs and a laptop at home. My own PC is the only one with Windows because all the tools I need requires it and it would take me months to move everything, but I'm trying.
VB6 is already installed but not deeply tested, and my lovely Visual Objects (my primary programming language) is already running there and seems to work fine.

My other PC is a server with Debian 9 for a long time, with lots of things for work and home use. It serves some movies for my kids, that they use from a small box connected to the TV. This box came with android, but it's now with CoreElec, a small linux distribution to run Kodi.

My wife's PC is currently running Lubuntu and she's happy with it. Apart from the browser she only needs Adobe Photoshop and it is working flawlessly in there (my wife even said it appears faster on linux).

My 11 yo daughter has a laptop with Lubuntu that amazes her math teacher at school. Unfortunately, they use MS Office at the school and my daughter uses LibreOffice, and it seems there are a few formatting issues, tho nothing serious.

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Nowadays, most of common people use Windows, not Linux.
Of course there are exceptions. But that doesn't make it a rule.

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Originally Posted by Carlos Rocha

Anyway, with windows going from bad to even worse we don't have too many options, so the faster you adapt the safe you are.

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May be you'll have an slight advantage over the 95% of the other people that don't see a point to experiment with Linux at this time, but I don't think that too much.
If there is a real shift of the mainstream users to Linux, we'll experiment also and in a few months may be doing something too. I don't see any hurry of jumping into Linux now.

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Originally Posted by Carlos Rocha

So, yes, I believe linux is the future. It's already the most used OS in the world.

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It is used on Web servers. Please don't confuse the things.
For web servers you don't need much GUI, if any.

WebApps would not only work on Linux but on any OS.
And someone developing WebApps could use Linux or Windows for the IDE, in the case that both OS are supported for the IDE.

I'm thinking loud and discussing in what direction the efforts could be more useful for people that want to carry VB6 to the next step.

Of course, if we could ask whatever, like asking to a genius of a lamp, then I would ask everything: compile natively for Windows, Win64, Linux, Mac, Android, iPhone and also to be able to produce WebApps.
But since we don't have such a lamp and the work force is not infinite, I would try to direct the efforts to the more useful thing, and IMO it would be Web.
It is my opinion, but I'm sharing it for others to think about it and may be discuss it.

@Eduardo, I don't disagree with you about WebApps. It's maybe the future, but what you should "extract" from what I said is that Windows isn't for sure. MS is making too many people hungry with their forced upgrades, and it's not finished yet. The "brute force" is here to stay, and when they (the people) realize there's more options out there they will jump out. That's how I see it. And the most viable option is linux (apart from WebApps).

Linux is not used only for Web Servers. It's used (as Olaf pointed out) in every android toy, in almost every device with and embedded OS, mainframes, probably in your car too. Not to mention MS itself, even in stuff outside their new loved child, the Azure.

I truly believe that the success both Windows and Android have been enjoying is only due to who is behind them: Microsoft and Google, two marketing beasts. They both sucks regarding quality (please don't start a new discussion because of this last sentence). The quality, the safety, the growing route in the desktop, is actually in the Linux side.

You don't need to move right now, but you will, eventually.

PS: I will try VB6 with the yesterday's release Wine 4.0 and will post the result, in case someone is interested.

Yes, good points. You are convincing me that Linux is probably the future (unless some unexpected thing appear).

Web apps is another thing. They have some advantages and some disavantages compared to apps that run in the devices, but that is also another discussion.

I think I would prefer to develop Web Apps instead of native Linux Apps because it asures that they will run in almost any device that has a web browser without recompilation.
But I think that Web Apps are still in early stages. Now may be a good time to throw an environment to make websites easy as VB, with VB-like syntax. It could become popular. I don't think the younger people want to program for desktop.

Linux has ALWAYS been the future. How long has it been now? Are we over two decades, yet?

There are plenty of problems holding Linux back.

1) For a long time, it was interface. If you don't have an interface as easy as Windows or MacOS, you're niche only. Linux may have that, now, but it still seems to take more work.

2) Who is it that is signing governments and major corporations to "deals" that lock them into the Linux ecosystem? W all know who it is for Windows...and MacOS, though they haven't been able to get out of their ruts.

3) Games. Don't underestimate the impact they have on driving platform choices. The biggest games come out on Windows. Do they all come out on Linux at the same time, or earlier?


The choices programmers make for their platforms doesn't reflect the preferences of the majority of people.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

Linux has ALWAYS been the future. How long has it been now? Are we over two decades, yet?

