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Thread: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

  1. #121
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    The good news is that we'll have plenty of warning before there is any need to move away from VB6. The people who will be in a panic and find themselves wading through lava when the time comes are those who haven't been exploring alternatives at this late date.

    And in the several threads that are basically clones of this one, a lot of alternatives have been mentioned.

    if you found yourself hugging Windows 9x, then very late moving on to desperately hug Windows XP, and now find yourself hugging Windows 7 for dear life... better invest in a nice pair of asbestos trousers because your odds don't look good.

    VB6 has been a rock during these transitions, despite the attempts of .Nutters to paint it otherwise. Its stability is pretty unique, much like Cobol. In times of great change it can be good to be a "cockroach" and survive. If there weren't so many people depending on its stability Microsoft would have stopped shipping its support libraries long ago, and we wouldn't have:

    Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 on Windows


    So don't panic. Get off Windows 7, a broken release of Windows at best for development anyway. And look at other things.

    An awful lot of the newer members here are probably fine candidates to move to a .Net language. They don't seem to make use of much of VB6 besides its "QBasic subset" anyway.

    At the same time it is worth spending some energy on playing with Node.js/NW.js/Electron. Or look into the B4x products. Lots of options, all worth some time.

  2. #122
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    i cant see rc5 to be relevant for vb6 survival. its just a 3rd party dll. works for you and for others but not for me.
    theres no way to do what i need and one computer i cant even install it properly. no matter how many times i add it in the reference i get errors.
    cairo or gdi is the same, both can be invalid in the future. both i need to find solutions if windows stop supporting it.
    rc5 is not the answer for vb6. if Olaf is making a vb6 ide with integrated rc5 i will "try it" but if i dont like it, i will continue use vb6 or find me another language.
    if vb6 is changing to be something completely different, its not vb6 anymore its something else and why do i need to spend time learning that when i could just go to something that offers better graphic support? i dont need vb6 because of the components, i just like it for its ide, the way how i can add functions and classes and use APIs. if that is removed, than i can just find me something else.

  3. #123
    MS SQL Powerposter szlamany's Avatar
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by dreammanor View Post
    Interesting. I'd like to know what kind of programming work you have done with VB.NET can't be done with VB6. Why?
    Did I disparage VB6 in my post? I'm not sure I'm prepared or even qualified to debate VB6 vs .Net.

    I know I can make an .XLSX file with the MS Open XML SDK - that's a .Net library. Not sure how I would accomplish that on a backend server with VB6. Same with creating PDF's - not sure how I would create those on a backend server with VB6. I'm sure I could install WORD on the server... Use a PDF Print driver... Those are hacks, IMO...

    I would rather discuss how nice it is to make a UI in a browser vs. how painful it was with VB6. .Net didn't make creating a UI much better. WPF is downright maniacal!

    ASP.Net trying to overlay a WINFORM event model on top of a WEBFORM - that was just stupid (I'm sure everyone can agree to that!).

    Code:
    If Not Page.IsPostBack Then
    honestly - crazy!
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  4. #124
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by szlamany View Post
    Did I disparage VB6 in my post? I'm not sure I'm prepared or even qualified to debate VB6 vs .Net.

    I know I can make an .XLSX file with the MS Open XML SDK - that's a .Net library. Not sure how I would accomplish that on a backend server with VB6. Same with creating PDF's - not sure how I would create those on a backend server with VB6. I'm sure I could install WORD on the server... Use a PDF Print driver... Those are hacks, IMO...

    I would rather discuss how nice it is to make a UI in a browser vs. how painful it was with VB6. .Net didn't make creating a UI much better. WPF is downright maniacal!

    ASP.Net trying to overlay a WINFORM event model on top of a WEBFORM - that was just stupid (I'm sure everyone can agree to that!).

    Code:
    If Not Page.IsPostBack Then
    honestly - crazy!
    Thank you for your reply. I didn't think that you disparaged VB6, and I don't care if others disparaged VB6. I just want to know those who have used VB6 before and are now using VB.NET (or C#) to talk about the advantages of dotNET.

    The above serveral features of .NET you mentioned can be achieved with some VB6 third-party library.

    Although I have no obstacles in developing some desktop software with C#, I've been looking for a reason to let me use .NET(C#) to develop a formal project, but I can't find it.

