Another vb alternative Mercury? not 100% compatible but still!

[axisdj]

FYI, thoughts on this one?

https://visualstudiomagazine.com/art...0/mercury.aspx

[Grant Swinger]

It looks nice but it's VB.NET they're extending, not classic VB, so it's probably of little interest to die-hard classic fans.

[VB6 Programming]

As Grant says it's a VB.Net alternative.

As Microsoft moves away from VB.Net it is probably of interest to the VB.Net community, but of little relevance to VB6.

[Niya]

As Grant says it's a VB.Net alternative.

As Microsoft moves away from VB.Net it is probably of interest to the VB.Net community, but of little relevance to VB6.

Errrr....As a person that loves VB.Net, I'm not actually onboard with this to be honest. This is VB6 all over again. If Microsoft wants to stick a fork in VB.Net, so be it. I have zero problems moving to C#. In fact, I'm going into C# for web development as soon as I'm done with my current VB.Net project. Might be a while though, but I'm definitely going. I'm never again going to let myself get caught using a dying or unsupported language, even if it's one I absolutely love.

[mansellan]

Errrr....As a person that loves VB.Net, I'm not actually onboard with this to be honest. This is VB6 all over again. If Microsoft wants to stick a fork in VB.Net, so be it. I have zero problems moving to C#. In fact, I'm going into C# for web development as soon as I'm done with my current VB.Net project. Might be a while though, but I'm definitely going. I'm never again going to let myself get caught using a dying or unsupported language, even if it's one I absolutely love.

I loved (and still love) VB6, but was forced to make the jump to .Net 15 years ago (damn, that makes me feel old!). The differences between VB.Net and C# are trivial compared to the differences between VB6 and VB.Net. All the fundamentals are identical, just a slightly different syntax and a few unique constructs each side. The expressiveness possible in C# is striking, it can enable extremely elegant source code. ReSharper can really help guide with this.

[Niya]

I loved (and still love) VB6, but was forced to make the jump to .Net 15 years ago (damn, that makes me feel old!).

Yea, sure doesn't feel like a long time. I started VB.Net is VS-2008! Now I'm using VS-2019 with a new version already in the works to be released soon. A lot of time has passed. When I made the jump, though I just couldn't go back to VB6. I had zero intention of staying in VB.Net but using it felt that they read my thoughts. All the things I wished for in VB6 were present in VB.Net and the .Net Framework. Going back just didn't make sense to me because .Net gave me things I've wanted for years.

The differences between VB.Net and C# are trivial compared to the differences between VB6 and VB.Net. All the fundamentals are identical, just a slightly different syntax and a few unique constructs each side. The expressiveness possible in C# is striking, it can enable extremely elegant source code. ReSharper can really help guide with this.

I really love C# as a language. It's one of the most beautiful languages I have ever seen. Though I think they have been overloading it with features a bit too much recently. It's really hard to keep up with all these new features they keep adding. I only hope they don't clutter it too much.

[VB6 Programming]

This is VB6 all over again. If Microsoft wants to stick a fork in VB.Net, so be it. I have zero problems moving to C#. In fact, I'm going into C# for web development as soon as I'm done with my current VB.Net project. Might be a while though, but I'm definitely going. I'm never again going to let myself get caught using a dying or unsupported language, even if it's one I absolutely love.

For web development (and some Android development) I chose JavaScript. I had no intention of choosing something that Microsoft could "stick a fork in" again.

I started VB.Net is VS-2008! Now I'm using VS-2019 with a new version already in the works to be released soon.

I started VB.Net with 2002/2003. It was virtually unusable. VB.Net 2005 was better, but still not as good as VB6. VB.Net 2008 was starting to get it right, but this was 5 years too late. I continued with VB6 and only used VB.Net for mobile development (Windows Mobile, and Microsoft "stuck a fork" in that after WM6).

[Niya]

For web development (and some Android development) I chose JavaScript. I had no intention of choosing something that Microsoft could "stick a fork in" again.

I started VB.Net with 2002/2003. It was virtually unusable. VB.Net 2005 was better, but still not as good as VB6. VB.Net 2008 was starting to get it right, but this was 5 years too late. I continued with VB6 and only used VB.Net for mobile development (Windows Mobile, and Microsoft "stuck a fork" in that after WM6).

Yea, MS tends to kill off a lot of their tech but I don't see this as odd. It's just natural. Some things will be huge successes like ASP.Net and C# and some will be failures like SilverLight. Success and failure tend to be dictated by how popular something is and C# and the .Net platform are extremely popular. I don't think they are going anywhere any time soon.

