VB6 is DEAD!

[Niya]

Slow initial startup? that's it? no, it isn't. I still remember the first ATI control panel made with .NET. It was simply scaring!! "what is this, what did I do wrong, and only clicked that button...?". But it wasn't me, it was .NET fault.

Only a poor workman blames his tools. Cliche, I know but it definitely applies here. I get no problem with my VB.Net apps other than the typical errors we make as coders like off-by-one errors or null references.

.NET is newer than the "old" Win32, so maybe it relies on faster technology

You do know that ALL software in Windows uses the Win32 API right ? VB6 apps, .Net apps, Delphi apps. The VB6 runtime wraps these calls. The ActiveX components you may be using would also wrap these calls. The .Net Framework also wraps these calls. You can't escape Win32.

, but the principal factor is that .NET steals all the resources for itself

Typically my .Net apps use around 8 MB of memory. I have 2 GB of RAM with around 800 MB free at any given time. How is that even close to using all the resources ?

Don't you think that, had Classic VB been evolved till now, it would be a lot faster now than back in 2000? and less resource hungry than .NET? Please be serious if you answer to this.

Perhaps, but customers users don't really care about millisecond improvements as long as their favorite apps are fast enough.

.NET was a mistake, a big one, and Windows is suffering a lot because of that wrong move. C'mon, admit it, as M$ already did.

How can it be a failure when its been embraced by millions and MS still updates it to this day. Wishing for it to fail doesn't make it so. MS abandoned VB6 something like 15 or 16 years now. VB.Net was its successor. If it failed, then why don't you have a new VB6 ?

[dclamp]

Move to the post race dclamp!

I thought we agreed this is equivalent to the post race?

[Shaggy Hiker]

It is sad.
I can not understand why many programs to create video games, end up failing or being abandoned by their creators.
DivGames studio, FPS Creator, Torque3D; the latter two are still worked, but ....

The latest vesion of FPS called Reloaded includes support for LUA language, but not just been completed, and its support 64bit platform, still does not work on all computers.

It IS sad, but what's their revenue model? Lots of people (relatively speaking) create game engines for their own games, then license them out. Those often cost some serious cash, which is because there aren't that many buyers. Once software is written, it costs darn near nothing to make a copy, but you have to recoup the cost of the development in the sales. So, if you expect to sell to a dozen people, the cost per unit has to be really high. If you expect to sell to hundreds of thousands, or millions, the cost per unit can be tiny or even free.

The problem with game creation tools, in my opinion, is that they expect to sell a very low volume, but their customer base also tends to be relatively poor. The customers are generally not companies, but enthusiastic hobbyists, or people making a go of some game. Those folks don't have the deep pockets that companies would. That kind of traps the tool developers: They have to charge a lot to recoup their development cost, but they can't charge a lot and expect many sales. They have to charge little to boost sales, but the total customer pool isn't large enough for them to make a living with a low charge.

Therefore, I have always felt that most of those tools were created by enthusiasts who eventually lose their fire and move on.

[Carlos Rocha]

There are lots of libraries apart from the core 3 DLLs (User32, Kernel32 and gdi32) and lots of ways to reach (or wrap) the needed functionality, as you know. Because you know everything, right? like my mother-in-law?

[dilettante]

Ouch. The old "mother in law" insult.

[homer13j]

I seem to remember that my sister had written something that took apart VB6 apps for some purpose.

Is she hot?

[dclamp]

Can't we all just get a long?

[dclamp]

[FunkyDexter]

OK, now I am going to put my mod hat on. Stop with the mud slinging or we'll close the thread.

This thread has the capacity to be an interesting debate and I'd personally rather not see it closed. It might contain some good information. It might contain some bad information. The truth is most of it's subjective anyway so there's no empirical value for right or wrong, there's just opinion. That can be expressed well or poorly and that's fine (we're in ChitChat after all) but it shouldn't be expressed rudely.

[NeedSomeAnswers]

Why is it impossible to express the merits of one language with out slagging of another?

while mildly amusing do you know how ridiculous you all sound?

'meh vb6 is soooo better than pooey.Net'

'no its not .Net is way better than stinky vb6'

... you cant say that i am going to run and tell my dad on you all now. And you will all be sorry!

[dee-u]

Only a poor workman blames his tools.

Okay, that is something I have to quote. If indeed a workman uses his tools efficiently then he is not poor, if those VB6 programmers are more productive in using VB6 then they should keep using it if they want to.