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That was more or less my point, but they quite convinced me that now (in the next decade may be) it will actually happen because IoT. For example TVs now are using OSs based on Linux. I don't foresee a TV having Windows or some small device with a screen with Windows.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

2) Who is it that is signing governments and major corporations to "deals" that lock them into the Linux ecosystem? W all know who it is for Windows...and MacOS, though they haven't been able to get out of their ruts.

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I don't undestand what you mean with that.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

3) Games. Don't underestimate the impact they have on driving platform choices. The biggest games come out on Windows. Do they all come out on Linux at the same time, or earlier?

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I think that could change at any time. They do them for Windows because people have Windows, but probably it would be much easier for them to move to Linux than for us.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

The choices programmers make for their platforms doesn't reflect the preferences of the majority of people.

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I don't know what you are specifically talking about here, but I tend to agree with that sentence.

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Originally Posted by Schmidt

Neither do I ... hence the little DirectCOM.dll (which is included as the 3rd Dll in the RC5-BaseLibs-Zip).

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Olaf & baka - curious about the reasons why you don't like SxS. For my part I don't like the (seemingly needless) complexity, though @wqweto's UMMM project makes life easier in that regard. But I don't know of another option for OCXs, and I use a handful of them (my own + Codejock's). For DLLs though, I 100% use DirectCOM.dll.

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Originally Posted by Schmidt

We all need to come out of our "Windows-Shells" at some point in time - a potential VB6-successor only has a future on "something else than Windows",
I'm absolutely convinced about that.

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IMHO there is a rapidly diminishing need for a VB6 successor as a desktop RAD tool, mostly because there's a rapidly diminishing need for desktop apps in general. The web is winning on the front end, so it's HTML5/JS/CSS/Whatever on that side. On the back-end though I am massively invested in VB6 and I see a future for it there for certain kinds of applications under certain situations.

I'm wiling to admit that I may be A) acting irrationally and B) subject to the "sunk cost" fallacy to some degree here, but here's my thinking in case anyone is interested:

• I've got an investment of over 500,000 lines of NON-UI code developed over 10+ years. This is all code that is proven to work day in and day out in real world business use, and all code I would ideally be able to re-use forever vs. just dumping and re-writing.
• The aforementioned NON-UI VB6 code works almost 100% flawlessly on Linux under Wine. The only exception is actually with a couple of vbRichClient5 library FSO calls that fail under Wine - but I fallback to regular VB6 calls for those and then everything works 100%.
• I'm a one man shop on the programming side and I'm fastest at writing decent quality VB6 code quickly, so new development is best done in VB6 and I'm able to use my existing skills & code to keep me one (or more) steps ahead of any competition.
• Lastly, and perhaps most importantly - I'm in a niche market.

So for me, the goal has been to keep all the business logic usable "forever" (backend stuff regardless of whether it is running under Windows or Linux) and start developing the front end using web technologies. It's all worked better than I thought it would to be honest. Though it has not been without challenges, they've all been surmountable.

My main surprise has been that many people that demanded a web version of my app didn't click the link even once! I wouldn't even mind if they checked out the web app and said it was terrible, but they couldn't even find the time to do that.

Anyway, I'm still thankful that code I started working on 15+ years ago is still paying the bills today and I hope the stuff I publish here is useful for some of you other longtime crazy VB6 devs!

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Originally Posted by jpbro

...curious about the reasons why you don't like SxS.
For my part I don't like the (seemingly needless) complexity,

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Same here basically - although I have nothing really to complain about...
(just don't like over-engineered stuff generally, I guess).

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Originally Posted by jpbro

though @wqweto's UMMM project makes life easier in that regard.

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Yep - we use it at work (to deploy vsFlexGrids and Krools stuff + a few other OCX).

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Originally Posted by jpbro

But I don't know of another option for OCXs, ...

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Yep - (the tight relation to OCXes might be another reason I'm not a fan -
because these are way over-engineered as well (a dozen interfaces to correctly
implement, just to get a grey rectangle manifesting itself on a Host-Form... ;)
(... well, since I'm at it already - the same over-complexity can be found in COM+, too).

Olaf

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You can negotiate and say: "OK, I'll abandon this idea of mine about this easy-to-use GUI feature that I wanted to put, so I don't need to use API" and things like that, but that's not my idea of quality and professional software.

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I haven't read all the posts since that and I think Olaf has touched on this but I'll answer anyway. I'm not suggesting you abandon the API call and therefore the user functionality that goes with it. I'm suggesting you hide that API call away behind an interface. And just to be clear, I'm not talking about wrapping every API call in it's own interface or creating one huge interface that rules them all. I'm talking about exposing interfaces that deliver features. And deliver those interfaces with implementations behind them as a framework that back up your app.

