Quote Originally Posted by Elroy View Post
However, having recently explored recent versions of net VS, it just seems that actual development in the net VS IDE would be much more cumbersome. So, I've come to believe that the VB6 IDE is just an absolutely superior IDE, and that it's fortuitous that I didn't originally force an "update". I just routinely get 3 or 4 executions of the VB6 IDE opened, trying out some concepts in slightly different forms. This is all lightening fast in VB6. I can't even imagine doing that in a recent version of the net VS IDE.
I can. I often have up to five different instances of VS open at a single time. The last time I went to VB6 I found it to be unusable due to the primitive nature of the IDE.

So, what are you talking about? The one thing that I can think of is that the recent versions of VS are painfully slow to start. MS tried to improve that with 2017, but didn't really get it. I tend to work with VS2010, which is instant, but that means dropping a few features. VB6 only allowed one file at a time (or was it even just one function at a time, I don't recall, though it doesn't really matter), and you couldn't collapse ANYTHING, so you were just scrolling all the time. The point of every IDE advance since then (just look at the developer tools built into every browser) has been to ease navigation. That generally means multiple files and collapsible methods. Collapsible groups, such as the Regions in VS are nice, but can be taken too far. C# allowed collapsible regions within methods, which could be used to hide ugliness rather than clarify anything, which made them loathed....so, naturally, I think MS added that feature to VB with either 2015 or 2017.

If your objection was the slow loading, I tend to agree with the more recent versions. I understand why they did that, on several levels, since the editor has taken on the characteristics of a game in that it is highly graphical. Some of those features are nice. For example, I like the ghost lines linking If to End If, cause indentation isn't always enough if the problem gets sufficiently difficult. The multiple rails in the slider also has some advantages, but not sufficient advantage, in my opinion. If it were possible to toggle off elements you don't use in order to boost launch performance, that might be nice...or not. After all, it's startup, and even on my slower work computer it only takes a few seconds. I think MS has gone a bit overboard with trying to stuff more and more productivity features into the IDE to the point where nobody can use more than a portion of them, but on the other hand, I'm working on a program that is entirely graphical, so I can see why it can slow down launch times.