Quote Originally Posted by Niya View Post
Actually these requirements make C/C++ ideal for this.
Not when the UI requirements are considered. A complex multi-featured UI that spans all those Windows OS versions is incredibly difficult to do with something like MFC, or you once again get into the problem of shipping additional libraries for something like Qt.

And you misunderstand on performance: obviously I could write faster image processing code by hand-tuning C/C++ implementations. (And for really performance-critical stuff, this is the case.) But the development cost is not generally worth it, especially with charity work, where the most important factor is very high reliability while keeping costs as low as possible.

(C# or VB.Net wouldn't solve any of the performance issues, either. You'll always end up at C/C++ or ASM if performance is crucial.)

My only point in this mess of an argument is that VB.Net is far better than VB6. VB6 was good in its hey-day but its been overshadowed by VB.Net. Your point about needing software to run on XP systems without any hassle and its native performance are a couple of only a very few sensible reasons mentioned that VB6 is preferable to VB.Net. Your requirements are very specific so its understandable but the vast majority of reasons usually stated in threads like this are garbage.
I don't disagree. But if we're being honest, VB.Net has a very small niche of use-cases too. (Basically, VB6 guys who can't be convinced to give up VB syntax for C#.)

I see VB.Net and VB6 in pretty much the same light: not recommended for newcomers, and useful only to people who are maintaining existing codebases or who have extremely specific use-cases. This is what makes disagreements between the two groups ironic, IMO.