My reason for doing this are that it makes the app code simple and maintainable. It's really worth looking at the principle of "open to extension but closed to modification". It basically means being able to change the behaviour of my application without having to touch the code. You achieve it by changing the implementations that sit behind the interface rather than having to change the app itself. That might sound weird at first but it leads to much more maintainable and robust software. I won't go further into it here because it'll turn into a very boring lecture but I'd encourage anyone to have a read about it - you won't regret it. (You'll probably find mostly OO examples because it came out of Gang of Four but if OO isn't your bag still get your head around the principle because it is just as applicable to Procedural code)

Olaf's reason is different but related. He's championing cross platform compatibility. Well that is a change of behaviour and he wants to make that as easy as possible to accommodate. But debate about whether Linux is going to be the next big thing misses the point. The point is to not care what the next big thing is. If you abstract away anything tied directly to the OS behind an interface then whatever OS you want to support simply requires it's own implementation of that interface. Your application doesn't care what OS it's running on because it's not really running on an OS at all - it's running on the interface.

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Originally Posted by baka

never tried wine, but its quite interesting

i wonder, can u run vb6 programs in wine? YES
what api, components, audio dll works in wine?

i would love to have a typelib that gives me all the functions that are supported in wine.
and only references to libraries that also works in wine.
this could be the first step that i need to do to be more aware of other os.

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Definitely check out wine, it's a great project. - they are also working on android support as well.

interesting! with wine, whats the point of making cross-platform at all. it will get better and better and eventually we can use window 32 application anywhere.
instead of making a setup, we tell them to install wine. :D

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Originally Posted by DEXWERX

Definitely check out wine, it's a great project. - they are also working on android support as well.

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Yup. They follow the clever way, imo, by intercepting API calls and redirecting them to their own libraries. Lot's of work, but potentially it can work in every OS.

Wine is cool because you don't need to purchase a windows license to run your vb6 apps. You can combine this with Apache Guacamole and xvnc sessions to create a terminal server that can vb6 apps in any html5 browser.

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Originally Posted by DllHell

Wine is cool because you don't need to purchase a windows license to run your vb6 apps. You can combine this with Apache Guacamole and xvnc sessions to create a terminal server that can vb6 apps in any html5 browser.

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now that's clever.

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Originally Posted by Eduardo-

I don't undestand what you mean with that.

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What I meant with #2 is that MS has signed contracts with LOADS of government and large corporations, which gives them....something or other. When it comes to Linux, there is nothing like that. The result is that there is a major corporation actively pushing Windows to large swaths of influential places in the world, while Linux is only word of mouth. I don't believe that Linux will ever be a major player on desktops with only the quirky support it currently has. It might take off, but something else will have to change for it to do so.

IoT is likely to put Linux on lots of things, but whether that will be good remains to be seen. It will require killer applications to arise faster than killer security holes. The way some companies are working, I wouldn't care to put any money on which will win out.

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Originally Posted by baka

interesting! with wine, whats the point of making cross-platform at all. it will get better and better and eventually we can use window 32 application anywhere.
instead of making a setup, we tell them to install wine. :D

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Yeah, the more wine you add, the better and better things look.

Wine is indeed a very nice product, I've successfully run Nginx + RC5 + vbFastCGI + My VB6Apps on Wine (Linux). But we still can't run Wine and VB6Apps on Apple's iPad.

One Chinese Golang expert said that the best and most promising cross-platform solution should be based on browser technology, such as Chromium-RenderingEngine + JavaScript. I strongly agree with this.

So, I think Olaf gave up RC5.WebKit is a big regret. IMO, the WebKit that wraps CEF3 is second only to his new VB6 compiler.

Of course, WebKit is so large that it takes a long time to compile once, and it's updated too often. It'll take a lot of time and effort to research and package WebKit.

This story is interesting:

Google Asks The Supreme Court To Decide The Future Of Computing

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Long story short in 2012 Oracle took Google to court over its use of the Java APIs within Android and the debate has been ongoing ever since. If you want a longer version see Appeals Court Rules In Favor of Oracle which is what we reported in March 2018.

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Google seems to have been working on replacements for things like Java and Android itself for a while now. If they're smart they'd take the opportunity to dump the use of a Linux kernel and libraries as well. That would end a lot of the goofy claims people make and eliminate a lot of hacking.


But the part that may be relevant to the current discussion is:

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In the wider world you can expect other companies to look hard at their "interfaces" and see if they too could make some extra revenue by enforcing their copyright. Any system compatible with any other system is going to be a potential target. Some that come to mind are WINE, Samba, R, Octave...

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That would end a lot of the goofy claims people make and eliminate a lot of hacking.

