Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

re: Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

Dean — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:42:29 GMT

I am a VB6 developer and I will never learn .Net... at home I use Ubuntu and I'm looking to re-skill on that platform or move into a non-programming role. I will continue to do VB6 consultancy work for companies that refuse to re-write their software for no business benefit.

re: Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

Mr. Marcus — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:24:55 GMT

I'm with JF. This dinosaur should have been buried years ago. VB's single threaded model is not a viable approach for anyone developing applications that would ever show up in an Enterprise environment. Yet, there are plenty of crappy VB6 applications that companies are trying to support that should never have been let in the front door or developed internally. Modern operating systems are marching steadly toward 64-bit programming. Either evolve as developers or retire. Don't hold the rest of us back...

re: Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

Saeed A. — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:06:54 GMT

I know a large number of people that are using it now!

even they are researching web for solutions for their headache about Crystal Reports and Other staffs in Windows 7.

If you do such a great thing, God certainly will bless you all!

saeed_adami@yahoo.com

re: Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

JF — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:10:09 GMT

@Adam VB6

The rest of the world needs to look forward. There is a lot of new stuff that is extremely useful like (EF, lambda expression, LINQ, etc). Should we stop evolving to accomodate people riding out their last years before retirement or people like Bonnie West who don't understand the .Net Framework ?

re: Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

Paul — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:48:32 GMT

Is this just support for the runtime of developed applications, or will the actual development of VB6 be possible on a Win7 machine?

re: Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

Adam VB6 — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:22:16 GMT

I just don't see the point in all these new things like Silverstream and EF. Why can't they just leave things like they were in VB6? I'm just trying to ride out my last few years until retirement.

re: Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

Winston Potgieter — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:24:57 GMT

I think if MS can make vba work for 64bit, I am sure they can do it for VB6 with ease. I think if they release a updated version of vb6 (VB7), all of the current devs would buy it, that would equal to millions, plus the positive PR would stop the MAC revolution. It would ensure MS stays on top of the OS wars.

As far as what is needed to make VB6 compete in todays market, gosh the problem is I can do everything any other DEV enviroment can do, quicker, easier, and it runs natively. Don't quite know what to ask for except 64 bit compilation and future OS compatibility, maybe win8 mobile compilation?

What features would you guys ask for?

re: Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

joyhn — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:57:41 GMT

vb6 is the best when considering the performance and productivity and the size.

vb.net should be get rid of, it is too bad when compare to c#. .net only need c#.

they should give a vb7 based on win32 and winrt directly, not based on .net. .net is too slow, can't use it for product, .net is only suitable for web.

Microsoft has created a lot of languages , creating too much dispersion. Not like apple, only a obj-c. so Apple 's strength is more concentrated. So apple can beat Microsoft.

re: Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

Bonnie West — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:11:07 GMT

That's great because I had just started programming in VB6. I have tried VB.NET, but I got so confused with its syntax and intimidating library, not to mention its verbosity compared to Classic VB. And also, I don't like how its IDE is consuming all available memory on my poor PC (I have just 256MB of RAM) causing my HD to trash like mad. Finally, I can't understand how .NET executables can be so sluggish compared to VB6 exes. I wish somebody would develop a compiler compatible with Classic VB code that produces stand-alone executables.

re: Visual Basic 6: Old Soldiers Never Die…

MarkJ — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:21:39 GMT

I would like to see Microsoft respecting the investments that its customers have made in VB6 code.

I would like to see a **free, working,** migration path for VB6 code into a modern platform like VB.Net. One that creates code that compiles and works and has no dependencies on obsolete libraries.

It is entirely possible. There are excellent third-party migration solutions, for instance from CodeArchitects or ArtinSoft. Microsoft should buy them and make them available free.

The migration tool built into Visual Studio wasn't good enough, it required too much manual rework. And, in fact, that migration tool was removed in Visual Studio 2010. And also, that conversion tool produced code that relies on Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility.VB6 and that library has now been marked obsolete in .Net 4. You can remove the "obsolete" marker on that library too.