VB6 was an odd duck since it was very successful and killing it may have been a blunder but I understood why they chose to kill it and can't say that I really disagree with it. I mean look at TwinBASIC. It's aiming to be a modernization of VB6 and some of it's new features are already clashing with some of the legacy stuff from VB6. There was a whole section in the TwinBASIC thread where I raised a discussion about how Set is clashing with generics. MS probably didn't want to deal with problems like that and decided to start fresh. .Net turned out to be a massive success so their decision in hindsight wasn't a bad one. Of course it came at the cost of the millions who were invested in VB6. It's not fair but that's how it goes sometimes.

[Cristianlt23]

Errrr....As a person that loves VB.Net, I'm not actually onboard with this to be honest. This is VB6 all over again. If Microsoft wants to stick a fork in VB.Net, so be it. I have zero problems moving to C#. In fact, I'm going into C# for web development as soon as I'm done with my current VB.Net project. Might be a while though, but I'm definitely going. I'm never again going to let myself get caught using a dying or unsupported language, even if it's one I absolutely love.

if you think that way, then you'd better revise your concepts about Microsoft.

Everything works great until next year arrives!

Microsoft's history of discontinuity is immense.

[PlausiblyDamp]

if you think that way, then you'd better revise your concepts about Microsoft.

Everything works great until next year arrives!

Microsoft's history of discontinuity is immense.

The same can be said of most tech companies though, look at how many things Google have killed off over the years, look at Apple's history on backwards compatibility. At least Microsoft are continuing to support the VB6 runtime in current versions of Windows.

[Cristianlt23]

The same can be said of most tech companies though, look at how many things Google have killed off over the years, look at Apple's history on backwards compatibility. At least Microsoft are continuing to support the VB6 runtime in current versions of Windows.

Quote Originally Posted by Niya View Post
Errrr....As a person that loves VB.Net, I'm not actually onboard with this to be honest. This is VB6 all over again. If Microsoft wants to stick a fork in VB.Net, so be it. I have zero problems moving to C#. In fact, I'm going into C# for web development as soon as I'm done with my current VB.Net project. Might be a while though, but I'm definitely going. I'm never again going to let myself get caught using a dying or unsupported language, even if it's one I absolutely love."

See the text above, it was for this answer that I made the comment

So there is no heartache and despair in switching to C#, VB.NET will be long standing!
and soon we'll have the same thinking for C # when it comes up in XY #

The truth is, there is no safe path either at Microsoft or Google or Apple.

If you want safer paths and without so many changes you should choose less popular tools like Delphi, Xojo for example!

[techgnome]

See the text above, it was for this answer that I made the comment

So there is no heartache and despair in switching to C#, VB.NET will be long standing!
and soon we'll have the same thinking for C # when it comes up in XY #

The truth is, there is no safe path either at Microsoft or Google or Apple.

If you want safer paths and without so many changes you should choose less popular tools like Delphi, Xojo for example!

You make it sound like the future is bleak and barren. Geezes, lighten up. It's not all that bad. There's plenty of stuff going on out there. Is any of it totaly 100% probably not... some of it safer than others, sure. But so what? Honestly, I don't care about 20 years from now. Hell, I don't care about 10 years from now. I care about today, tomorrow, and... wait, it's Friday, so I care about today. All we can do is look ahead with what we know, and make a best guess. A couple years ago, I made the decision to get out of the MS stack, and I jumped into Java development. Do I regret it? Not one bit. It's been fun. I'm doing my best to keep up with what's still going on with .NET and it's releases (I'm stoked it's now cross platform, and I'm looking forward to playing with it on my Linux machine) as well as picking up other skills (tinkering with Python).

The future of C# is safer than VB.NET ... C# is open sourced. It's spec is wide open for anyone to implement. And now With .NET 5 (Core) it's open sourced as well... so now almost the entire C# ecosystem is open sourced and available to the world. Microsoft can and has put the lid on the coffin of VB, the last nail may not be driven into it quite yet, but as C# continues to proliferate and take hold, there will come a time when VB will wane. And that's fine. But C# isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

But VB isn't going anywhere either... it's got a huge following, it's got a strong support base... even if it's no longer supported (meaning new features added to it) by MS, doesn't mean it suddenly stops working on everyone''s machine. Hell, even VB6 still works today... you think the idea of VB.NET going away is bleak, you should check out some of those threads...

Truth is... there is no really safe path anywhere. All we can do is roll with our best guess.