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[ThinVoice]My bad, sorry Archie[/ThinVoice] :rolleyes:

2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey

https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/01/2...rs-everywhere/

I'm not sure there are enough people still using VB6 to make a difference in that polling. Remember, there are armies of bowlegged JavaScript kiddies and tons of dotNutters who post there.

Reminds me that people seem unaware that "Learn to code!" was designed as a putdown. It was hurled by coastal urbanites at people who lost manufacturing jobs due to globalization post-NAFTA.

To fully understand that you need to remember the term "coding" referred to people doing data entry. It was also used later to disparage copy/paste coders, the lowest rung of software development. This came out of its use to describe early consumer PC users who typed in software printed in books and magazines since there was no Internet yet and very few even had modems and used BBSs. Blithely ignorant, they were proud to call themselves "coder."

In recent months it has been turned around and used on journalists who have lost credibility and their jobs as media outlets have fallen on hard times. "Learn to code!" directed at journalists is almost a meme right now, and not a flattering one.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

Google seems to have been working on replacements for things like Java and Android itself for a while now. If they're smart they'd take the opportunity to dump the use of a Linux kernel and libraries as well. That would end a lot of the goofy claims people make and eliminate a lot of hacking.

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Last I checked, Google was still making progress with Fuchsia, and it's on top of it's own non-linux kernel (Zircon).

https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon <-- last commit 11 hours ago.

https://www.techradar.com/news/google-fuchsia <-- whether it ever replaces chrome and android, I don't know, but they are still working on it.

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Originally Posted by VB6 Programming

2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey

https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/01/2...rs-everywhere/

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I noticed that the only flavor of VB on that survey was VBA. There were some pretty obscure languages on there, but not VB. That seems kind of weird, actually, but it certainly will skew results to some extent.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

I noticed that the only flavor of VB on that survey was VBA. There were some pretty obscure languages on there, but not VB.

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That's the inevitable result of breaking backwards compatibility. That decision split the VB community and reduced the popularity of both VB6 and VB.Net. Now Microsoft feel free to ignore both.
VBA remains simply because Microsoft failed to replace it despite several attempts.

I think it is more likely that VBA is and always was much more widely used.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

I think it is more likely that VBA is and always was much more widely used.

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It is. Or at least more widely installed, if only used occasionally by each user.
In fact VBA is probably the most popular language (more so than Java or JavaScript) if you count the number of users. But most VBA users use it rarely and do relatively little development.

It remains popular because Microsoft have failed with each attempt to replace it. There is no real alternative for use with Office. Like VB6 it does just what the users require.

MS didn't write the SO survey. For that matter, neither did Tiobe, but VB.NET ranks fairly high on Tiobe, certainly higher than a whole bunch of the languages in that survey. There's also a Visual Basic in the Tiobe index, which is about 50% VBA, 40% VB.NET, and 10% VB6.

Frankly, I think it shows more of a bias in SO than anything that MS did. VB has been the poor relative in the programming world since very early on. SO is probably just reflecting that.

VBA is installed (more or less) with every valid Office install. However, if you turn on the key recorder, you can end up with a VBA macro, and nobody would call that programming.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

MS didn't write the SO survey. For that matter, neither did Tiobe, but VB.NET ranks fairly high on Tiobe, certainly higher than a whole bunch of the languages in that survey.

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VB.Net ranks higher than C# (and JavaScript!) on Tiobe. Microsoft tell us that C# has 10 times the number of users than VB.Net. I'd suggest Microsoft is more likely to be correct than Tiobe is.

VB.Net was #18 on last years SO survey (and #13 the year before) so you would think it would be in this years survey.
Maybe SO consider that as VB.Net is no longer kept in line with C# it is in decline.

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VB has been the poor relative in the programming world since very early on. SO is probably just reflecting that.

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Microsoft used to claim over 6 million users of VB6. More than they have ever claimed for any other language. Hardly " the poor relative".
It's Microsoft's failure to update VB6 that lost many of these users, with relatively few moving to .Net.

That's one way to see it, but the claims of MS as to the number of developers doesn't change the point. I wasn't saying that the view was right, I was saying that it existed:

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons...2&mode=classic

Not exactly an uncommon view. You can still find it here and there. I even have a coworker who fears VB for irrational and unfounded reasons....well, they would be if he HAD reasons.

That's one way to see it, but the claims of MS as to the number of developers doesn't change the point. I wasn't saying that the view was right, I was saying that it existed:

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons...2&mode=classic

Not exactly an uncommon view. You can still find it here and there. I even have a coworker who fears VB for irrational and unfounded reasons....well, they would be if he HAD reasons.