    Making a UI in a browser is a very interesting topic. I'd like to know if .NET has an advantage on this subject?

  5. #125
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    I just want to know those who have used VB6 before and are now using VB.NET (or C#) to talk about the advantages of dotNET.
    I really don't want to get into a "My language is better than yours" debate because they usually just turn childish and pointless but I will try and give you a constructive response.

    First off, there is nothing that can be achieved in .net that can't be achieved in Classic VB... or just about any language. Ultimately computers come down to 1sand 0s so, as long as your willing to drill down far enough, all languages end up being the same thing: a means to write 1s and 0s.

    So for me, when I moved to .Net, I found the advantage it allowed me to do lots of things a little bit more more easily.

    When I moved to .Net I found I kept having a common experience. When I needed to do a thing, instead of spending half an hour writing code I found myself spending that same half an hour (and, admittedly, often more) looking through msdn, VBF and StackOverflow to work out what the correct way to do it in .Net was - and it invariably turned out to be one line of code. Over time, as I learned the libraries, the research time diminished and my overall development sped up. I became more productive in many tiny ways. No single one was significant but the totality was. So I got a long term pay off from some short term pain.

    If you're looking for a "killer" feature .net offers that classic doesn't, you're probably not going to find it. But there's lots of little things that just add up. Actually, here's a little thing as an example. In classic I remember in a list views, list boxes etc. having itemdata (or it's equivalent - tag I think) as an integer - have I remembered that right? That meant I was always having to maintain parallel collections of objects to keep the data I needed associated with a list item - not exactly a nightmare but, still, tedious. In .Net it's an object which just simplifies things that little bit. It wouldn't surprise me to find I've slightly miss-remembered that or to learn that some third party stuff closes that gap (it would be an one to close) but I remember breathing a sigh of relief over that back when I switched.

    So I hope I haven't disparaged VB6, it's not my intention to. But yeah, for me personally, I found .Net to be a step in the right direction. And though it may have led down the occasional dark alley and wrong turn (Web forms and WPF would be the biggest) over the last 15 years, it's taken me where I wanted to go far more often than it's let me down.
    Last edited by FunkyDexter; Apr 30th, 2018 at 04:06 AM.
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  6. #126
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Hi FunkyDexter, your comments are very valuable. I'm not a child and won't be involved in "My language is better than yours". I just like to compare different solutions.

    I received the .NET-Beta release from Microsoft in 2000, but it was so bad, especially not compatible with VB6. At that time, I had already written a lot of VB6 code. From then on, almost every year I spend some time studying .NET, IMO, until 2005 .NET matured enough to develop commercial software. But at that time, my VB6 code increased several times, I could no longer migrate my code to .NET. Even if I was preparing to develop new desktop software, .NET had no obvious advantages compared to VB6.

    In fact, I can add some advantages of .NET, for example:
    1. Using .NET will give you more learning materials, third-party libraries, and sample code
    2. Using .NET will make you pay more attention to Web development and Mobile development.
    3. Using .NET will give you better employment opportunities.

    But all these advantages are based on the misleading and despising of VB6. It is because many people say that VB6 is not suitable for Web development, so many VB6 developers are not willing to pay attention to JavaScript and some Web frameworks.

    Since 2000, I have been looking for programming tools that can replace VB6. I've examined C#, Java, Delphi, and Python, but none of them satisfied me. Now I prefer Golang and plan to use it as my second development tool.

    I'm glad that I've been using VB6 until now. If some people just want to make a simple or mediocre product, no matter what development tools are used, they all can achieve their goals. But if you want to make a product as perfect as possible, then you can only use the tools you are most familiar with.

  7. #127
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    For me the real "killer" advantage of .Net languages is that Microsoft (a.) provides wrapper classes for a lot of the Win32 API as the "Framework" (gag, I hate that overused and abused term), (b.) provides far more complete documentation of Windows features for .Net users, and (c.) provides tons of additional wrapper code for newer APIs in Windows as open source contributions.

    Wrappers and docs are valuable. Well, at least to the core developer community. Then they can spit out more snippets for the bulk of plinkers to copy/paste.

    So vast amounts of stuff is predigested for .Net users by Microsoft. Something they never really did, and don't do for VB6 programmers now because of its shunned status. After all, think about it. If they had ever updated VB and provided a level of support anything like they have for the .Net p-code VM... who in their right mind would ever use .Net anyway?


