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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VB6 Programming

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

---

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.

---

I think the focus of VB6Programming's sentence is "significant" and "experienced".

If you can list the significant features of VB.NET for desktop development and list the unique features of C# for web and mobile development, and these features are important for experienced web and mobile developers, then your point of view will be more convincing, and others can learn a lot of useful knowledge from your discussion.

1. There is a lot to be said for using mature software which is well understood with a fixed feature set where it is clear what it does and doesn't do. You can't say that for new languages which are still evolving.

2. Not everyone is a professional programmer. I am an IT professional, but my speciality is networking. Programming is something I do more casually as a sideline because I'm cheaper and my projects are inevitably smaller in scale. I have a reasonable knowledge of VB6 but not really of anything else and unless my career path shifts I have no real need to. It doesn't mean VB6 could or should be used for everything, but it does everything I need (it actually does far more than I will ever need). I see no need to spend time learning other languages when programming isn't my primary job function, my projects will still only be of the same scope anyway and therefore they won't earn me any more money.

3. There is so much help available. From these forums, to libraries of books on the subject, to the still useful MSDN library. It's a very well documented language where if you don't know how to do something, the solution is never far away. That doesn't apply to newer languages to anything like the same scale.

4. Many VB6 users are professional programmers and believe, in their professional opinion, that it is a better language than those which have replaced it. If it's good enough for them to stake their livelihoods on, it's good enough for me.

5. An often made point, but Microsoft haven't entirely killed it - they are happy to promote the use of VBA in Office. VBA is simply a subset of VB6.

6. Despite it's age, the runtime is still supported, it's not like someone is trying to make a case for still using VB3 in active development. Even when the support ends, lack of 'support' doesn't necessarily mean it won't work (eg the IDE is 'unsupported' yet works just fine directly in Windows 10). I can't forsee any serious problem continuing to do VB6 development until 32 bit app compatibility is no longer natively in Windows, and I can't see that happening for a very long time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VB6 Programming

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

---

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.

---

As dreammanor says, the important words are 'significant' and 'experienced'.

This is a VB6 thread asking why people still use VB6. You seem to agree on the first statement (that VB.Net didn't offer VB6 users anything significant for desktop development)

Quote:

---

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)

---

But you also appeared to be suggesting that VB6 users (many of whom already develop for web and/or mobile) should move to C# for web and/or mobile development.
Forgive me if I am reading too much into your comment but experienced developers are unlikely to move from whatever they use to C# for web or mobile. It is also extremely unlikely that VB6 users would choose to move to C# for any reason.
I'm not saying C# can't be used for web or mobile, but for any developer there are better solutions - and for VB6 developers virtually any solution is better than C#.

When I searched for information today, I saw some threads from 1 years ago. These threads touched me：

About the future of VB6: which famous commercial software is developed using C#?

Writing a new IDE with clean, straight-forward code (vbRichClient)

Quote:

---

... that VB.Net didn't offer VB6 users anything significant for desktop development ...

---

I don't want to get into who said that. But, IMHO, that entirely misses the point. I blithely followed Microsoft all the way from Disk Basic, through all the versions of PDS Basic, all excited about VB-DOS (and that it would rather directly run my PDS Basic), and through all the versions of VB (through VB6).

And furthermore, I would have happily followed them into .Net. However, and it bewilders me why people forget this (or just don't know it), .Net was (and still is) a fundamentally different language from VB6 (and/or any prior versions). At the time .Net came out, I had substantial applications I was distributing, and many 1000s of lines of code. Prior to .Net, upgrading to the latest compiler and IDE was little more than trivial. However, with .Net, it would have taken a major time investment. Actually, we took a few runs at it, but it just became overwhelming, and we had better things to do. Therefore (as I suspect with many others here), I stay stranded at VB6.

To this day, it still apsolutely amazes me that the first versions of .Net weren't more compatible with VB6. It's as if Microsoft just got incredibly lazy (or arrogant), thinking they could continue to drag us along, regardless of the difficulties.

In the past, I (and many others) have made lists of all the differences between VB6 and .Net (particularly the earlier versions), but I'm not motivated to pull one of those lists together yet again. Suffice it to say (by the mere existence and activity of this forum) that they were far from trivial.