Being "most popular kid on the block" shouldn't be important. Enough popularity to sustain vendor support efforts and a user community of a certain critical mass is.

In the case of VB6 we actually have a fairly good vendor support story, considering the time that has passed. I could wish for more, but my wish list is pretty modest. I'd be happy if newer system COM libraries came with VB-friendly interfaces and type libraries - either linked in or provided alongside the DLLs. Even if they just made TLBs downloadable for developers to use instead of shipping them in Windows I'd be happy.

I wouldn't argue that the core language, IDE, and C2.EXE couldn't stand improvements. But that's another level of support and getting any agreement on new features without seriously breaking forward compatibility quickly becomes a can of worms. People often forget how hard some people tried to dig in on VB5, rejecting many changes in VB6.

I wonder how the Oracle vs Google legal battle will impact Java. It could be pretty significant. Oracle has a bit of a history in that area. They might manage to shoot Java down pretty thoroughly.

As far as I can tell the case is about Google implementing Android libraries using Java library API definitions. It isn't about Java itself at all, and wouldn't have any impact on Java.

It might encourage Google to proceed with a replacement for Android that doesn't use Java as its primary programming language. That would probably make more sense than redesigning the OS APIs and breaking all apps.

If upheld it certainly would kill Wine dead unless Microsoft could come to a licensing arrangement. If not free of charge that might kill it anyway.

I saw this question on the site and decided I would like to thank the VB6 programmers for the support of VB6.
I am retired now and was never a professional programmer. As a CEO of as small firm I also doubled as as
problem solver and used vb6 to help in analysis and presentation. I used vb6, excel and word and married the three apps
as set up way back. I now write apps for me as a hobby and to keep my mind going. I tend to be able to solve any
issues I have by searching the web and have never posted or asked any site for help. Most of my question have been
asked and answered before. So I find them. So I thank you the vb6 programmers.

Tiobe's February's index has Visual Basic .Net as the fifth most popular language.

That makes it more popular than JavaScript, more popular than C# and more popular than Visual Basic.

That may be surprising enough, but according to Tiobe Visual Basic .Net is more popular than those 3 languages added together. :eek:

Something seems to be seriously wrong with Tiobe's algorithm.

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

Doesn't have to be. They publish their algorithm, such as it is. All they are looking at is the prevalence of returns based on some simple searches. While they take some pains to spread those searches across a variety of platforms, it is possible that changes in search algorithms could produce odd jumps, and even more likely that a bunch of recent announcements could boost some ranking.

For example, C# may drop if it comes to be synonymous with .NET, because people may stop bothering to specify C#, just as the .NET was officially dropped from VB.NET. The Tiobe index won't reflect that quickly, so it may be that a whole lot of .NET, such as .NET Core, and the like, will be C#....it just won't SAY C#, so Tiobe won't pick it up.

Similarly, the Visual Basic category is primarily VBA, with a strong secondary component of VB.NET, and VB6 making up about 10% of the category. So, if there is less talk of VBA explicitly, then that category will drop off. Anybody who talks about Office development is talking about VBA, but if they don't say VBA, then the Tiobe algorithm won't pick up the site. Thus, just a change in terminology could greatly impact the rankings.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

For example, C# may drop if it comes to be synonymous with .NET, because people may stop bothering to specify C#, just as the .NET was officially dropped from VB.NET. The Tiobe index won't reflect that quickly, so it may be that a whole lot of .NET, such as .NET Core, and the like, will be C#....it just won't SAY C#, so Tiobe won't pick it up.

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But even if people now refer to C# as just ".NET" (I see your point, but I don't fully accept it) that doesn't account for Visual Basic .Net climbing so high (the largest increase this month) to place it higher than JavaScript (which I believe is mentioned occasionally on the web) and higher than PHP, SQL, Objective-C, and many others - and ranking almost as high as Python and C++

so, theres x7 more people using .net than vb6,
but in this forum right now theres (556 Viewing) VB6 and (467 Viewing) .NET (no matter if its bots or not, its not about amount of people but activity)
theres no equivalent on the internet that we can compare for .NET users, googling, this forum is the top place for .netters and vb6 users.

for me its strange that we have x7 more people using .net but you dont see them at all. are those people active at all? how do they share, learn, discuss? or .NET is that easy you dont need a community?
on the other hand, a easy language would also mean u need less help, if the language is old and theres tons of help, you don't need to ask for help either.

im sure we can do the index by asking companies, but the majority of programmers are amateurs.

