VB6 Thought: Making AI part of your VB6 development process

[yereverluvinuncleber]

OK, so following on from another thread where the limitations and possibilities of using AI in your development environment, I thought I'd make this thread to allow us to discuss which AI tools and methods you are using to improve or facilitate your coding theses days in VB6.

Let's keep the thread on VB6 acknowledging that much of this will protrude into the TwinBasic world and probably increasingly so as time passes.

For the moment though, the majority of my coding is still within VB6 so for my purposes I am going to ask we keep the pure TB chat to a minimum and perhaps I propose a similar thread for the dedicated TB-ers. The two threads should cross-pollinate and that's fine.

Myself I am using AI to a very limited extent.

1. When I am converting programs from javascript/jscript to VB6 (desktop widgets) I am using AI conversion tools that allow you to translate a few hundred lines of code from .js to VB. Typically, they translate to VB.NET only (so far) emoving the {},==, // and ; converting the logic of a subroutine or two. That is all they can be relied on. I then do the conversion from VB.NET to VB6 myself and that isn't always an easy job. I have not yet troubled the main AI bots with this task and I suspect they might have done a better job now. The last time I did this was a while ago. Things may have improved.

2. I use Upscayl to upwardly resize my graphics. Upscayl is a useful desktop tool where you select an image and given a selection of upscaler bots will perform an image upscale, typically 100% in my case, the end result is usable but ften a little harsh or the overall affect is somehow lost. However, in general it is a useful starting point and it gets me going... I have a lot of graphical images composed in the days when screens were a lot smaller. If you scale them programatically using standard VB6 logic/functions, a lot of the lack of detail is revealed at higher DPI, larger screens. Upscayl allows something a lot better than a quick and dirty upscale. Quite usable in most respects.

3. I have asked AI for some code on performing some rather special tasks, such as: using VB6, extracting the largest icon from a Windows binary/dll and converting it using GDIP to a bitstream, maintaining transparency that I can feed into a collection. What it came up with was very good looking, nearly feasible gibberish quoting some APIS that would have been nice if they had actually existed. From my point of view AI bots seem to be very convincing and overly optimistic liars trying to please and cannot be trusted thus far with VB6 code examples.

Best practice for VB6-ers for making AI part of your VB6 development process, would appear to be something like this:

a. Prior to launching into some complex coding, ask AI bots as a matter of course, Github Copilot preferred for VB6.
b. Formulate a well-defined question that is more likely to obtain results.
c. As the answers are returned, check the results and reformulate your questions to better suit the solution you require.
d. Do not fully trust the returned code and check it does contain false methods/logic.
e. Use the supplied code as boilerplate code for your own final logic.
f. Time saved coding, might be well-spent writing test cases ensuring the AI-supplied code works in all eventualities.
g. Non-coding tools such as upscayl are useful for upscaling program graphics and icons to allow form-scaling minimising image data loss.
h. Create a new ChatGPT/CoPilot session for each individual question to allow AI to retain memory and context, do not linger in the current thread.
i. Create a reusable text template containing guidelines for the AI collaboration including project details, amending it each time specifically describing the current features we require.

I will keep this list updated at the top so that it can be easily found.