[dclamp]

I am going to start a fundraiser to send Niya and Carlos to a counseling retreat in the mountains. Get some fresh air and resolve their differences.

Who wants to donate?

[Steve R Jones]

OK, now I am going to put my mod hat on. Stop with the mud slinging or we'll close the thread.

This thread has the capacity to be an interesting debate and I'd personally rather not see it closed. It might contain some good information. It might contain some bad information. The truth is most of it's subjective anyway so there's no empirical value for right or wrong, there's just opinion. That can be expressed well or poorly and that's fine (we're in ChitChat after all) but it shouldn't be expressed rudely.

I'm going to be a lot more direct. Niya and Carlos Rocha have both violated the rules of the site and will get banned if they do it again.

[dclamp]

I'm going to be a lot more direct. Niya and Carlos Rocha have both violated the rules of the site and will get banned if they do it again.

[Schmidt]

Okay, that is something I have to quote. If indeed a workman uses his tools efficiently then he is not poor, if those VB6 programmers are more productive in using VB6 then they should keep using it if they want to.

You come to that conclusion, because you think rationally, and because you don't
post untruths *against* your own better knowledge, just to provoce somebody
(IIRC, that's called "decency" - a rare thing to find these days).

What I'm shaking my head about always when it comes up in these discussions is,
that many of you .NETers already noticed, that MS is abandoning Tools and Techs
left and right (e.g. dday9, who states, that he "wasted a whole lot of time with
XNA" - or others who invested their time into Silverlight).

What's amazing then is, that instead of criticising the ones who "lured" you into
using tools they only a few years later don't consider worthy to support anymore,
most of you defend them with: "that's the way it is - let's just learn something else".

And instead of truly learning "something else" (as in: "not from this vendor again",
which would be the logical thing to do), you enter the next round in always the
same game - learning the next "soon to be abandoned tech" from the same source).

E.g. imagine a selfemployed developer, who has founded a small company, trusting MS
in the phase where they marketed Silverlight as the next best invention since sliced
bread - even hiring a few developers - then developing something like the "next picasa"
for example - a great tool, even better than the Google-pendant...

Then when it comes to your "return on investment" (the phase after you invested
3 years of your time, also paying hundred-thousands of dollars for the developers
you hired), MS announces that it's abandoned tech now... well - not really abandoned,
since it "still works" - but your *potential* customers noticed MS' announcement too -
and will decide to not bet on this "dead horse tech" - not using your great picasa-
replacment in their own products.

Now consider this .NET-guy (existence in shambles) reading something many of you
write here: "No problem, then I just 'move on', learning the next thing MS has to offer".

He would (perhaps somewhat enraged) point out to you, that this is the opinion
of an *amateur* (a hobbyist, nothing a professional would say, because professionals
are defined as: "making money relying on the tools they bought for their daily work").

Decency and logic would demand, that you (being amateurs) have an understanding for
that professional - that it's not him who is to blame for the crash of his small company -
but perhaps you will ridicule him as oldfashioned and backwards, along with:
"stop your ridiculous MS-bashing, there are vendors who are far worse".

The whole thing is (to bring a really hard example) IMO comparable to a scenario
like "rape in marriage".

There's those, who endure that only one single time - and then get a divorce.

Then there's others who just endure it and endure it, never saying a thing.

And then there's also a third group, who experience it themselves, but mark
those who "talked about it" (making it public in getting divorced) as "incapable
of leading a successful relationship, sullying the "holy bond of marriage") -
blaming the "victim" - who truly is not - not anymore, she's free again -
it's those who choose to "go on", who are the true victims).

Sorry to say, but many of you .NETers are doing exactly as the members of
that third group (bashing and ridiculing the innocent).

Olaf

[FunkyDexter]

Oh, come on. That analogy is thoroughly flawed. MS didn't rape us. At worst they divorced us and didn't pay the alimony. More accurately they divorced us and introduced us to to their younger hotter sister.

And I really don't see how you can describe .Net as a "soon to be forgotton" tech. It's been around for nearly a decade and a half and, despite what Dilitante says, is still going strong. There have been some "sub-techs" like like XNA and silverlight that have come and gone but you've only got to look at the number of old diss-used java lirbaries that are out there to see that's mot a problem that's specific to MS. that's just a sad truth of software development. We live in a changing world and our development tools neeed to change to accomodate that world. Sometimes that means incremental improvements, which we always prefer, but sometimes it just means the abandonment of an idea that's had it's time, which we have to swallow. I'd rather that abandonment with a viable replacement than the extension of a paradigm past it's usefulness, though.