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Originally Posted by VB6 Programming

But even if people now refer to C# as just ".NET" (I see your point, but I don't fully accept it) that doesn't account for Visual Basic .Net climbing so high (the largest increase this month) to place it higher than JavaScript (which I believe is mentioned occasionally on the web) and higher than PHP, SQL, Objective-C, and many others - and ranking almost as high as Python and C++

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Yeah, I can't account for the rise in VB.NET. I feel that the drop in some of the others can be explained easily (though perhaps incorrectly), but a rise, especially one that sharp, is hard to explain. My first thought was that they had changed up their algorithm. The Visual Basic category has a whole lot of VB.NET in it because they split two of the categories 50/50 between VB.NET and Visual Basic. A sample suggests that the real split should be 90/10 VB.NET to VB6 (with a tiny amount of VBA). If they noted that, they might change the algorithm to shift more of those categories from Visual Basic to VB.NET, which would cause VB.NET to jump up and Visual Basic to jump down. That's the pattern we are seeing, but they didn't change their documentation about the breakdown of the categories, so there's nothing to suggest they did that.

Other than that, it would suggest a whole LOT of new pages on VB.NET. Considering the total number of pages out there, that seems very unlikely. To see a significant shift, the number of pages would have to be pretty large, or possibly the number of links would have to be very large, and neither of those seems likely from anything I have heard.

So...while I can make up a reason for drops in Visual Basic and C#, and I can even come up with a reason why VB.NET would rise sharply while Visual Basic fell sharply....I can't support the reason with any evidence.

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Originally Posted by baka

so, theres x7 more people using .net than vb6,
but in this forum right now theres (556 Viewing) VB6 and (467 Viewing) .NET (no matter if its bots or not, its not about amount of people but activity)
theres no equivalent on the internet that we can compare for .NET users, googling, this forum is the top place for .netters and vb6 users.

for me its strange that we have x7 more people using .net but you dont see them at all. are those people active at all? how do they share, learn, discuss? or .NET is that easy you dont need a community?
on the other hand, a easy language would also mean u need less help, if the language is old and theres tons of help, you don't need to ask for help either.

im sure we can do the index by asking companies, but the majority of programmers are amateurs.

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This is something I was asking about earlier. VBF may well be the most significant forum for VB6 questions. It may be the ONLY forum that is active for that language. The same isn't true for VB.NET. In my experience, VBF isn't often the top reply for searches about VB.NET, so it is likely that the other active forums are absorbing a considerable amount of the VB.NET question traffic. SO is a big one, especially for people who want a .NET answer, but don't care whether it is C# or VB, and MS has some pretty active forum (though I find the format annoying, personally) for .NET questions. So, VBF might be the bulk of VB6 questions and a minority of VB.NET questions. If that's the case, then the pattern seen here isn't all that surprising.

Microsoft kicked VB6 questions off their "forums" a long time ago.

SO really isn't a great format at all. It was intended to act a sort of "wiki" of concise questions with concise answers, albeit more open than conventional wiki sites. It isn't designed for discussions at all, and there isn't much provision for any back and forth.

From what we see here, there are a lot of people who can't formulate a question well or even consume an answer. So many threads turn into long and painful Socratic sessions where people have to pull teeth getting the questioner's requirements and then once understood (?) answers often have to be restated several times filling in a lot of assumed knowledge. Sometimes other factors such as imperfect English or even machine translation enter the picture, just adding to potential misunderstandings.

SO really falls apart for that, but it was never intended to work over such "terrain." VB6 questions also tend to get a lot of .Net fan club snide comments there due to active trolling.


But I think it is also very true that the VB6 community is on it last legs. Much of what we see here today only came along after the UseNet groups for VB6 died. I presume one or maybe two pied pipers moved and that helped them overcome their decade long disparagement of web forums, Windows post-9x, and the wearing of shoes.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

But I think it is also very true that the VB6 community is on it last legs.

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I don't see that. If I was using any other such product and it had a such a vibrant forum with almost instant responses to queries, such knowledgeable types willing to comment, propose, contribute and respond, such a codebase and that technical product functioned as well as VB6 does today, I would be generally impressed with that product and confident about its future.

The fact that its future is NOT in the hands of the original developer is the ONLY thing that worries me but at the same time it may well be a better outcome, if at the hands of impassioned developers some progress is made on a VB6.5+ and we actually have a future.

I am still looking for a tool as good as VB6. As flexible, as RAD, as quick, as streamlined, as BASIC.

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Originally Posted by yereverluvinuncleber

I don't see that. If I was using any other such product and it had a such a vibrant forum with almost instant responses to queries, such knowledgeable types willing to comment, propose, contribute and respond, such a codebase and that technical product functioned as well as VB6 does today, I would be generally impressed with that product and confident about its future.