-tg

[Cristianlt23]

You make it sound like the future is bleak and barren. Geezes, lighten up. It's not all that bad. There's plenty of stuff going on out there. Is any of it totaly 100% probably not... some of it safer than others, sure. But so what? Honestly, I don't care about 20 years from now. Hell, I don't care about 10 years from now. I care about today, tomorrow, and... wait, it's Friday, so I care about today. All we can do is look ahead with what we know, and make a best guess. A couple years ago, I made the decision to get out of the MS stack, and I jumped into Java development. Do I regret it? Not one bit. It's been fun. I'm doing my best to keep up with what's still going on with .NET and it's releases (I'm stoked it's now cross platform, and I'm looking forward to playing with it on my Linux machine) as well as picking up other skills (tinkering with Python).

The future of C# is safer than VB.NET ... C# is open sourced. It's spec is wide open for anyone to implement. And now With .NET 5 (Core) it's open sourced as well... so now almost the entire C# ecosystem is open sourced and available to the world. Microsoft can and has put the lid on the coffin of VB, the last nail may not be driven into it quite yet, but as C# continues to proliferate and take hold, there will come a time when VB will wane. And that's fine. But C# isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

But VB isn't going anywhere either... it's got a huge following, it's got a strong support base... even if it's no longer supported (meaning new features added to it) by MS, doesn't mean it suddenly stops working on everyone''s machine. Hell, even VB6 still works today... you think the idea of VB.NET going away is bleak, you should check out some of those threads...

Truth is... there is no really safe path anywhere. All we can do is roll with our best guess.

-tg

But that's just what I meant.

There is no reason for suffering, everything will still have its use and will work for a long time.

No need to rush from VB to C#, or from C# to a new fashion language in the future.

Microsoft, Google and Apple can't guarantee anything because they live off creation and novelties, and whoever finds this a burden finds it very complicated to keep updating the tools on a daily basis, can use other less popular tools that don't have this competitive aggressiveness as a priority. but the objective of simply delivering the project to the client

As you said today and Friday and let's enjoy

[Niya]

No need to rush from VB to C#, or from C# to a new fashion language in the future.

Blazor, Xamarin, MAUI, Razor pages....none of these work directly with VB. They are all C#.

[Cristianlt23]

Blazor, Xamarin, MAUI, Razor pages....none of these work directly with VB. They are all C#.

Yes of course they are for C#

For VB.NET Web I simply use Vazor (https://github.com/VBAndCs/Vazor)

[Niya]

Yes of course they are for C#

For VB.NET Web I simply use Vazor (https://github.com/VBAndCs/Vazor)

That looks amazing but I tend to avoid such approaches for the same reason I find fault in VB6 programmers over-reliance on vbRichClient, which is that it relies too heavily on a single individual and how much spare time he has. It's just better to go to C# where I know it will be supported by Microsoft themselves and dozens if not hundred of active open source contributors.

Don't get me wrong, little hacks like these are nice and some of them do go on to be something more but I've learned the hard way that trying to fit a square peg into a round hole is not worth it 90% of the time. Look no further than the VB6 community to see a perfect example of what that disaster looks like. You end of with a community of people depending on the efforts of one or two overworked individuals trying their best to one-man it. While these effort do yield some fruit, they always fall way short of endevours backed by big companies and/or hundreds of individual active contributors.

The TLDR if it is to just go where the crowd is and avoid these "one man army" solutions.

[Cristianlt23]

That looks amazing but I tend to avoid such approaches for the same reason I find fault in VB6 programmers over-reliance on vbRichClient, which is that it relies too heavily on a single individual and how much spare time he has. It's just better to go to C# where I know it will be supported by Microsoft themselves and dozens if not hundred of active open source contributors.

Don't get me wrong, little hacks like these are nice and some of them do go on to be something more but I've learned the hard way that trying to fit a square peg into a round hole is not worth it 90% of the time. Look no further than the VB6 community to see a perfect example of what that disaster looks like. You end of with a community of people depending on the efforts of one or two overworked individuals trying their best to one-man it. While these effort do yield some fruit, they always fall way short of endevours backed by big companies and/or hundreds of individual active contributors.

The TLDR if it is to just go where the crowd is and avoid these "one man army" solutions.

I agree with you.
in fact, the risk is too great!

I sincerely wish that you have a lot of success with C#, that it can represent the meeting of your great quest.

I also use C# and I like it a lot.

I really wish that C# can also be a great comfort and security for thousands of developers around the world, and that MS have more passion for this language and honor all the developers who have already dedicated themselves and those who will still dedicate a lot. time of their lives for this tool to work.