Personally I do desktop dev. I've haven't had to change a thing since framework 1.0. And before you pat yourself on the back that VB6 hasn't required you to change anything in that time, it hasn't enabled you to go anywhere new either. It hasn't let you develop web pages. It's not going to let you develop mobile apps. It's not going to let you develop cranial implant when some bright spark invents them. The .Net ecosystem already enables me to do the first two (very well for web, can't speak for mobile as I don't do it but I know the facility's there). And I can be reasonably confident that they'll offer me something to support the cranial implants too. For you to work in new enviroments involves you moving out to completely different techs. At least I get to stay in the same family.

I can understand that the move from VB6 to .Net was a hard cut off. But the various evolutions in .Net since really aren't.

[szlamany]

I've been making a living from MS dev tools from VB6 through .Net - it's all good. Why all this constant bashing. It makes no sense.

With .Net I've been able to expand way past desktop - doing web apps - android apps that talks to .Net web methods. All in a nicely documented and easy to understand library.

And I really don't see how .Net was modeled after Java - just because of the "." structure? That's in jQuery - it's probably in most properly created object oriented libraries.

And I still have VB6 code I support - have one XP machine that I keep around for just that purpose. And I have to say that app is showing signs of stress as newer versions of MS SQL come out. Migrating those customers to a web app...

Things move on - development tools change. Am I crying about not having that VAX and fortran around from my salad days? I use all the same coding tricks - language and platform should not matter if you are a business programmer.

[Schmidt]

Oh, come on. That analogy is thoroughly flawed. MS didn't rape us.
At worst they divorced us and didn't pay the alimony. More accurately they divorced us and introduced us to to their younger hotter sister.

As often in these discussions, what I wrote is getting ignored.

So let us go more slowly...

I brought an example (of a .NET-guy who trusted a well-marketed technology,
taking MS seriously in their "promise" - and he entered a "bond", so to say) -
investing huge amounts of time and money, trusting them.

The first thing you should come up with is, to point out if you consider my example
of such a "trusting .NET developer" an unrealistic one.
Do you?

For my part I think, it's a pretty realistic scenario, which could have happened
exactly as I wrote it - so in the following I assume, that you at least *try* to put
yourself into the shoes of this .NET-developer for a few minutes, who chose MS-
Silverlight, to use it as the base for a truly amazing new product, which was then
brought into shape (by investing large amounts of time and money), the product
then finally "ready to sell".

Now, what MS was doing then is, that they didn't honor the trust you gave them,
they were just breaking "the bond" - and they truly *hurt* you (financially) -
you will have a hard time to recover in the next decade, to pay-back all the
money you borrowed, to finance your product (which is great - but now nobody
has a larger interest in it anymore - the only interest being the one you now pay
for all the credits you took up, to get "this far").

So, where's the "hotter sister" you introduced above in that scenario.
She doesn't come into play here as far as I see it, since your existence is destroyed,
you are broken, a wreck (feeling "raped").

I nowhere mentioned VB6 so far - so there's no point (yet) to discuss it -
let's just stick with the example as I wrote it (and now explained in more detail) -
and so please try to comment on that first, before we come to the VB6-topic...

Can you do that?

I mean, many of you pointed out, that there was "an argumentation" going on here in
this thread - I for my part didn't really see anything in that regard - so could you at least
try to act decently, respecting the points I already brought - not ignoring them, not ridiculing
them, not taking any "evasive action", because that's what's normally avoided "among decently
arguing participants".

Olaf

[szlamany]

I coded mobile apps with Pocket PC's from HP and the compact framework. Phys Ed teachers used them for years - loved them. That went away. I could easily do it again on a Android.

Actually new platforms kind of drive my income stream.

PDP-11's went away - replaced by VAX's. Then Digital Equip itself went away. That killed 20 years of my development portfolio.

And I re-wrote it all and re-sold it all.

Never did I feel raped or taken advantage of or lied to.

The hardware and OS and platform folks do it to make money. Need to compete against whatever is hot and looks better.

Us software folks should do the exact same thing.

Back in Y2K there was mass exodus from COBOL in manufacturing to SAP apps. That was just another revenue stream for programmers like me. What were we doing to do? Stop the century from flipping over?

I've got a UI that I created in WPF right now for a app that is not even being sold yet. That's a shaky platform - I know it and still use it. If it dies I move to another platform. I'm not sure I see a "bond" between me and MS in any of this...