Far more than any other reason, that's why I'm still on VB6. (And the fact that it actually is a very nice, robust, and bullet-proof language.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elroy

we took a few runs at it, but it just became overwhelming, and we had better things to do. Therefore (as I suspect with many others here), I stay stranded at VB6.

---

this is what happened with us. The choice was throw away a few years worth of code or just keep going.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elroy

To this day, it still apsolutely amazes me that the first versions of .Net weren't more compatible with VB6. It's as if Microsoft just got incredibly lazy (or arrogant), thinking they could continue to drag us along, regardless of the difficulties.

---

It's more like they changed directions and we just got left behind. It won't be long before their "cloud" division surpasses the windows\office divisions in revenue.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elroy

To this day, it still absolutely amazes me that the first versions of .Net weren't more compatible with VB6. It's as if Microsoft just got incredibly lazy (or arrogant), thinking they could continue to drag us along, regardless of the difficulties.

---

Actually, we have a pretty good idea as why it wasn't more compatible. Microsoft tried to do it but couldn't make it work. The book "Upgrading VB6 to VB.NET" (Microsoft Press) describes how Microsoft originally intended for VB.NET to be backwards compatible with VB6. As the book puts it:

Quote:

---

When did Microsoft decide to break compatibility with Visual Basic 6? It was actually in early December 1999, during the development of Visual Basic .NET. Until that time, Visual Basic .NET was being developed to support the notion of “Visual Basic 6 sourced” projects that allowed you to edit and compile Visual Basic 6 projects in Visual Basic .NET. These projects would have a compatibility switch turned on, meaning that the language would be backward compatible with Visual Basic 6 and would even have access to the old Visual Basic 6 forms package.

---

Well before 1999 Microsoft found that this was much harder to do than they had assumed. So did MS just said "Screw it, we're breaking stuff and VB users can just like it or lump it"? Nope, not at all. About the start of 1999 they had held a focus group for VB7 with their largest VB users. Yuval Neeman explained the problems they were having and asked about making VB.NET "kind-of compatible" with VB6. Bill Storage got up and said to just drop backwards compatibility altogether. Neeman asked the rest of group what they thought and was astonished to hear that they agreed with Storage. As he put it "Do you guys realize what you’re telling us? I mean, we’re flabbergasted. We can’t believe what we’re hearing."

After that they did a lot of market research and the results were consistent with what the focus group had said. The customers who provided the majority of their business did not care about backwards compatibility. Since it would have taken months to do the research and debate the results that brings us to December 1999 when they decided to pull the trigger.

A considerable minority was not happy but in business the majority rules and the minority has to deal with it. They might have kept VB6 alive as a separate language (VB6.5) but probably decided it wasn't worth it. The minority wasn't big enough in terms of business to justify it. It's much less so today.

While the above leaves out a lot of details it is consistent with what we know, statements made by those were there at the time, and the way businesses actually works. It makes a lot more sense than most of the theories that are tossed around to explain it.

its easy to say "drop it", we are getting the big cake soon. but when the cake arrive, its big alright, but taste bad. im sure a lot that agreed to drop backward compatibility felt cheated.
we have hindsight right now, almost 20 years later and VB6 is still here.

Yes, 20 years later, .NET did not defeat Java, nor did it help Microsoft win the war on the Internet, nor did it help Microsoft win the war on the mobile Internet. The biggest achievement of .NET is to allow other programming languages to gain room for development, while making Windows no longer the most important part of Microsoft.

.NET was obviously wildly different to begin with; I'm amazed backwards compatibility was even on the table at all. They should have realized it was a separate product entirely and treated it that way. Heck, I don't even see why they needed it at all given how similar C# is.