The fact that its future is NOT in the hands of the original developer is the ONLY thing that worries me but at the same time it may well be a better outcome, if at the hands of impassioned developers some progress is made on a VB6.5+ and we actually have a future.

I am still looking for a tool as good as VB6. As flexible, as RAD, as quick, as streamlined, as BASIC.

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I disagree also. This site has stats next to the forums showing how many people are viewing which forums. Very often there are more viewing VB 6.0 then VB .Net. It is very cyclic that new VB 6.0 course are beginning somewhere because of all the homework questions being asked. Maybe because parts of the world are using recycled equipment and software but it is still be taught new and VB 6.0 sites are still valuable. Just like COBOL people have been writing VB 6.0 is dead for years but the is so much of it is in the "real" business world it is fairly entrenched and not going anywhere soon.

Funny thing about statistics, they can mean anything since it's about interpretation. 62% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Sure the VB6 forums here are more active here... they've been around longer. It's the original foundation of this site. It stands to reason that it would have higher numbers. Does it mean that VB6 is more popular? *shrug* beats me. Maybe it means that VB6 is harder to work with that people need more help with it than .NET. Maybe it's because it's one of the few resources left out there dedicated to VB6 on the internet. A library has 4 books on VB, 3 on .NET and 1 on VB6 ... the one on VB6 gets checked out on a regular basis, but the ones on .NET only get checked out every once in a while ... is VB6 still more popular? Or is it simply a supply/demand issue?

I reject your statistics and substitute my own.

As for what is taught out there... often that's because it's easier to teach 20 year old technology than it is to get updated newer technologies certified correctly. Colleges and Universities can't just wake up one morning and say "Hey, it's nearly 2020, we should be teaching full-stack development, with things like react, and java, and docker and cloud and AWS..." ... there's actually a lengthy, involved process they have to go through, boards, certifications, etc. Then they have to find professors knowledgable enough to teach the courses...


-tg

That one always kills me: "Full-stack development."

Turns out it's a grandiose term for "web secretary" and a badge they often pin onto their own chests that turns out to be utter rubbish when they are questioned on it. Most of them have atrocious database skills, and their server-side development skills are often just as lacking. When pressed you find that even their JavaScript skill level is laughable. In the end most of these "full-stack" Little Emperors are found wearing no clothes.

It's a scam to sell them worthless training and certifications, like when Microsoft began calling box jockeys "IT Professionals."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by techgnome

Funny thing about statistics...

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There are two types of people in this world, those that agree that there are two types of people in this world and those that don't.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by techgnome

Funny thing about statistics, they can mean anything since it's about interpretation. 62% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Sure the VB6 forums here are more active here... they've been around longer. It's the original foundation of this site. It stands to reason that it would have higher numbers. Does it mean that VB6 is more popular? *shrug* beats me. Maybe it means that VB6 is harder to work with that people need more help with it than .NET. Maybe it's because it's one of the few resources left out there dedicated to VB6 on the internet. A library has 4 books on VB, 3 on .NET and 1 on VB6 ... the one on VB6 gets checked out on a regular basis, but the ones on .NET only get checked out every once in a while ... is VB6 still more popular? Or is it simply a supply/demand issue?

I reject your statistics and substitute my own.

As for what is taught out there... often that's because it's easier to teach 20 year old technology than it is to get updated newer technologies certified correctly. Colleges and Universities can't just wake up one morning and say "Hey, it's nearly 2020, we should be teaching full-stack development, with things like react, and java, and docker and cloud and AWS..." ... there's actually a lengthy, involved process they have to go through, boards, certifications, etc. Then they have to find professors knowledgable enough to teach the courses...


-tg

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????

I'm talking about the number of people viewing a particular thread that displays next to each forum. Right now 285 are viewing .Net and 286 are viewing VB 6.0. Which, by the way, proves my point.

I pretty sure that qualifies as a statistic

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Colleges and Universities can't just wake up one morning and say "Hey, it's nearly 2020, we should be teaching full-stack development, with things like react, and java, and docker and cloud and AWS..." ... there's actually a lengthy, involved process they have to go through, boards, certifications, etc. Then they have to find professors knowledgable enough to teach the courses...

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That is an interesting point in some other argument somewhere but what does it have to do with my post, which was, it is still being taught as new in many places?

We're late enough in the day now though that an awful lot of legacy VB6 code has been replaced in businesses. Sure, some still lingers but not anything like even 5 years ago.

I suspect what we're dealing with now are a lot of Office VBA macro plinkers who have somehow acquired a legit (or not) copy of VB6 and want to have a play at it. Some are just curious, others are those clerical types who'd rather muck around "coding" rather than stamping that pile of forms they're supposed to be dealing with. Stealth IT is as big a curse today as 15 years ago.