[Schmidt]

I coded mobile apps with Pocket PC's from HP and the compact framework. Phys Ed teachers used them for years - loved them. That went away. I could easily do it again on a Android.

Actually new platforms kind of drive my income stream.

PDP-11's went away - replaced by VAX's. Then Digital Equip itself went away. That killed 20 years of my development portfolio.

And I re-wrote it all and re-sold it all.

Never did I feel raped or taken advantage of or lied to.

Ok, so you were lucky - but now - what about our poor .NET-guy from the
example I gave?

Is a timespan of only "5-years-until-deprecation" for software-tools now
considered "normal" in your book (above you write of some 20years, which
truly is a different thing IMO, since it allows - after a development-phase of
some 3-4 years still some time to earn a ROI)...
and would you mark this .NET-guy "an idiot", "incapable of change"?


Olaf

[szlamany]

Is this your SILVERLIGHT guy? SILVERLIGHT - imo - was always a fresh out of the box maybe goes no where thing.

Back in 2001 when I left that VAX world for PC's I decided that this .Net thing was just too new - and coded my world in VB6. I've always had a guarded approach to new tech - waiting for wide spread adoption. That decision might have been wrong. Regardless I got a good decade out of the VB6 portfolio. Half the time of my VAX world (most of that time the manufacturer was already out of business!!)

You either choose stable, cutting edge or bleeding edge. Go with bleeding edge and you take the most risk.

[szlamany]

Actually flip table for a second. MS spends all this money creating a Silverlight platform - thinking the world will adopt it and forget flash or whatever else it competes with.

Wide spread adoption never happens.

Is that MS's fault?

There is no blame - this is the most evolving industry in the world imo and those who can ride wave are successful.

[NeedSomeAnswers]

What I'm shaking my head about always when it comes up in these discussions is,
that many of you .NETers already noticed, that MS is abandoning Tools and Techs
left and right (e.g. dday9, who states, that he "wasted a whole lot of time with
XNA" - or others who invested their time into Silverlight).

What's amazing then is, that instead of criticising the ones who "lured" you into
using tools they only a few years later don't consider worthy to support anymore,
most of you defend them with: "that's the way it is - let's just learn something else".

I will try and answer you point as much as i can Olaf.

The thing is your analogy just doesn't fit for me or for a lot of people.

Most developers (me included - although i do more managing than deving these days) do not work for themselves they work for companies, and it is normally the company that takes the hit when Technology changes rather than the developer.

When i couldn't get vb6 jobs anymore i learnt .Net C# and vb.Net. It wasn't hard and there were a lot of jobs out there ( And they paid more) Even now there are loads of .Net jobs (in the UK), far more than any other dev language that i know of.

A team at my last work did exactly what you describe, they developed a whole application in SilverLight, then just as they were due to complete, the company pulled the project for fears about the future direction of Silverlight.

The company took a big hit on this, the developers got assigned to other projects and there lives moved on. I spoke to a couple of the dev's who worked on that project and they didn't see it as a waste of time despite the technology, they still thought they learnt a lot of stuff that would cross over to other areas.


For me advising someone to learn C# for instance is unlikely to be a bad thing because even if Desktop development does die a death, you can also develop Web & Mobile apps with it which means that the live span of C# is likely to last for quite some time yet and you are learning the C# Syntax which while not the same as C++ or Java would be a good basis for someone wanting to move to one of those languages.

Form what i understand in your case your an Independent Software Vendor, and your pressures will be completely different than mine, and i can understand why you would potentially be far more affected by choosing a technology that died soon after then i would.

My world is really barely affected if MS chooses to end of life one of there languages, or another vendor (as we don't exclusively use MS here). In a strange way it can even drive sales as when we bring out a new version of something in a new technology we can charge all over again for it.

The other thing is lead times for our customers to move to newer version of our software is slow. We still have a fair number of customers using VB6 versions of a number of our programs (Hell i until 2 months a go we still had 1 customer on our old Cobol product that was built 20 years ago) and we still support and make changes to them.

The .Net products we sell will still need to be supported and new features added for many many years also.

So for me advising some to use .NET (either C# or VB.Net) i just dont see as a bad thing especially if they are looking into a career in Software Dev.

If i was advising an ISV on the what language they should invest in for the long term then my answer would probably be different.

As for the Learn something else line, During my career i have learnt web and desktop, and done some mobile and with each one i have had to learn a new way of doing things. Then MVC came out for instance ( for .Net) and had to learn that. Things do change in Software dev and if you are smart you can use that to your advantage to further your career.