And quite honestly... their biggest customers were gung-ho to rewrite their programs from the ground up? That sounds highly suspicious to me. Like post-hoc excuses. Then of course there's the insult of bringing language upgrades to the old VB line anyway, but locking it to VBA only. Also not like it's the first time they've forced hugely unpopular major differences and basically told everyone where to go and what to do when they got there. No, sorry, I'm not buying that story. I bet they're going to say "Our customers were just clamoring for the ability of MS to have access to all their private data through telemetry and a EULA that says we can access everything on your (i.e. OUR) system!" too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grant Swinger

Well before 1999 Microsoft found that this was much harder to do than they had assumed. So did MS just said "Screw it, we're breaking stuff and VB users can just like it or lump it"? Nope, not at all. About the start of 1999 they had held a focus group for VB7 with their largest VB users. Yuval Neeman explained the problems they were having and asked about making VB.NET "kind-of compatible" with VB6. Bill Storage got up and said to just drop backwards compatibility altogether. Neeman asked the rest of group what they thought and was astonished to hear that they agreed with Storage. As he put it "Do you guys realize what you’re telling us? I mean, we’re flabbergasted. We can’t believe what we’re hearing."

After that they did a lot of market research and the results were consistent with what the focus group had said. The customers who provided the majority of their business did not care about backwards compatibility. Since it would have taken months to do the research and debate the results that brings us to December 1999 when they decided to pull the trigger.

A considerable minority was not happy but in business the majority rules and the minority has to deal with it. They might have kept VB6 alive as a separate language (VB6.5) but probably decided it wasn't worth it. The minority wasn't big enough in terms of business to justify it. It's much less so today.

While the above leaves out a lot of details it is consistent with what we know, statements made by those were there at the time, and the way businesses actually works. It makes a lot more sense than most of the theories that are tossed around to explain it.

---

Just lies. I'm not saying you lie, but them.
It is Lapalissade truth that a majority, if not almost everybody always wants backward compatibility.

We had the petition. We know the story, don't try to tell us another one.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fafalone

their biggest customers were gung-ho to rewrite their programs from the ground up? That sounds highly suspicious to me.

---

Of course, these are inventions. (They must think we are all stupid and believe anything)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grant Swinger

Actually, we have a pretty good idea as why it wasn't more compatible. Microsoft tried to do it but couldn't make it work. The book "Upgrading VB6 to VB.NET" (Microsoft Press) describes how Microsoft originally intended for VB.NET to be backwards compatible with VB6. As the book puts it:



Well before 1999 Microsoft found that this was much harder to do than they had assumed. So did MS just said "Screw it, we're breaking stuff and VB users can just like it or lump it"? Nope, not at all. About the start of 1999 they had held a focus group for VB7 with their largest VB users. Yuval Neeman explained the problems they were having and asked about making VB.NET "kind-of compatible" with VB6. Bill Storage got up and said to just drop backwards compatibility altogether. Neeman asked the rest of group what they thought and was astonished to hear that they agreed with Storage. As he put it "Do you guys realize what you’re telling us? I mean, we’re flabbergasted. We can’t believe what we’re hearing."

After that they did a lot of market research and the results were consistent with what the focus group had said. The customers who provided the majority of their business did not care about backwards compatibility. Since it would have taken months to do the research and debate the results that brings us to December 1999 when they decided to pull the trigger.

---

You can fool some of the people all of the time.

Perhaps back in 1999 people were naive enough to believe this sort of marketing nonsense.

But now surely everyone realizes that "focus groups" are manipulated to give the desired result. Whatever results a marketing department is told to provide, the chosen focus groups will provide.

It's normal marketing practice to try to present failure as success. Some people will actually believe it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by baka

its easy to say "drop it", we are getting the big cake soon. but when the cake arrive, its big alright, but taste bad. im sure a lot that agreed to drop backward compatibility felt cheated.

---

Wait a minute...are we talking about VB6, or Brexit?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dreammanor

Yes, 20 years later, .NET did not defeat Java, nor did it help Microsoft win the war on the Internet, nor did it help Microsoft win the war on the mobile Internet. The biggest achievement of .NET is to allow other programming languages to gain room for development, while making Windows no longer the most important part of Microsoft.

---

Then what did? Amazon just topped MS as the most valuable company in the world according to the latest Economist. Whatever their strategy is (and it is fairly nebulous, to me), it seems to be working.

[...]

You left out XNA...except that it went open source ahead of time. Looks like .NET is open source, too, which is what lots of VB6 folks wanted all along. So....maybe step-brothers?