    I'm really not sure why so many people with thin skill investments in VB who mainly use the "dark parts" changed little from QBasic/QuickBasic days hug VB6 so hard at this late date. If anything, they should be the target market for VB.Net because it is the copy/paste cowboy's friend.

    A lot of them are surely those stealth IT types who wreak so much havoc in business creating MS Office crapplets. For them Office VBA was the first thing they saw when hatched out of the egg, so they think VBA is their Mother. That may also help explain why VSTA/VSTO has been such a dismal failure for Microsoft.

  8. #128
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    libraries are created to make it easy for us, most of the time they are exactly what we need, but sometimes they lack features.
    what to do then? we need to create our own, and usually people tends to use other libraries for that purpose.
    but, in almost any language you can actually create it from scratch. that is why VB6 is still viable.
    even if I dont use it, rc5 is an example of that.
    but im a "do it from scratch" programmer. i just don't like using a 3rd party library or a large class created to do "lots", where I will only use 5%.
    rc5 is that. theres a lot inside, tons of functions I dont have a clue what it do. if I can't understand at least 90% of it, it will be discarded.
    so for me, VB6, .NET, C# or whatever is the same, I will create my own stuff. its just a preference of syntax. i enjoy coding in VB6 and thats it.
    now, when people change to another language is because theres not enough libraries or source code for something they want to create.
    when they get stuck they tend to follow the masses. if C# is popular, well, they go there, if Java, they tend to check that out.
    what is the better language? the answer is you.

  9. #129
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by FunkyDexter View Post
    First off, there is nothing that can be achieved in .net that can't be achieved in Classic VB
    .net core programs are cross platform and the language has tons of features that will never be a part of vb6 (reflection, function overloading,etc)

  10. #130
    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by dreammanor View Post

    1. Using .NET will give you more learning materials, third-party libraries, and sample code
    Frankly, I think that't the big one anymore.

    In my case, I moved to .NET because, at that particular time, there was something that .NET could do that VB6 could not do: Write programs for PDAs. Of course, the PDA lived a very brief life before being utterly replaced by the smart phone, which really isn't the same thing. We don't always know where the world is going, though, and somebody I worked with saw the advantage of the PDA for doing some creel survey work. Smartphones didn't exist, tablets were FAR in the future, so a PDA was a portable device that could be used for data entry (no network connection was necessary). VB6 could not be used for a PDA. There was the horrid eVB, but that was VBScript, not VB6, and it was, as I mentioned....horrid.

    So, at one time, for just a few years, there was a place where VB6 did not work and VB.NET did. I needed to be in that place, so I switched. I loved VB6, though not the IDE. The IDE was OK, but could be improved. MS has greatly improved IDE design since those days...then maybe took it a bit too far, but that's debatable. The language was great. However, I had learned C++ before VB6, and found OO to be totally natural to me. The more OO a language was, the more comfortable I was with it. VB6 has OO features, you just don't have to use them, and I didn't take full advantage of them. Still, coming from OO, I found .NET to be more in line with my way of thinking, but still had the same VB syntax that I liked so well from VB6.

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  11. #131
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    OK, first, realtalk: #121 is the post from dilletante I think I've agreed with most in the history of the forums and I think it's important to highlight when I agree with people with which I usually violently disagree. There are probably other options we don't know and not having an escape plan is very dangerous. I don't think any sensible developer can claim to have a clear vision of what the next 2 years brings us.

    I also don't think comparing VB6 to .NET is relevant at this point and I'm going to quote a part of dilettante's post to tell you why:
    if you found yourself hugging Windows 9x, then very late moving on to desperately hug Windows XP, and now find yourself hugging Windows 7 for dear life... better invest in a nice pair of asbestos trousers because your odds don't look good.
    I think if you're considering desktop applications it is too late to be investigating VB .NET as your exit strategy for your VB6 career. The only thing that will kill VB6 at this point is if Microsoft decides Windows should abandon it. I think that will only happen if Microsoft abandons Windows itself, or dramatically changes its focus to something that cannot support "classic" desktop. If that happens, Windows Forms and WPF are on the same boat as VB6 and they are all going to sink together. That suggests any effort spent building a new career out of Windows Forms/WPF is about as smart as maintaining your VB6 knowledge. If you are writing and only know how to write VB6, Windows Forms, or WPF apps right now you should be worried.