You can smell this group, most of their questions are about automating MS Office. They insist on using ListView controls in place of the flexgrids they don't have the OCXs for, most likely because they are using a pirated copy of VB6.

Then you have your script kiddies. Most of their questions are about compiling code that clearly originated as admin VBScript or else something intended to subvert system security or scrape data from web sites.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dilettante

We're late enough in the day now though that an awful lot of legacy VB6 code has been replaced in businesses. Sure, some still lingers but not anything like even 5 years ago.

I suspect what we're dealing with now are a lot of Office VBA macro plinkers who have somehow acquired a legit (or not) copy of VB6 and want to have a play at it. Some are just curious, others are those clerical types who'd rather muck around "coding" rather than stamping that pile of forms they're supposed to be dealing with. Stealth IT is as big a curse today as 15 years ago.

You can smell this group, most of their questions are about automating MS Office. They insist on using ListView controls in place of the flexgrids they don't have the OCXs for, most likely because they are using a pirated copy of VB6.

Then you have your script kiddies. Most of their questions are about compiling code that clearly originated as admin VBScript or else something intended to subvert system security or scrape data from web sites.

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Look at the last 20 or 30 VB 6.0 posts and tell me if you see any of that...I certainly don't.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dilettante

That one always kills me: "Full-stack development."

Turns out it's a grandiose term for "web secretary" and a badge they often pin onto their own chests that turns out to be utter rubbish when they are questioned on it. Most of them have atrocious database skills, and their server-side development skills are often just as lacking. When pressed you find that even their JavaScript skill level is laughable. In the end most of these "full-stack" Little Emperors are found wearing no clothes.

It's a scam to sell them worthless training and certifications, like when Microsoft began calling box jockeys "IT Professionals."

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So what, oh exalted one, and keeper of badges and nomenclature, what shalt I call myself in thine eyes? Because this is what I do now. I work on the entire frame, top to bottom. I'm responsible for everything from the HTML that the user interacts with, through the middleware that initiates the state changes and makes calls to services. I'm also responsible for those services... all the way down to their databases... security... I've even had to pick up learning about Docker, pods, AWS, and all sorts of things I didn't know about 18 months ago. So yeah, this "Web secratary" as you so %$#%$@ put it yeah... I'll take that as a badge... I am learning to be a jack or all trades with out the benefit of being able to become the master of any. Back in the VB days, I could afford to be a master of some stuff. But these days, yeah, that #$%! doesn't fly any more. So you know what take your high and mighty attitude and shove it.

I'm done.

-tg

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Originally Posted by techgnome

that #$%! doesn't fly any more.

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TG, Will you still be able to post when your post total reaches beyond 32,768?

Be nice to Dil - please.

I should be more civil too of course. I'm going through a personal disaster and my stress level is very high. Not an excuse, I need to try harder to check myself.

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Originally Posted by TysonLPrice

????

I'm talking about the number of people viewing a particular thread that displays next to each forum. Right now 285 are viewing .Net and 286 are viewing VB 6.0. Which, by the way, proves my point.

I pretty sure that qualifies as a statistic

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You have to remember that most of those "viewers" are bots, crawlers and the like. NOT actual people interested in what we have to offer. Over the years ads and crawlers will hit a particular forum harder than a newer forum. I would be more inclined to go by the actual logged in users that are viewing a particular forum.

First Thought: When I hear "full stack developer"....I get hungry for pancakes.

Second Thought: If the number of viewers of a sub-forum on VBF can be used as a surrogate for popularity...then C# is DOOMED!!!

Third Thought: I prefer the title "code monkey".

Fourth Thought: Watch the language. Violating the @#$%#@ censor is a violation of the @#$^% AUP. (note that the first one should be replaced by "blessed", and the second one should be replaced by "generous").

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Originally Posted by RobDog888

You have to remember that most of those "viewers" are bots, crawlers and the like. NOT actual people interested in what we have to offer. Over the years ads and crawlers will hit a particular forum harder than a newer forum. I would be more inclined to go by the actual logged in users that are viewing a particular forum.

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It looks like you have to open individual threads to get that...any other way to get the number for the whole forum topic?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TysonLPrice

It looks like you have to open individual threads to get that...any other way to get the number for the whole forum topic?

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Not so. Every single page has ads which will cause crawlers for analyzing ad metrics. So home page, forum view, thread view etc

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

Second Thought: If the number of viewers of a sub-forum on VBF can be used as a surrogate for popularity...then C# is DOOMED!!!

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Isn't this a VB oriented forum?