Continue with VB6 or new launguage?

[Thediabloman]

I have always been very interested in programming, ever since I was a little kid, trying to program in Delphi at the age of 14, and later in VB5.

In the last year I have had Programming in school, a beginners class in VB6, but the teacher was so bad, and now I am lightyears better than him.
Now the school-year is over, and I am decent in VB6. My best projects have been a running sign/MSComm program and a fun little game.
You can see them here: Eksamens Projekt - Programmering.rar and Skydespil.rar

Now that I am done in school, and not forced to program in VB6 anymore, I need some guidence. Should I continue with programming in VB6, and if so, what should I make, or should I learn a new language, like VB.Net, C++ or C#?

- Thediabloman -

[DigiRev]

Probably .NET and/or C++. I personally chose C++, I hate .NET. But if you want a career in programming or to ever develop commercial software for the future then you should learn .NET or C++. There are other languages, of course, like Java.

It is still possible to write good commercial software in VB6, but once it's phased out for good then you'll be screwed.

[RhinoBull]

I would definitely "move" to new technology - .Net.
Although it's not so new anymore but still it's based on completely different architecture (as you know VB6 is based on COM).
Language would be irrelevant - if you are more familiar with VB6 style syntax then go for VB.Net or C# otherwise.

[Thediabloman]

Hehe.. I'm just 18 years old, and I know that I have a lot to learn..

I have also been playing with 3D Gamestudio, and I believe that the programming language there is C++?

In a year I will begin on a Software Development education here in Denmark, and in the end I would like to be a gaming developer, but that will proberly only be 5 or 6 years into the future..

[Thediabloman]

If I want to learn .Net, what should I do then? Do you have sites with good tutorials and fun programs to write?

[alex_read]

Hi,

My first response would be mimicking the above - you really want to get into a current language as VB6 is rapidly becoming a specialist (older development supporting role) and obsolete language.

However when it comes to choosing a current language, my question would be what excites you, where do you see yourself in the future. Do you think you'd prefer writing games, custom company/business systems, websites - then what systems you like working with/on or get excited by - mobile or PDA, Windows, Linux, Unix. These will greatly affect the choice and narrow your answer we can give.

[alex_read]

As a guide, if you think you'd like mobile development, the most commonly used tool (which Nokia and Sony Ericsson, amongst other phone manufacturer's use), is Symbian. The actual programming language behind this is C++.

For gaming, any serious games software house would use a flavour of the C language also (not sure if that'd be C or C++ though).

For Windows based development, .Net languages are the best. For Web application and website development, either .Net or Java would be best, depending whether you like to support and target a Windows or Linux box respectively.

For Unix development, C is the way to go (maybe C++, not sure).

[alex_read]

Ok aaaaaand I've just noticed your other reply further down. I wasn't sure if C or C++ was used for games programming, in a larger shop I'd imagine both, but I found nearly all resources suggest C++ is what you should be looking at. From one site, there's this description for you:

C++. This is the de-facto standard for games programming, and it handles objects and graphics at speed, as it is a processor based language. However the learning curve for being able to program well and with the sophistication necessary for good games programming is steep, so experience counts with C++. You'll want to be an expert with Microsoft Visual Studio's C++ compiler/debugger, seeing that it's what most are using.

[alex_read]

Finally, in 3D Gamestudio's Q&A section from their site, yep - they use C++ also:

Q. Does Gamestudio contain the source code to the engine?
A. Partially. Not the complete source code is included, but the source development kit (SDK) offers full access to the engine functions through C++, and allows you to add new features to the engine, and also to the editors. The SDK for the engine comes with the full Gamestudio version; the SDK for the editors is available on our download page.

You might want to check out their site by the way, as this note was also on the same Q&A page:

Q. I would like to learn programming - how shall I proceed?
A. - Read the script tutorial in the manual.
- Work through the workshops.
- Read the Acknex User Magazine.
- Talk to other users in our forum / ask questions.
- Take a good look at the included scripts.

[leinad31]

Learning T-SQL, PL/SQL and similar variants is also worthwhile. After all, most if not all considerably sized business systems has an enterprise database at the back-end... and you don't have to deal with GUI with database languages; concern is getting data out of the DB. Maybe you will also be tasked with the application that will receive the data and you'll have to also develop the front-end, GUI and all (e.g. .Net) ... maybe not (exclusively database programmer). Depends on the needs of the company.