    I see that there are some products that let you run VB6 apps as web CGI or whatever. That won't do you any good if MS switches to a version of Windows that only supports UWP/.NET Core applications. That will *also* be the end of Windows Forms and WPF for .NET developers.

    So I don't feel like it's productive to think about it. If you're planning to migrate a major application, you should be looking at something that can work in a world where .NET as we know it isn't supported. The safest options, in that case, are in order:
    • A web application built on a stack with wide community support. Even PHP qualifies here but I was meaning something more like Ruby or Python.
    • A native application using some cross-platform framework like the ones mentioned in this thread or ones we haven't thought of. If it's Windows-only it is not cross-platform. Period.
    • UWP. This is a solution that ties you entirely to Microsoft and it seems the Slashdot people were right all along and we placed too much trust in their ability to provide a 100-year plan.

    The web is not controlled by a single company and has so much support from open-source developers it's hard to imagine it disappearing without decades of warning. The cross-platform frameworks that aren't Windows-only also have very strong outside support. UWP is the weakest of these solutions because MS's only interest in it is maintaining some development platform on Windows, and if they decide Xamarin isn't working out for them you are hosed.
    Last edited by Sitten Spynne; Apr 30th, 2018 at 11:15 AM.
    This answer is wrong. You should be using TableAdapter and Dictionaries instead.

  12. #132
    PowerPoster wqweto's Avatar
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    HTML/JS/CSS for desktop is full of abandonware w/ only Electron remaining somewhat viable (although extremely bloated) option. HTML/JS/CSS combo is making grounds for _mobile_ development -- that's where the efforts and innovation is going to. Desktop is more or less irrelevant for vast majority of companies, developers and sooner or later clients.

    So which it's going to be -- VB7 for UWP or VB7 for Mobile? :-))

    cheers,
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  13. #133
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by Sitten Spynne View Post
    The only thing that will kill VB6 at this point is if Microsoft decides Windows should abandon it
    Everyone keeps talking about the doomsday scenario where COM ends or where MS abandons desktop programs which seems unlikely to happen for all the reasons you listed and more.

    What is more possible is that technology will move on and there may be important components of your program that simply have no alternative.

  14. #134
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    The most likely scenario is that Windows as we know it ends after Windows 10.

    Probably replaced by something similar to Windows 10 Sucker's Edition (a.k.a. Windows 10 Lean, a.k.a. Windows RT Fire Two: Back From Hell). Mainly meant to be "Azure Terminal" running very little but Edge and Store Apps. Probably built to run on 64-bit ARM based and low-end Intel based hardware, basically a tablet with a keyboard... a Chromebook clone sort of thing.

  15. #135
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    It looks like everybody thinks desktop is doomed. But how do you think the office people will work on a workstation? With a tablet, mobile thing??

  16. #136
    MS SQL Powerposter szlamany's Avatar
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    I do not think desktop is dead - not even close. I work with non-profit labor unions and schools and colleges. One of my customers just upgraded all desktops to Windows 10 - all new hardware. Running Windows 10 LTSB (long term service branch) - so that they can avoid the constant upgrade/update nature of regular Windows 10. This customer actually still runs my VB6 application - still working on Windows 10. This client does realize the strange support position MS and VB6 are in - and they expect me to get them off VB6 in the near future.

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  17. #137
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by dilettante View Post
    The most likely scenario is that Windows as we know it ends after Windows 10.

    Probably replaced by something similar to Windows 10 Sucker's Edition (a.k.a. Windows 10 Lean, a.k.a. Windows RT Fire Two: Back From Hell). Mainly meant to be "Azure Terminal" running very little but Edge and Store Apps. Probably built to run on 64-bit ARM based and low-end Intel based hardware, basically a tablet with a keyboard... a Chromebook clone sort of thing.
    it's going to be subscription based for sure. You will know they are ready to kill windows when they port IE to linux

  18. #138
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by Krool View Post
    It looks like everybody thinks desktop is doomed. But how do you think the office people will work on a workstation? With a tablet, mobile thing??
    I don't think it is doomed. I think we are seeing cases where you have people who would have traditionally used a windows computer with desktop software move to a browser based workflow that works on any device.