So in conclusion what might be true for you is not true for me, and i believe that many of the other on this site will be in a similar boat to me which is why you will see a lot of .net users and a lot of people talking it up. It does a good job for us, and it is nice to use.

In fact the one really true bit of the VB6 vs .Net argument is the .Net Visual Studio IDE is a lot better than VB6 one and as a Dev it does make your life easier.

[FunkyDexter]

Right guys. I've just spent the last 20 minutes going through the last few ages of the thread and cleaning it up. I've tried to leave as much as I think I can get away with and if you look at the strength of what's left that should give a pretty good indication of what I had to remove.

Thankfully the thread seems to be to be taking a turn back toward the more constructive. I'm therefore still not going to close it because, honestly, I hate the idea of stopping a discussion, particularly in Chit Chat. Please... please... do not make me regret that decision.

We can disagree. We should disagree. If we didn't we really would all be drones. But we should also respect each other.

[FunkyDexter]

[TakesModHatOffHopefullyForTheLastTimeThisWeek]

So, where's the "hotter sister" you introduced above in that scenario.

That would be .Net although I did think you were talking about VB6 when I wrote it. If you want me to come up with a metaphor for her in the context of Silverlight guy I'd say it was HTML5. While not actually an MS product they have invested pretty heavily in the standard and it does make Silverlight pretty much redundant. Not to mention that Silverlight guy probably also spotted JavaScript girl down a back alley way somewhere. She'd been around the block a few time but boy did she know how to please a man. MS could have continued to invest time and money into Silverlight but why bother? Silverlight guy can still go round to Silverlight's house for dinner (his application will continue to function) but he gets to dive into bed with the younger, sexier HTML5 or the deftly experience JavaScript when he fancies a bit of excitement. I think I've probably milked that metaphor as far as I can now.

The point is the MS didn't drop Silverlight for the heck of it. They dropped it because it didn't make sense to develop it further. Realistically t just wasn't offering us devs anything that we couldn't get better elsewhere. And Silverlight guy hasn't been abandoned. He can still roll out his app and it will continue to work for any user. And there's nothing to stop him bringing in other technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript either.

Perhaps future browsers may not support Silverlight but the major players are so far and, for the same reasons the VB6 runtime continues to be supported at least for now, Silverlight applications will probably have a pretty healthy shelf-life ahead of them too. Quite simply, it wouldn't pay a browser producer not to support it.

So now your Silverlight guy is faced with the choice of what he should do next. Should he abandon MS in a fit of pique and go elsewhere? Hell no. That would be unprofessional. What he should do is assess the world as it stands now and make his choice based on that.

I hope that answers where I'd stand on the likes of Silverlight being dropped so I'll touch on VB6 again now (it's what this thread was originally about after all) . You talked about return on investment. Do you not think MS have given you plenty of time to recoup your VB6 investment in the last decade? How long would be enough? I actually think MS has a pretty good track record of not just leaving it's developers out in the cold.

[Shaggy Hiker]

What I'm shaking my head about always when it comes up in these discussions is,
that many of you .NETers already noticed, that MS is abandoning Tools and Techs
left and right (e.g. dday9, who states, that he "wasted a whole lot of time with
XNA" - or others who invested their time into Silverlight).

NSA covered pretty much everything I would say to most of this post: I work for somebody else, and they largely determine which tools I use. If one goes away, it doesn't make any dent in my income. That's not the case with axisdj, to be sure, but it is the case with me.

Still, I AM annoyed that MS abandons viable tech right and left. I'm still working with XNA, and there is a chance that it will come back. On the other hand, tech companies have stupidly ignored the influence of games on computer development for most of the 90s, and could easily go right back to that. Fortunately, XNA is still advancing by open source, and MS hasn't totally closed the door on it...so who knows. However, the reason I'm still using XNA is that there isn't a great alternative for what I need to do.

That's the point to the whole thing: Even if I'm pissed at MS for abandoning tech, what's the alternative? Apple has a FAR worse track record for abandoning things. Google has very little track record at all, but what record it has is indifferent, at best. Linux is a dead end. There was a chance that it could become the universal OS a decade, or so, back, but that chance is pretty much gone. It is a niche player and is likely to remain so. ReactOS looks nice, in theory, but isn't all that in practice, yet. When it comes to development tools, the situation is even worse. MS has the best, and the rest are a long ways down from there.

