Visual Basic 6.0 or Visual Basic.NET?

[DopeyGuy123]

What do you prefer?

[DopeyGuy123]

poll closes after 10 days! Vote now!

[krtxmrtz]

poll closes after 10 days! Vote now!

This has been recently discussed in depth here...

[Hack]

You should have added a third choice for "Both"

I think the main reason why more people vote for VB6 is simply because more people know VB6. Over time, that will change.

[mendhak]

Move to VB.NET before the market gets saturated.

[Valleysboy1978]

Haven't really had the time to have a good look at VB.NET so I couldn't really say. Hwoever, from what I hear it does sound as though it's an improvement on VB

[techgnome]

That's like asking, Screwdriver or Hammer? The answer is, depends.
USe the right tool for the right job. I might like to use a baseball bat to kill flies... but that doesn't make it the right choice.

Tg

[Valleysboy1978]

What would VB be better than .NET for?

[Hack]

What would VB be better than .NET for?

The answer to this would depend completely on what your definition of 'better' is.

The one instance that immediately pops to mind in which VB would be a 'better' solution to .NET is for a small company where the cost of purchasing VB6 would be one heck of a lot cheaper than the cost of purchasing the .NET framework.

[szlamany]

When we started our conversion to PC/VB from mainframe BASIC almost 4 years ago, it was difficult to purchase VB6 - not sold in stores at that time, that's for sure.

VB6 lost mainstream support from MS at the end of this month (couple of days away).

Most businesses will have to stop using it for new development - at least that's what MS wants them to do.

We will be switching our VB-client program from VB6 to VB.Net in the next couple of months.

Still a good language for teaching programming skills to a student - but in reality it's business use is coming to an end.

Still ga-zillions of programs written in VB6 that need support and enhancements - so coding in VB6 will be around for decades...

[tr333]

The one instance that immediately pops to mind in which VB would be a 'better' solution to .NET is for a small company where the cost of purchasing VB6 would be one heck of a lot cheaper than the cost of purchasing the .NET framework.

what part of the .NET framework requires purchasing?
the framework is free to download, and there are free IDE's that work just as well as VS (if not better).

[tr333]

as for why i think .NET is better than vb6....

.NET can be run on multiple OS's (windows/unix/linux/macOS)
vb6 can only be run on windows.

[krtxmrtz]

what part of the .NET framework requires purchasing?
the framework is free to download, and there are free IDE's that work just as well as VS (if not better).

I don't use/know .Net, however this may be interesting.

From the link above I arrived at this page where a number of benchmark tests for VB6 and .Net are discussed. I'd like to quote these words from it:

"The average of three test runs on my computer resulted in the conclusion that, at least in this particular test, VB 6 is 83 percent faster than VB.NET. Not too bad!"
"I have to conclude, however, with a lesson that has come hard to someone who learned programming when every millisecond counted. The lesson:

Milliseconds actually don't count much anymore.

Computers are so fast and cheap these days that, in spite of what Jeff might feel, the most important factors are the costs of programming and the ability of the language to do the tricks that today's applications need. Factoring those things in makes VB.NET a clear, hands down winner!"

[mendhak]

The only time the speed would count is during a prime number generation contest on VBF.

But I like that quote.

[krtxmrtz]

what part of the .NET framework requires purchasing?
the framework is free to download, and there are free IDE's that work just as well as VS (if not better).

I've downloaded one of these, SharpDevelop, more than anything to see what it looks like. My first impression is very positive but at the same time it seems to me that you've got to start learning a new IDE and set of language rules. I'd like to hear from someone if it really requires quite a few hours of intensive effort or is not so much what it looks like. Because if it's so similar to .net then this extra toil might hold me back from migrating.