  19. #139
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by Krool View Post
    It looks like everybody thinks desktop is doomed. But how do you think the office people will work on a workstation? With a tablet, mobile thing??
    Yes. I know people that do it.

    My dad, for one. He's basically an executive for a refining company. They got him a Surface Pro and he was really skeptical. But a few months later I asked him about it and he loved it. It's smaller than a laptop and easier to deal with if he's just reading a bunch of documents, which is something he does a lot. When he needs to write a quick email, he can use the foldy keyboard and get things done. When he needs to do "real" work he sits at a desk and docks it to a monitor with a mouse and keyboard. Nothing about that requires classic Windows: he works within IE and Office, two programs that can not only run on the web but can also demonstrably run without COM/classic desktop.

    My wife's a social media consultant. She does practically all of her work on her phone and her iPad. She hasn't even touched a Microsoft product in maybe 4 years.

    My customers are truck drivers. My apps run on iOS/Android. Their dispatchers use our web software, which doesn't care if they're using Windows. My guess is the dispatchers like that they can sneak off to do some Christmas shopping for their kids while technically still keeping tabs on their drivers.

    I've read articles about farmers in places like Afghanistan running all of their sales over Instagram. It only takes about a $50 smartphone to do it, and they can carry it around to take pictures/video of the animals/products they're selling. You ever tried to take a picture of a goat with a workstation? It's tough.

    My doctors office has been using tablets as opposed to workstations in each room for at least 8 years. It means instead of 1 workstation per room (and the technical support burden that entails) they only need 1 tablet per nurse.

    If you live in a bubble where everyone uses a workstation it can look like there's no use for other devices. But if you meet a variety of professionals, particularly people who do most of their work on the road or outside, their lives have been made many orders of magnitude easier by the presence of apps like Office on tablets. There are millions of jobs using computers, and very few of them need a full-time workstation.

    It turns out "not being able to work at all" is a lot worse than "working a little less efficiently". There are a lot of places where a workstation/laptop would be nice but isn't feasible.

    And speaking frankly, if the only solutions you consider are workstation-based, you are potentially a burden to your company.
    This answer is wrong. You should be using TableAdapter and Dictionaries instead.

  20. #140
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by Sitten Spynne View Post
    If you live in a bubble where everyone uses a workstation it can look like there's no use for other devices.
    And speaking frankly, if the only solutions you consider are workstation-based, you are potentially a burden to your company.
    Yes I'm in a bubble (accounting) where only real workstations are feasible. However, I don't think I'm a burden. I understand your points but I also understand my points.

  21. #141
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    you need to think that today we use multiple machines not just 1. in the past, a family shared one computer, if any.
    my friend that works with mobile dev. and a graphic designer they have desktop computer at work, they need that, powerful enough to do whats needed, a tablet would not be enough. at my work, a treatment home, we cant go around with tablets, instead we simply use computer at our staff room. schools usually have desktop computers, this because they could work with media that need better computers and its also more comfortable to work with a bigger screen and a big keyboard.

    even if we are going in that direction that we dont need a desktop computer, technology will allow that we can use the same OS in phones, tablets and desktop computers, in the end, they are all computers with different sizes.
    so, in 10 years we get windows "****" version. that we can install on anything. and im sure that a big company like microsoft will try to make compatibility as long possible or at least downloadable runtimes for those that uses old applications.

    i think this doom is like the same **** that people talked about 2012, the end of the world. what happened? nothing.

  22. #142
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    A lot of it is market driven though.

    If the majority of people can get by with an updated Windows RT on ARM or Intel and live with a few commodity applications (Edge, Office 360, and a few of those Microsoft Store fart apps)... then that's the only target.

    It's all about focusing on the masses. If you have specialized needs you don't exist anymore and you'll be left naked to die on the cold prairie like an unwanted newborn. Suddenly Linux might not look so absurd. Er, assuming that still exists in a form useful to you as a minority user.

    Gamers get shoved to XBox, everyone else to a Chromebook style thingy.

    Yet developers still need tools, so something will exist. Of course it might only be "closed world" tools running on WinRT or in Edge that only produce outputs for that world.


    I can see this happening. It is like a world where all scissors are right-handed because "to hell with minority needs, not profitable enough to bother."