[Hack]

Moved to General Developer

I would definitely "move" to new technology - .Net.

Learning T-SQL, PL/SQL and similar variants is also worthwhile.

I agree with both of these.

Regardless of whether you go the .NET route or the C++ route, SQL, in one form or another, is essential if you are doing to be doing any kind of work with databases.

[alex_read]

In a year I will begin on a Software Development education here in Denmark, and in the end I would like to be a gaming developer, but that will proberly only be 5 or 6 years into the future..

Think you just read the top bit just as I did. He wants to get into gaming so advising on .Net or to a extent SQL isn't going to be of much relevance for him...

[Shaggy Hiker]

One thing somebody ought to point out is that you can get .NET2008 Express for free (2005, too), so the CHEAP solution would be to move to VB.NET2008. The principles there (OO) would apply to C++.

However, C++ would be the way to go if you are seriously interested in writing games. While you can write games in VB.NET, you can only write certain types of games. If you want to get to the bleeding edge of game design, you will need a lower level language, and C++ would be the way to go. Originally, C++ was significantly slower than C due to some overhead issues, but that went away a decade or more back. If you know C++, you would be competent in C, but the reverse is not true, so C++ would be the one to learn.

But VB.NET would be the shortest and cheapest learning curve, so it is certainly worth a look.

[mendhak]

Go for a .NET language and C++ to expand your horizons. Whether you go for C# or VB.NET won't matter much once you learn how the CLR works, you'll easily be able to interchange between the two. You could possibly go for C++ and C# as they are similar and both help you with different types of applications.

[Thediabloman]

Thanks alot for your guidence.. Its awesome that you want to help a programming runt like me..

So now I have begun on the turtorials at Cprogramming.com. Are those okay, or do you have any other good sites?

[leinad31]

Think you just read the top bit just as I did. He wants to get into gaming so advising on .Net or to a extent SQL isn't going to be of much relevance for him...

Your only thinking about the GUI aspects of gaming... do you really think MMPORG servers keep everything in memory?

[alex_read]

Not at all, but I think if the poor guy goes to any successful gaming manufacturer with a CV and attitude of "well I've learnt .Net and SQL, and I'm just learning C++ too", that he wouldn't get him very far. Yes SQL has it's place of course, which is why I put "to an extent", but if I am advising someone on which programming language(s) to learn for gaming, I would argue that he should be pointed to C++ all the way as this would help his career immensly.

[leinad31]

Then I guess he'll have to clarify whether he wants to be a game engine developer.

[Blakk_Majik]

If I were in game development, I would definitely go the "game engine" route. If you make a good game, it will sell for a while. Then what? To keep the money coming in, you have to make another game.

If you can make a good game engine, you can just sit back and enjoy the licensing fees. Sure, you will have to make modifications to update the product every now and then, but it sure beats having to design the whole game. I mean really, how many games (past, present, and future) are using some kind of "Unreal Engine"?

[BytePtr]

Everybody suggests to move to the .NET. Im using currently Visual Studio 6 Pro (including VB6 pro and VC++ 6 Pro).
But i don't like .NET because it's slow. That's the only reason i don't like it.
VB .NET and VC# are slow. I tried them.


Dunno what to do. Probably i will stay with VB6, Delphi and C and C++. They are fast.

[RobDog888]

Well then you may need a faster machine

Eventually you will and as development increases "usually" apps require more and more resources from systems. So I really wouldnt say being "slow" is a valid reason to deprive yourself from the great experience that is called .NET

[RobDog888]

Compiled exe's removed from rar attachments in first post as exe's are not allowed on the Forums to help protect members

[leinad31]

Everybody suggests to move to the .NET. Im using currently Visual Studio 6 Pro (including VB6 pro and VC++ 6 Pro).
But i don't like .NET because it's slow. That's the only reason i don't like it.
VB .NET and VC# are slow. I tried them.


Dunno what to do. Probably i will stay with VB6, Delphi and C and C++. They are fast.

