Is it worth migrating from VB6 into new .NET?

[pacoperez]

Hi there! This is Carlos from Spain.

Guess this must be the most talked-about topic in the entire forum, but as long as I'm relatively new at programming I'll just dare to ask.

Is it really worth migrating from VB6 into new .NET?

I've been working with VB6 for several weeks now and although I've developed nothing more than just some pretty simple applications I feel myself quite confortable with the VB6 Integrated Development Environment. I've been able to get pretty used to the VB's graphic environment by now and I don't wish to change just for the sake of it.

Are they very different from each other? Is it for the better?

Should I keep working with VB6 with the view of improving my programming techniques before jumping over to the .NET version or it doesn't really matter at all whether I wait or not?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Also, could anyone tell me where I could get the Smart Menu XP application (if there's any as such)? I just can't find it anywhere in the internet and I can't get the VB standard menus to work with the vbSkinner 2 skins -- which is somewhat frustrating to say the least.

Any alternatives out there maybe? I'd really like to be able to work with menus without having to use the VB standard forms (I'm sorta tired of the WinXP visual look).

Thanks in advance to everybody! Greetings from Spain.

Carlos.

[dotnetguy]

Hi there! This is Carlos from Spain.

Guess this must be the most talked-about topic in the entire forum, but as long as I'm relatively new at programming I'll just dare to ask.

Is it really worth migrating from VB6 into new .NET?

I've been working with VB6 for several weeks now and although I've developed nothing more than just some pretty simple applications I feel myself quite confortable with the VB6 Integrated Development Environment. I've been able to get pretty used to the VB's graphic environment by now and I don't wish to change just for the sake of it.

Are they very different from each other? Is it for the better?

Should I keep working with VB6 with the view of improving my programming techniques before jumping over to the .NET version or it doesn't really matter at all whether I wait or not?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Also, could anyone tell me where I could get the Smart Menu XP application (if there's any as such)? I just can't find it anywhere in the internet and I can't get the VB standard menus to work with the vbSkinner 2 skins -- which is somewhat frustrating to say the least.

Any alternatives out there maybe? I'd really like to be able to work with menus without having to use the VB standard forms (I'm sorta tired of the WinXP visual look).

Thanks in advance to everybody! Greetings from Spain.

Carlos.

Very simple answer, how many people still cut their grass with scissors ? Heh ... not scissors but those really old grass mulchers (not the lawn mowers). They were very tiresome, most of the time the grass was not cut right, you'd have a lot of missing spots, and you'd be sweating...

So they invented the lawnmower...which I hope everyone is using today...but it doesn't stop there..they came out with the riding mowers and they knocked prices down. You see my point here is the old eventually dies out...even with programming. How many people do you know still program in QBasic or Pascal? Maybe SOME but not many. MS is going to stop supporting VB6. VB6 is not true OOP, there are a lot of blind spots, and cheats people come up with to handle OOP.

Interfacing, structures, inheritance, threading and all that...well they can be hacked and are "sort of" supported but it is painful and a lot of code. I would definately recommend you make hte move to .net. Not only is it a learning experience but the amount of integration with the CLR (Common Language Runtime) far beats any other deal out there.

To be quite honest microsoft's whole philosphy on most of this stuff has changed so that things become well more integrated, more web enabled, more collaborative. Why do you think they made these big changes ? The answer to your question is definately, you should PLAN if not DO change your existing legacy systems.

[wossname]

Very simple answer, how many people still cut their grass with scissors ? Heh ... not scissors but those really old grass mulchers (not the lawn mowers). They were very tiresome, most of the time the grass was not cut right, you'd have a lot of missing spots, and you'd be sweating...

Love the analogy! .Net is a combine harvester, with grenade launchers and flamethrowers.

[epixelman]

I have been using vb3-6 for the past7-8 years.

I like everything about .NET... except one thing.

It does not allow transparent labels and graphics to be put on pictureboxes or panels. The transparency only works on forms.

see thread... http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=329756

Therefore using a label (like most people) for graphical applications can be a pain. You would have to draw on the screen with code.