Still, the point is correct. I feel that things were more straightforward back in the 80s and 90s. There were these languages for this platform, and those languages for that platform, and no real overlap or blurring of the boundaries. It doesn't feel like that anymore. With the proliferation of platforms, most people don't seem to be able to work in one language unless they are willing to say "I'm just going to write Windows desktop applications." Perhaps Apple folks can say the same, but outside of the walled garden of Apple, it just doesn't seem to be the case. Even those who have talked about using VB6 for web seem to be downplaying the other, non-VB, components they are using to make that work. I don't feel like I work primarily in .NET because so much of what I do involves other things. Even if we don't count SQL or HTML as real languages (some do, and SQL certainly is), I'm not sure how much I can say I work with any one language.

So, I don't think .NET will ever go quite as away. I just think that an increasing mix of things will be blended into the stew until no one language is all that distinguishable. The languages will be the spices in the recipe: Everybody can use a different mix to create distinctive results, but the cake can never be fully reduced to one ingredient.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

Looks like .NET is open source, too, which is what lots of VB6 folks wanted all along. So....maybe step-brothers?

---

They will be too busy improving their tools to form any type of kinship

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dz32

I cant wait until MS gives .NET the same treatment they gave vb6. Then we will all be brothers again :)
The silver light developers know. The 3 generations of windows phone developers know. Who else, Visual Fox Pro, J++

---

I think MS will do the same mistake over and over again :(

for all you .net guys...

https://www.facebook.com/programming...5736115009398/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by axisdj

for all you .net guys...

https://www.facebook.com/programming...5736115009398/

---

Hahahahahah very hilarious !!!

The video even has wisdom, A secret can't stay a secret forever :)

The grave stone is even funny, Where are you want to go today? :D

When was that made? It seems like it must have been back around 2003 to 2007, but there didn't appear to be any date on it.

very funny video! Norwegian humor! :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

When was that made? It seems like it must have been back around 2003 to 2007, but there didn't appear to be any date on it.

---

Published on late 2012 according to Youtube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnqAXuLZlaE

Yeah, I was looking into some of that and figured that it likely had to be 2007, at least. Strange stuff. It reminds me of the ads that Apple was running in the mid to late 90s. Those were dark days for Apple, so they went after Windows....by criticizing DOS. MS was famously anti-open source until not all that long ago. There's a 'history of computing' exhibit at a museum in Albuquerque, NM (if that city surprises you, look into the history of computing in Albuquerque) that includes a letter penned by a young Bill Gates saying that people who shared code were stealing. It was a different time....yet still kind of similar.

The VB community hasn't always been its own bet friend in such matters. Doesn't anyone remember the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, the pants-wetting that accompanied every new version?

I'm not letting the .Net Travesty off the hook for the many reasons why it should never have existed, but it is hilarious to go back and look at what some people were saying when VB 6.0 came out:

https://www.vb-helper.com/newvb6.htm


This isn't unique though. It goes on in every programming community.

Quote:

---

But you also appeared to be suggesting that VB6 users (many of whom already develop for web and/or mobile) should move to C# for web and/or mobile development.
Forgive me if I am reading too much into your comment but experienced developers are unlikely to move from whatever they use to C# for web or mobile. It is also extremely unlikely that VB6 users would choose to move to C# for any reason.

---

Ah yes you are misunderstanding me at least a little. I am not suggesting anyone move from an established platform where they are successfully developing for Web / Mobile.

Quote:

---

I'm not saying C# can't be used for web or mobile, but for any developer there are better solutions - and for VB6 developers virtually any solution is better than C#.

---

I am saying that C# is actually a good tool for web & mobile, and your dislike of all things .Net is preventing you from evaluating it in a fair light.

Your insistence that it is not a good tool or that all others are better suggest to me that you have not used it and your basing you opinion on a general dislike rather than on having used it and found it not good !

The list of Wikipedia is too long exceed limit of characteres, below the link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BASIC_dialects

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by xman2000

The list of Wikipedia is too long exceed limit of characteres, below the link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BASIC_dialects

---

Hah. Remember from back in ~1985 my lecturer saying there were at least 500 versions of BASIC- and growing fast! QuickBasic was a favourite, but it started to get exciting with the Megapack. :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

I am saying that C# is actually a good tool for web & mobile, and your dislike of all things .Net is preventing you from evaluating it in a fair light.

---

Actually I chose VB.Net for mobile development, and still use it for that. But then Microsoft abandoned Windows Mobile, just like they have abandoned so many other things.
I've every expectation that if I started to use C# Microsoft would abandon that too.

