Examples of poor practices that I have actually come across are:

  • "Glueing" VB6 code to C++ code to have a GUI.
  • Development of applications around GUI's (any large system cannot support this type of development)
  • Massing of poor code styles and seriously questionable hacks.


These are just items from 1 system I work with on a daily basis. I agree that systems can be poorly built in any language but VB6 was the proverbial gold rush when it came to cheaply developed poorly designed systems. It is not that I am even a .Net fan boy. I think python got it right in terms of an extendible language VB6 did not. The fact that it had RAD development papered over some serious design flaws in the implementation of the language.

I am not even sure why people are surprised .NET came about. All it was in essence was a major clean up. If it had not been branded .NET and simply called the VB7 runtime with no C# none of these arguments would have happened.