  23. #143
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    minority will still be in millions. even if billions will use tablets, there will still be customers for the minority. and maybe its a good thing.
    that will mean the big companies will not try that hard to update and create new os for desktop computers, instead the current windows, right now 10 will last longer.
    and when its time to something new, we just get an upgrade for directx13+ and thats it.
    desktop will never die, but maybe it will not grow. statistic, even if now 10 years old, desktop increased every year and prognosis told around 2020 or something before it stop to increase (meaning its growing). so im not sure about the death of desktop, what i see its that the mobile market is exploding and is fast and everyone are using it and its a much bigger market. sure tablets replace desktop here and there, but that doesnt mean its the death of desktop, just that its not growing there anymore.

  24. #144
    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    I can see it happening, I just don't see it happening in the next decade. Beyond a decade....I still don't see it happening, but beyond two decades it may well.

    On the other hand, I can see what Sitten reported: The Surface could easily replace desktops....because it IS a desktop, just in a more compact format. It'll run whatever will run on a desktop, though with lesser graphics than you might have on a desktop.
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  25. #145
    Lively Member Grant Swinger's Avatar
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Since when have "the masses" ever wanted to pay for software? They've been conditioned by years of getting stuff for free. This is what the masses think about paying for software. The market for software has always been business.

    So is business abandoning the PC? I've got a friend who works for the largest PC rental firm in the country. He has good finger on what business wants. When I asked him if businesses were going to move to Windows 8 he said it was DOA. There had been a mini-boom in renting PCs with it installed but after they came back the demand was zero. Nobody wanted it after renting a PC to check it out. But Windows 10 has been completely different. Now the equipment that goes out with it installed outnumbers Windows 7 ten to one.

    They also rent a lot of tablets (mostly iPads). The overwhelming uses for these are kiosks, concierge and sales lead apps, and other stuff like that. Some people have rented them to do presentations "but they only do that once and then they want a laptop the next time." PowerPoint on the iPad crashes and burns on lots of presentations. And tablets are a pain to connect to the display equipment you find at most sites. It's so bad some places tell you get lost if you turn up with one. They rent a lot of Surfaces as well but people use them as ultralight laptops running Windows applications, not as a tablet.

    We're probably going back to the way things were when PCs were for businesses and the masses had toys like the Commodore 64. But if the masses aren't a market for software who cares?

  26. #146
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    The "Surface' products are laptop PCs, just a high-priced version of the same thing we've had for a while: detachable keyboard and touchscreen. Very little different from my aging Acer iconia Tab W400 from 2011 which right now happily runs Windows 10 as a free upgrade.

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  27. #147
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Has anyone completed the survey yet?

    Help us plan the future of .NET!


    There is nothing there for VB6 programmers though. You can't really even vent there.


    Some brief commentary at http://www.i-programmer.info/news/89...-we-start.html as well.

    .NET was a revolution and even the Microsoft haters have to give it some credit in this direction. Today Microsoft's vision is to do what everyone else is doing and innovation is long gone. Microsoft has gone from leader to follower, but now we can fill in a survey to help plan the future of .NET. A bit late, I say.
    The open sourcing of .NET into .NET Core is a reasonable step, but it left everything else behind. Today the .NET Framework is legacy, no matter how much reassurance Microsoft provides, because .NET Core is the future.

    But .NET Core doesn't have a GUI stack. What good is that?
    Last edited by dilettante; Apr 30th, 2018 at 09:31 PM.

  28. #148
    Super Moderator FunkyDexter's Avatar
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    The desktop isn't going anywhere. The desktop operating system, on the other hand, not so much.
    The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter - Winston Churchill

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  29. #149

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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Please let MS know we want vb6 Open Sourced; goto https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dot...future-of-net/

    Enter VB6 in the other box as the first answer, no other place to indicate this

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    Last edited by axisdj; May 1st, 2018 at 05:00 PM.

  30. #150
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    I would love to see vb6 ported to Linux.
    Thanks all !

  31. #151
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by axisdj View Post
    Please let MS know we want vb6 Open Sourced; goto https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dot...future-of-net/

    Enter VB6 in the other box as the first answer, no other place to indicate this

    i-programmer have an article about this.

    http://www.i-programmer.info/news/89...-we-start.html

    Interesting i-programmer say...
    In fact the only thing that .NET did wrong was to kill off VB6 - it should have been allowed to coexist for those wanting to use it. Instead Microsoft provided as its replacement VB .NET, which added nothing that C# didn't already have.