So lets say you want to put a picturebox on a form and put a transparent label on the picturebox (that has a pretty picture) the label will show the form backcolor... not the objects or picture underneath it... duh

So creating a page (picturebox) application like CorelDraw where you drag transparent objects around a page will be next to impossible to do with out some major GDI or other graphical code.

MS took a step back with this approach. It has a lot of programmers upset.

What I like about .NET is the tools available in the IDE... no more distributing an OCX for every app that requires them... they are all in the .NET framework.

.NET is more powerful than VB6, but it has stepped back as far as "easy" graphical designing with simple controls.

[wossname]

[.NET] has stepped back as far as "easy" graphical designing with simple controls.

I disagree. It is very much easier to do hard graphics in .net than it would be in VB6. You try doing gradients and alphablending in VB6 without using API functions. You are omitting the large fact that you CAN do transparent controls in vb.net, its just that those functionalities are not instantly available to newbies. As soon as I get a chance to have a go at it I will do.

I'm going to write a transparent label now just to annoy you.

[epixelman]

Oh.. and another thing.

.NET is not great for making games. It is geared towards business, web, database applications... serious applications.

I find VB6 better for gaming then .NET

But there must be better languages out there for making games... maybe C++, Java or a game making IDE

[wossname]

We can't really do anything to change .net so it is more to your liking I'm afraid.

However, we can direct you to books such as "Visual Basic.Net Power Tools". It is very good for new programmers.

[epixelman]

I disagree. It is very much easier to do hard graphics in .net than it would be in VB6. You try doing gradients and alphablending in VB6 without using API functions. You are omitting the large fact that you CAN do transparent controls in vb.net, its just that those functionalities are not instantly available to newbies. As soon as I get a chance to have a go at it I will do.

I'm going to write a transparent label now just to annoy you.

Well... thats great wossman... make a transparent control so you can prove me wrong (thats okay by me)... I really need a transparent label that can wrap paragraph text!!

Then get it out there in the .NET public. There are lots of programmers that are not happy about it. I have seen lots of posts from other forums.

Thanks

[wossname]

Well... thats great wossman... make a transparent control so you can prove me wrong (thats okay by me)... I really need a transparent label that can wrap paragraph text!!

Then get it out there in the .NET public. There are lots of programmers that are not happy about it. I have seen lots of posts from other forums.

Thanks

The .Net public are perfectly delighted with .Net, its the VB6 crowd that are not. DotNet has discarded the cotton wool approach and now it makes programmers think about the structure of their programs in a manner conducive to maintainability and futureproofing.

It does mean that many hobbyist coders will not want to move to .net and that is fine by me. There's too much bad code floating around on the net at the moment. And no I'm not pointing any fingers

[wossname]

*cough*

Its not even nearly finished but it is clearly working.

It even responds to click events, but only when the mouse clicks the red pixels of the text (done by region rather than color testing)

Who said it couldn't be done?

When I finish it I might consider letting you have a look at the code.

ps. Not used any API's either

[epixelman]

Ohhh...

give me... give me... give me... give me... give me...
give me... give me... give me... give me... give me...

PLEASE

PRETTY PLEASE....

I will grovel...

u'd da man!

[wossname]

Ohhh...

give me... give me... give me... give me... give me...
give me... give me... give me... give me... give me...

PLEASE

PRETTY PLEASE....

I will grovel...

u'd da man!

Ahhh, patience young paduan. I'll take this home and meddle with it some more. :smugness reaching hazardous proportions:

[epixelman]

I'll be here waiting *patiently*

[Dave Sell]

There's too much bad code floating around on the net at the moment.

I just read in an article in Computerworld that there are 1 Trillion lines of code written in VB6 in the world today. That's alot of bad code!