Yes there are systems wherein speed is of primary importance and enhancements are rare or far spaced such as air traffic control systems... but if your gonna be developing for a typical business then other considerations are also important, such as development time (deadlines) , maintainability (there will always be bug fixes, changes in business process, and enhancements), ease of acquiring/training developers (don't expect your developers to work for you forever), portability (e.g. VB6 has problems running in Vista), etc.

If speed is within reasonable duration/tolerance then just trust that hardware development will catch up in due time (just plug in additional hardware) rather than having to rewrite code and catch up with deadlines.

[dilettante]

... portability (e.g. VB6 has problems running in Vista)...

Actually VB6 programs experience no problems unique to Vista that .Net programs don't experience as well. The caveat is that you must avoid using things that were deprecated even when VB6 came out (DAO) and some components that were once part of Windows need to be installed into Vista (DHTMLEdit control).

It's true that VB6 doesn't offer tools for creating and embedding manifests into programs like VS2005 (which had buggy tools) and later do. But many of the same tools can be used on VB6 programs, and there are 3rd party tools to help fill the gap as well.

Vista and Windows Server 2008 both support VB6 programs just fine if written properly.


But I am not advising new programmers to spend time learning VB6 now.

[leinad31]

Different definitions then but in the end it's still something that has to be dealt with or considered, e.g. port or rewrite. I was focusing on the speed only criteria posted earlier.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Everybody suggests to move to the .NET. Im using currently Visual Studio 6 Pro (including VB6 pro and VC++ 6 Pro).
But i don't like .NET because it's slow. That's the only reason i don't like it.
VB .NET and VC# are slow. I tried them.


Dunno what to do. Probably i will stay with VB6, Delphi and C and C++. They are fast.

I was curious about the "slow" part. The only program I have written in both VB6 and .NET that could be anything like a fair test of speed was a GA equation evolver. Once it started running, it was just a loop which showed generation speed. I originally wrote it in VB6, and it took about three days to run. When I re-wrote it in .NET....it took about three days to run. Turning Option Strict ON, and disabling Integer overflow checking got the timing down to about two days, but since it was a non linnear program, I couldn't be certain that the 30% increase in speed was due entirely to Option Strict. In any case, there was no appreciable difference between the two languages. Of course, the code wasn't identical either, as the program just made more sense in .NET, so it was somewhat easier to write, and may have been more efficient as a result.

[dilettante]

Well the speed differences are certainly real. But clearly coding can make some difference too. And a big factor in anything networked is the "glue" protocol involved.

We have a 3rd party product we use that processes dirty postal address data with its own algorithms and a large postal database. Originally this was front-ended by a service written in VB.Net 2003 that provided client systems with a Web Service interface.

This was balky, slow, and lost transactions at times.

So I ripped it out and replaced it with a service written in VB6 that used a simple protocol over TCP. We saw almost a 12 times improvement in performance and no longer lost any transactions.

I think a good part of this was due to XML generation, parsing, and transport overhead. Another chunk might have been the interop needed to get to the 3rd party product's standard DLL interface. For that matter the VB.Net code may have been crappy: it clearly recopied large data blobs that didn't need recopying and I'm pretty sure it was repeatly translating large blocks from bytes to Unicode characters and back. Of course people do that in VB6 a lot too because they don't know when not to use Strings. Then there is the overhead of everything passing through IIS.

It couldn't all be network transport costs though because memory and CPU use on the server went way down.

[hai2hai]

OK, .NET is better (no other way if you want to go ahead) but when you moving from vb6 to .net then who pay you to live (if you/your company are earning money from all your vb6's apps)?

All know that one commercial business application like accounting software usually take much time to develop and deliver to the market.

I think we should have long term plan to take this big movement.

[akhileshbc]

Game Programming:

I had gone through some searching... And found this:
* 3d RAD Tools -> Free development environment providing minimal coding.
* A site that provides useful information on Game Development and Designing : http://www.gamasutra.com
* Unreal Development Kit for Unreal Game Engine : http://www.udk.com/index.html
* Intel Visual Adrenaline - Useful site and it provides free magazines and lessons : http://software.intel.com/sites/billboard/
* An article in gamasutra. http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Rober..._Rock_Star.php
* 3d Max and Maya are some of the famous level(and character) designing tools.... 3d Max is user friendly, but Maya is somewhat tough (but powerful)

Regards,
- Akhilesh