  32. #152
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by axisdj View Post
    Please let MS know we want vb6 Open Sourced; goto https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dot...future-of-net/

    Enter VB6 in the other box as the first answer, no other place to indicate this

    see pictureName:  vb6.jpg
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    Perhaps the .NET team is complaining to Microsoft's decision makers: Why not kill VB6 earlier? It has been said that in 2008, VB6 will no longer be supported. Why not keep your promise?

    -----------------------

    IMHO, instead of begging for Microsoft, it's better to get out of trouble by yourself.
    I think there are two ways to get out of trouble:
    1. Choose a cross-platform development tool that suits you
    2. Fully support Olaf to develop new compiler and IDE.

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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by dreammanor View Post
    Perhaps the .NET team is complaining to Microsoft's decision makers: Why not kill VB6 earlier? It has been said that in 2008, VB6 will no longer be supported. Why not keep your promise?

    -----------------------

    IMHO, instead of begging for Microsoft, it's better to get out of trouble by yourself.
    I think there are two ways to get out of trouble:
    1. Choose a cross-platform development tool that suits you
    2. Fully support Olaf to develop new compiler and IDE.
    I am doing both.

    1. if I have to, I will be moving from vb6 to Lazarus. I have spent the last couple of years learning it.

    2. I did, and do going even as far as starting an indigo go campaign.

    WP

  34. #154
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by axisdj View Post
    I am doing both.

    1. if I have to, I will be moving from vb6 to Lazarus. I have spent the last couple of years learning it.

    2. I did, and do going even as far as starting an indigo go campaign.

    WP
    I have written a couple of very simple programs in Lazarus just while learning a bit of object Pascal.
    Lazarus is a very impressive product and if I was starting out from scratch I'd strongly consider it for a desktop product.
    But I'd have thought that migrating an existing application from vb6 to .net is far easier than doing the same to Lazarus.
    I've found the migration tool in vb2008 pretty good on code I've tested it on. Nothing similar exists for Lazarus that I know of.

  35. #155
    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by dreammanor View Post
    It has been said that in 2008, VB6 will no longer be supported. Why not keep your promise?
    They did. Support ended, but that isn't the same as killing something. It just means that they won't be supporting it. If it runs, it runs....and it runs.
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  36. #156
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by C++Novice View Post
    I've found the migration tool in vb2008 pretty good on code I've tested it on. Nothing similar exists for Lazarus that I know of.
    You're one of the few. Not the only one that I have heard from, but people calling that migration tool "pretty good" are quite unusual. I have little experience with that tool, but found it to do a pretty mediocre job at most of the code, and not work at all for some other code. Doing a port by hand isn't too hard, either, and does a better job at the cost of considerably more time. I would hesitate to even suggest that conversion tool as a first step for any program of any size. For small programs, it may work tolerably, but never all that well, and the larger the project the worse it will do. You can always do better by hand, and for small projects that isn't much work, so the one place where the conversion tool may be adequate is the one place where it isn't worth using it.
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by C++Novice View Post
    I've found the migration tool in vb2008 pretty good on code I've tested it on.
    Only if you spell good c-r-a-p

  38. #158
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    Quote Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker View Post
    They did. Support ended, but that isn't the same as killing something. It just means that they won't be supporting it. If it runs, it runs....and it runs.
    Microsoft support statement for VB6.0 on Windows...
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/pre...support-policy

    The Visual Basic team is committed to "It Just Works" compatibility for Visual Basic 6.0 applications on the following supported Windows operating systems:

    Windows 10
    Windows 8.1
    Windows 7
    Windows Server 2016
    Windows Server 2012 including R2
    Windows Server 2008 including R2

    Key Visual Basic 6.0 runtime files, used in the majority of application scenarios, are shipping in and supported for the lifetime of supported Windows versions.

  39. #159
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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    so if you are on 1,2,3,95,nt,98,2000,me,xp,vista you need to upgrade to at least 7 or you are f*****
    im sure we can push it to the next windows as well vb6 will never die!

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    Re: How Many People are Sticking around Until the end of VB6

    If it runs, it runs
    That made me think of Drako from Rocky 4. I can just see him working on the next version of Windows and eyeing up the Com model... "Now I must Break You".
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