So, even if I am pissed at MS for the choices they have made (which I'm not, though I am a bit annoyed when I think about it), what is my alternative as a hobbyist? As an employed coder, I have no choice at all other than quitting my job, because I work for a group that has a contract with MS and all the systems I am writing for run MS products. The job is most excellent, though, so quitting in a fit of pique over MS would be masochistic.

[RobDog888]

[TakesModHatOffHopefullyForTheLastTimeThisWeek]

That would be .Net although I did think you were talking about VB6 when I wrote it. If you want me to come up with a metaphor for her in the context of Silverlight guy I'd say it was HTML5. While not actually an MS product they have invested pretty heavily in the standard and it does make Silverlight pretty much redundant. Not to mention that Silverlight guy probably also spotted JavaScript girl down a back alley way somewhere. She'd been around the block a few time but boy did she know how to please a man. MS could have continued to invest time and money into Silverlight but why bother? Silverlight guy can still go round to Silverlight's house for dinner (his application will continue to function) but he gets to dive into bed with the younger, sexier HTML5 or the deftly experience JavaScript when he fancies a bit of excitement. I think I've probably milked that metaphor as far as I can now.

The point is the MS didn't drop Silverlight for the heck of it. They dropped it because it didn't make sense to develop it further. Realistically t just wasn't offering us devs anything that we couldn't get better elsewhere. And Silverlight guy hasn't been abandoned. He can still roll out his app and it will continue to work for any user. And there's nothing to stop him bringing in other technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript either.

Perhaps future browsers may not support Silverlight but the major players are so far and, for the same reasons the VB6 runtime continues to be supported at least for now, Silverlight applications will probably have a pretty healthy shelf-life ahead of them too. Quite simply, it wouldn't pay a browser producer not to support it.

So now your Silverlight guy is faced with the choice of what he should do next. Should he abandon MS in a fit of pique and go elsewhere? Hell no. That would be unprofessional. What he should do is assess the world as it stands now and make his choice based on that.

I hope that answers where I'd stand on the likes of Silverlight being dropped so I'll touch on VB6 again now (it's what this thread was originally about after all) . You talked about return on investment. Do you not think MS have given you plenty of time to recoup your VB6 investment in the last decade? How long would be enough? I actually think MS has a pretty good track record of not just leaving it's developers out in the cold.

I think I want to meet this JavaScript Girl lol

[szlamany]

I think I want to meet this JavaScript Girl lol

Why - do you need some "closure"??

You probably have to be a JS coder to even get that

[RobDog888]

Why - do you need some "closure"??

You probably have to be a JS coder to even get that

Either that or an "escape" from reality lol

[Shaggy Hiker]

I think I've probably milked that metaphor as far as I can now.

No, no, keep going. Who knows where you will end up.

So, to summarize:

.NET = breasts
JavaScript = hooker/tramp

By that analogy, if you end up with a lot of .NET built onto JS, you have an app that will be both pay as you go, and a bit more expensive than other apps.

I think I just figured out the MS strategy.

[ident]

Sod it i'm turning to Jscript/brainF(cant name it)

[Shaggy Hiker]

I've just spent the last 20 minutes going through the last few ages of the thread

Ok, are you saying that this epic has epochs? Was there the age of despair (the original post and the few following), the age of condemnation, the witness of wittis, the age of sushi, the age of vitriol, and the age of moderation and banishment?

Doggone it, I had a better word play than the epoch of the epic, and it totally slipped my mind. Here you were, coming down through the ages weeding out the calumny like a wolf upon the fold, and I clean forgot the words to eloquently skewer that statement, typo that it may be. What tragedy, what misfortune, that here in the latter days of this august thread, aged as a fine Microsoft whine, when the ancient and venerable discourse of those now so many days older and doubtless wiser, no fitting riposte, no suitable bon Moti, no sufficiently quarlesome quip, should dull the sting of your perspicatious moderation. The aeons of this thread, though seeming endless, are but days. The thread is still young. The age of enlightenment has yet to flower. Indeed, when it comes to enlightenment, the only buds yet opened by this thread are those that don't make the reader wiser, but rather weiser. And so, beer in mind, we stumble towards no truth of any consequence, but tumble, yowling and spitting, into a querolous future.

Or are you saying that you just p'd off about the last few pages?

[dilettante]

Where Is .NET Headed?

What To Do?

If your business or company still relies solely on components delivered to developers through an MSDN subscription, then it is past time to start looking beyond what Microsoft offers for .NET development so you won’t be left behind in 5 years. Embrace and support open source.