[Markmellow]

All I can say, is there are a lot of things missing from VB .NET that you'll have to work around. Obvious things, I'm absolutely convinced if you bought a car based on VB.NET it would come with a steering wheel, gas peddle, and no brakes, why they didn't put brakes in it who knows! You either must disassemble it and fix the situation, or decide it's less work to just get the pieces and assemble it yourself. Here's an example of that situation. VB.NET has a thing called the commandbuilder. It automatically handles inserts, updates, deletes. Wow, that's great except when you insert you can't get anything back, something obvious as getting the order# on the order you just created? That functionality wasn't included with the commandbuilder, it's not obscure there's nothing you can do to overcome that hurdle. Instead, you better do the Inserts, Updates, etc all manually because they left out that obvious thing.

I'm convinced if you bought a computer that was based on VB .NET you'd get it and not be able to find the power on button. Should be obvious, you spend a day and can't find it. So, you do some research and someone asks did you flip the mouse upside down and push in the mouse ball? That's the computer's on switch. Oh, that was supposed to be obvious? The datagrid Column width is one such beast. Think it's as obvious as Datagrid1.Column(5).Width = 90? Oh heck no. You have to create a table style, add the style to the datagrid collection, then from there you can modify the width of the table style's column, and that in turn modifies the datagrids column width. Okay, that's supposed to be easier I guess then one line of code.

So, just be prepared with VB .NET because so much of the simple things are missing... here's one. Try to change the color of a cell of a datagrid who's value is greater than 1,000. Oh, that function wasn't included. It's actually a tutorial that's 5 pages long, requires multiple classes, inherits, and delegates, and pretty much YOU have to rewrite the entire process of drawing the datagrid. Oh, that's easy. Want to autosize a column in a datagrid? That functionality is not accessible through code, you have to get the pixels in a font, make a picture box, go through the column seeing if the pixels of the characters are wider than the column, if so set the picture box's width do it. When you're done, make a style, add it to the datagrid collection, and change the width of the column to be the same as the picture box. Easy? It's insanely complicated. Oh, but after the grid is populated, your program is running, the user can just double click between the columns to autosize them. So, the Datagrid has the feature in there somewhere but not anywhere you can access it through code. That's top secret stuff.

Be prepared my friend, be prepared the simple, obvious things will be your biggest gripes.

[wossname]

Be prepared my friend, be prepared the simple, obvious things will be your biggest gripes.

I bet you are using the VS 2005 beta aren't you?

The thing is that this is what OOP is like. Doing things this way is actually easier in the long run because you don't have to do nearly as much parameter validation. Face it VB.Net is BETTER!! muahahahahaaaaaa.

[wossname]

So, the Datagrid has the feature in there somewhere but not anywhere you can access it through code. That's top secret stuff.

VB6 did that all the time and there was nothing you could do about it.

Anyway it's not top secret, you can always inherit from the datagrid and expose protected members if you want.

Controls are not sealed units any more, you can bust them wide open and redisign them to your own design. That's the whole point of OOP.

[epixelman]

*cough*

Its not even nearly finished but it is clearly working.

It even responds to click events, but only when the mouse clicks the red pixels of the text (done by region rather than color testing)

Who said it couldn't be done?

When I finish it I might consider letting you have a look at the code.

ps. Not used any API's either

Hey Woosname!

How is is going with the transparent label??

I'm still waiting here * patiently *

Thanks
Frank

[maged]

sorry for joining late,

i agree that vb.net is much far better than vb6, but

not all code written in VB6 is bad code. I have written millions of Vb6 code lines, some of them are good and some are bad. not all of them are bad.

when i moved to vb.net i found things pretty harder but more professional in a very useful oop way.

what i couldn't find is a vb6-->vb.net code convertors.

i have many blocks and segments of code that needs rewrite and i don't have time for that. SO old projects should be held intact and new projects should be written by VB.net from scrach i assure you.

that's my opinion

By the way : WossName this label box is great , i hope you can teach us how to do this trick. We are not old dogs, you know

[wossname]

You can find the source in the codebank. But its not for the faint hearted, i had no time to make it pretty or anything.

[Dave Sell]

I have written millions of Vb6 code lines

uhh... ya.

[maged]

Trust me , i did that