VS 2008 is it free to download anywhere? I don't find any working links

[sdowney1]

Was there a community version?

I was interested in converting an old vb6 app.

[2kaud]

The free VS2008 was the Express version. It can be obtained here:
https://www.blitzcoder.org/forum/topic.php?id=94

But why? Why not use the latest version VS2022 community which is also free:
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/

[sdowney1]

The free VS2008 was the Express version. It can be obtained here:
https://www.blitzcoder.org/forum/topic.php?id=94

But why? Why not use the latest version VS2022 community which is also free:
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/

Supposedly vs2008 has a feature to import an old vb6 project.
Any experience with that?

How would you do that with vs2022?
can you recycle the code or the forms?

[Shaggy Hiker]

That feature did exist, but it never really worked very well. Simple projects could be imported in a mediocre fashion, while anything beyond that would just result in loads of errors. The changes between the two programs were sufficient that the import tool just couldn't do a good job.

Since very few people were content with the results of the importer, we generally don't recommend that anybody use it. If you used the grid control, control arrays, any other kind of array, user types, and most anything else, the importer wouldn't work at all. So, what are you to do?

For the most part, the basic language is the same. What I found to be fairly workable was to create the forms I wanted in .NET, and for the code behind controls, I could copy and paste directly from the VB6 project. However, some changes were always going to be necessary, such as changing any Long into Integer, but more importantly, re-thinking the logic to take advantage of the features in .NET.

The biggest changes, from my perspective, was the introduction of generics, threading, and handlers. Most places where you would use an array in VB6, you would likely use a List(of T) in .NET. If you ever used DoEvents in VB6, then...well, that should go away in favor of one of the numerous threading strategies in .NET. If you used control arrays, then understanding the improved handler model in .NET would mean that those go away. If you used Modules in VB6, then those should be reconsidered, as there is likely a superior organization in .NET. And so on.

Iny my experience, if you have a working VB6 program, the thought of rewriting it can be daunting, but in practice, the amount of time taken for the re-write is a tiny fraction of the original development time.

[OptionBase1]

VS 2008 Express With SP1 included:
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...NUX1504728.iso

VS 2008 Professional 90 Day Trial:
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...NUX1435622.iso

SP1 for VS 2008:
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...NUX1512962.iso

If and when these links ever stop working, check the Wayback machine to see if the above files were archived there.

[sdowney1]

I opened the vb6 project in vs2008 and it ran it's conversion thing
102 errors
21 warnings

Which did not seem awfully terrible to me.
Funny but it fussed about a public function too
Lots of ME things, garbage collection, some array stuff

https://photos.app.goo.gl/HfBbfL2Soix9u8E49

[Shaggy Hiker]

Those are just the errors that were reported, thus far. However, if I remember correctly, 102 errors is the maximum that the compiler will report before it gives up. If that's the case, the actual number of errors remains unknown.

[sdowney1]

Those are just the errors that were reported, thus far. However, if I remember correctly, 102 errors is the maximum that the compiler will report before it gives up. If that's the case, the actual number of errors remains unknown.

That's pretty cruddy.

Can I fix some of the issues, then rescan?
How would you do that?

[Shaggy Hiker]

That will happen automatically. As you fix, new errors will start popping up, so the number of errors will stay right around 102 for a time, then start dropping as you get things worked out.

[jmcilhinney]

Ther's a reason that that conversion tool hasn't been provided since 2008. As suggested, the results were generally so bad that you'd spend as much or more time fixing the errors as you would writing new code in the first place. Any project small enough that the errors weren't too significant would be small enough to write from scratch anyway. Writing the best VB.NET code you can to perform a task will almost always be better than converted VB6 code.

[sdowney1]

If I do it, then it is a learning experience, which I don't mind as long as I can figure out the needful answers with help.

It likely is not worth doing it.
That is what I seem to be getting here.

My program runs perfectly and on win11, and on the latest version of MSSQL, MySQL 8, and now I added MariaDB 11.3 so I don't really know what I would gain doing it program wise for future use. And I date tested it with PC year set to 2042. It passes that UNIX 2038 time bug.

I was spiffing it up and going over code and did have to make some changes to do all that.

Also in reading people seem to be moving away from vb.net, and simply writing stateless web apps.
I did years ago write a small PHP app to do database searches using the tables my program creates and it worked fine over the internet.
I did it all on Ubuntu, Apache web server etc... Reason I did it, I wanted to see something other than windows OS being needed for my program.

Did you know Facebook is entirely written using PHP.