Now where it really gets interesting is in feedback comments, such as:

At this point, I beleive the best move Microsoft can make is to make .NET Open Source, and then launch a program like Apache Incubator around that - so that some serious OSS development can happen around the .NET ecosystem. The real problem with .NET is the unavailability of frameworks for solving new age problems - .NET developers are cramped with the nonavailability of Proven libraries for Machine Learning, Distributed Processing, Text Processing etc - Talk about Solr, Lucene, Mahout, Storm, etc. The CLR and C# are awesome - but MS just can't push forward the development of mature libraries around the same, with out participation from OSS community. Hopefully, if Azure turns out to be a big success story, then Microsoft won't mind open sourcing the Entire .NET stack OSS .

If you get a sense of deja vu from this, you should. It does sound just like the straws some VB6 programmers were grasping for after VB6 went legacy back in 2008.

[Nightwalker83]

I'm going to be a lot more direct. Niya and Carlos Rocha have both violated the rules of the site and will get banned if they do it again.

May I ask which rules they have broken so I don't brake them? Also, this thread could be used as an example of how not to break said rules.

[FunkyDexter]

typo that it may be

It was a typo but it was an apt one, given the length of the thread, and I have to ask (because your puns so oft fly below the radar of my wit) was this deliberate:-

aged as a fine Microsoft whine

? Because if it was then you, sir, deserve cake.

Very poetic, by the way.

May I ask which rules they have broken

General aggressiveness specifically covered by these two clauses:-
•You will not behave in an abusive and/or hateful manner, and will not harass, threaten, nor attack anyone.
•You will not use profanity and will neither post with language or Content that is obscene, sexually oriented, sexually suggestive or otherwise objectionable, nor link to websites that contain such content.
Hopefully you won't find any evidence of it, though, because I went to considerable pains to remove it.

[dclamp]

OH GOD. The wrath of FunkyDexter has come. He is not CC Mod.

[SJWhiteley]

You may have actually gotten that reference, but I barely did. I seem to remember some event where Steve Jobs poured a can of black paint on a computer as part of some promotion of NeXT systems.

Big Blue.

[Schmidt]

[The discontinued Silverlight and "the hotter sister"]

That would be .Net although I did think you were talking about VB6 when I wrote it.

Nah - for me the ".NET-sister" was always the "clumsier one" (a bit too much resembling
the role-model for a Rubens-picture) ... but tastes differ of course.

If you want me to come up with a metaphor for her in the context of Silverlight guy I'd say it was HTML5.

That would be a step-down from Silverlight (when looking at things technologically) -
the only thing in favour of HTML5 is, that it's a standard (now) - but still many Browser-
engines implement things differently - and the JS-frameworks still need to dance around a
lot off issues with their "browser-vendor-specific-quirks-modes", to offer a commonly usable
API and the same visual appearances on the outside.

So, no - when we talk about "sensual experiences" after being "in bed" with Silverlight
and after that with HTML5/JS as the "RichClient-like" alternative approach, then one
needs to be a masochist, to label the latter experience a "sexual highlight" (there's a
reason for things like TypeScript, you know).

And Silverlight guy hasn't been abandoned.
He can still roll out his app and it will continue to work for any user.

But the MS-announcement already broke him (financially), because the potential customer-base
was breaking away along with it...

And there's nothing to stop him bringing in other technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript either.

Not possible currently, borrowed money is gone - very hard marketing now for him, to sell
to at least "a few" - the current ROI barely covering the interests for the borrowed money.

So, what did the guy do wrong exactly?
Was it his fault?

In my opinion the MS deprecation-cycles for developer-tools/techs are far too short currently.
At least 10 years would be much better - especially when they promote a tool *as much* as
they did in case of Silverlight. And in case they are unsure about the long-term-success (or their
own strategic plans) for a certain tool, why not label it clearly as "experimental" (for a time).

So now your Silverlight guy is faced with the choice of what he should do next.
Should he abandon MS in a fit of pique and go elsewhere? Hell no.

Amazing (and contradicting) logic you show there - I say: "Hell yes!".
If that wasn't a "fool me once"-experience, then what is?
And your "younger hotter sister" (the HTML5/JS one - albeit not really being hotter)
offers that way out for him (in case he's still on to "the web-thing").
He'll still need some years to recover though - let's hope he's finally learned his
lesson, that it's a good idea to use either well-established standards - or well-
known and actively-developed OpenSource tools for his "next business idea".

I actually think MS has a pretty good track record of not just leaving it's developers out in the cold.