Mono hasn't abandoned it. That's one of the points about open source, it doesn't necessarily matter what MS does anymore. I started using XNA when it was "the thing". Soon after that, it was abandoned by MS. However, it's still going strong and being extended as MonoGame. Though, to be fair, I didn't switch to MonoGame, because XNA still works...and I can't quite decide which direction I want to go. Since I don't HAVE to decide, just yet, I'm leaving my options open. Perhaps a mix of XNA and WPF baked into the same cake. I've made the changes for doing that, I just haven't added WPF pieces.

The point is that everything is changing. If we knew which technology was going to last for a good long time, that sure would be nice. We don't, though, so everybody takes a gamble no matter which choice we make.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

The point is that everything is changing. If we knew which technology was going to last for a good long time, that sure would be nice. We don't, though, so everybody takes a gamble no matter which choice we make.

---

I think there are a few languages that have stood the test of time and will continue to do so: c++ and java. And I think c# is microsoft's answer to java and it will be a safe language going forward. and the .net compiler and tools being open source means that the community will have a lot of options for extending it's life if Microsoft moves on.

what i dont like with java and .net are the neverending updates.
that is also why i haven't tried B4J, because they require java.
i remember a couple of tools that required java, and after installed that, its always updates and freezes my computer.
no, a program for windows should be exe and nothing else.
if .dll requirements, they should be included in the package, not installed into the system at all.

for me java and .net are the same crap.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by baka

what i dont like with java and .net are the neverending updates.
that is also why i haven't tried B4J, because they require java.
i remember a couple of tools that required java, and after installed that, its always updates and freezes my computer.
no, a program for windows should be exe and nothing else.
if .dll requirements, they should be included in the package, not installed into the system at all.

for me java and .net are the same crap.

---

Under .Net it is not only possible but actually recommended to keep your dlls with the application rather than install them into the system.

And updates are roughly what every VB6 vs .NET thread turns into. After all, VB6 still works...people just want updates.

This is my first intervention on the post.

We develop commercial applications with VB6 since so many years....
And they are at the "top of the art" including many things like OCR, Scan, QRCode, Agenda, links with outlook, Google, excel, web (in PHP), cloud, including ah home made "word like" etc...
Our applications are updated every weeks according requests from clients for functiunalities.

The only thing that is missing with VB6, is the possibility to create mobile and web applications :(
We don't need complicated OOP or similar things, which, yes, could be nice (on an IT view), but not usefull on a client side.

VB6 is so nearly perfect.
I also develop in .NET, ASP.NET... for some clients wich is more complicated.
The IDE in .NET is more complex and is less easy and faster as the VB6 IDE.

NB : The latest development I did, is writing an add-in for Outlook in VB6, which is so great....
And allow to gain nearly 30min of work per day.
I am derivating this add-in for a more global use, and once it is done, I will post it here to test it.

And Yes, I know, I could have written it in .NET, but it is quickest in VB6 than in VSStudio to do it...

.net u need to install the .net framework, how many we got so far?
java is the same. and c++ redistributable. theres more then 10 of that.
VB6 how much we got that need to be installed?
still I can create tools and games that are as advanced as .net and java and c++.
that tells something is wrong. the techs are not that smart it seems.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by baka

.net u need to install the .net framework, how many we got so far?

---

I keep seeing this as if you need to keep installing all frameworks... you don't. From a development side, you only need to install the FW version that has the functionality that you want/need. Heck, you can get away with writing complete apps in FW2.0 still ... so target just that FW... it doesn't take much. As for the installation at the client, that's all that needs to be installed, just that framework. If you don't need it, don't install it. It's no different from any other framework or runtime.
So the number of frameworks or service packs is a BS argument. Same with Java... there's a ton of versions out there... I only need one to do my work. I've installed it and removed the others. What's so difficult about that? At least they install side by side and will co-exist happily as such and don't interfere with each other.

-tg

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by baka

.net u need to install the .net framework, how many we got so far?

---

if vb6 was still being developed, you would have lots of different versions of the runtime files too. New features and bug fixes require new runtimes and new frameworks. This isn't a bad thing but so many people just have an irrational hatred of these frameworks.