So, my small example with the Silverlight-guy apparently didn't make it through -
MS does *not* have a "good track record" (not anymore since VB6), when it comes
to offering developers long-term-usable tools they can truly rely and build a business
on for a decade or two (aside from their C/C++ platform).
Larger companies can live better with that short-term-policy of MS (larger cash-reserves),
but for self-employed developers or smaller companies, using any MS-tools is quite risky
(if they plan something bigger which takes 3-4 years development-time - and choose
something different from MS-C/C++).

In my opinion the Silverlight-guy did nothing wrong - and in case he will decide to
make another attempt in continuing his career in selfemployment, running his own
small company, then carefully choosing non-MS-tools would be (in my book) a very
good idea for him.

And to come back to VB6 finally - that's what *many* (not all) VB6-developers
have learned already - most experienced ones who still run a small company, will
look very carefully, what technology or language or platform they will choose for
their next projects - not all of them ruling out MS-tech entirely, but others are
quite consequent in applying the "fool-me-once"-rule - and there's nothing wrong
with that.

Speaking for myself, I invested my time into C/C++, HTML/JS/JS-frameworks +
multiplatform-OpenSource-libs + algorithms and patterns in general.

I feel quite well-prepared for the future - still love the simplicity (paired with
entirely sufficient comfort) of the VB6-compiler I use for Win-Desktop-Apps -
and cannot see any reason why this should cause a "living in the past"-attitude
towards me from the end of some .NET-devs.

Switching over to .NET is just *one-of-many* alternatives for VB6-developers -
there's loads of other interesting stuff to "move on to", so please try to not be that
adamant about ".NET being the *only* logical choice for a VB6-dev" - especially now,
that the "end of the desktop is proclaimed" (though as for that, I differ for example
from dilettantes opinion, that the desktop will die *soon*). Nevertheless I feel prepared
for the possibility, reading much about the different cloud-approaches (not only the
MS-one) - I write more WebApps already (currently using classic *.asp at the server-end,
and HTML5/jQuery at the clientside - but already experimenting with Node.js - to use
JS-classes as the "intermediate glue" on both ends).

As for the point some others have brought up in the discussion, who are:
"... not selfemployed - and work for a company who dictates which tools they have to use" -
not much to comment about that - there's no larger lever to influence decisions, other than
trying to apply a bit of "soft-pressure" in a team-meeting or something, e.g. how great
your "latest experiment with Node.js" worked out - things like that.

Olaf

[axisdj]

Well since i started this Let me chime in...

So i have realized at some point I will have to re-write my vb6 apps that are making me a living right now.
The question is when should i do it. I have read many studies saying that a rewrite can be disasterous, here is one:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articl...000000069.html
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid...-Software.aspx

Ok, so here is my train of thought. I think im going to wait till vb6 breaks. In the mean time i will continue to see what develops with vbrichclient. I am also learning lazarus which i think is a viable vb6 replacement/ native/ cross platform.

Logically it seems that when vb6 apps break all others like lazarus/qt/etc that compile native will break also

In the mean time i am Going to clean up my code and remove as much ms dependencies as possible.

So time will tell, those that are capable i encourage you to help the vbrichclient project, i believe its the only way foward for exusting v 6 code. And let me just say the creator of vbrichclient showed me how to do proper multi threading in vb6 and to this day i am amazed by it, because everyone said it was impossible. Its not. The automation software i wrote run 24/7 and never crashes running multiple threads with vb6 created app. You can hear my station at www.sadanceradio.com

Have a nice day everyone!

[SJWhiteley]

Silverlight:

It was obviously targeted as a Flash killer/sequel/steamroller/alternative.

.NET programmers, though, weren't interested in the Flash-targetted market, so Silverlight failed. Not 'failed' as in gone away, but it really isn't a viable alternative, because alternatives really aren't good for the consumer in the development market.

however, it will be around for a while - Netflix uses silverlight as their movie client. HTML5 does not have the richness of Silverlight or Flash. Flash is annoying as hell. Silverlight (appears) to have a fairly unintrusive client side implementation.

That sounds contradictory, but this is the future of choosing the right technology: make your choice, knowing at some point, you will not be in the majority. VB6 had a good run, can still be used, but is overshadowed by more capable technologies. Just because a handful of people can knock out fantastic apps in VB6 does not mean VB6 is a viable development tool.

Remember, Macs were few and far between, but people still developed for them. They knew their market was small. Doesn't mean that there was no future in it. Conversely, computer systems are developing rapidly; how can any serious developer believe that their language of choice should live on forever?