141–150 of 292 posts
I loved VB. I don't think I've ever been as productive as I was in VB - I could literally knock together a complete desktop application in an afternoon. It wasn't perfect. There were lots of problems with it. It would never win prizes in CS competitions. But man you could build shit with it fast.
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> There would have been no need for Python syntax or Golang with Visual Basic's simplicity in a windows only world.
Not if they would have made it open source 2001 - or anytime later for that matter.
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The only problem is that Powershell as language is pretty bad. I wouldn’t want to write my vB6 projects in Powershell.
It’s definitely one of the ugliest languages (syntax wise) that enjoys widespread usage, at least in Microsoft land.
myfunc -param1 this -param2 that
instead of:
myfunc(param1: this, param2: that);
I get the impression it's designed with the intent that you're supposed to type the dash, then hit Tab to get tab-completion in most cases. Same with the verb/noun syntax (I know I want to 'Get' something, so typing Get- for the list of things is usually the thing to do). I do find it a bit difficult sometimes to think of an approprioate verb right off the top of my head (is it Get- or New- that I need?).
I'd also love to see the concept of proper namespaces in PowerShell; it seems really inconsistent right now (unless I've missed something). For example, type Show-Command and hit ENTER, then look at the different modules that are available. Some will express a 'namespace' by having it prepended to the noun (see for example, commands from the BitLocker module, their nouns all start with BitLocker) while others express no namespace at all (see for example commands from the 'Dism' module). For everyday use I've gone with the 'add the name to the noun' approach in my own scripts. That does mean I tend to use short namespace names though.
I've mentioned this in an older PowerShell-related thread here - MenuComplete is absolutely awesome and improves the PowerShell experience in the console. I actually think it should be the default. If you havent already, try these commands:
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -key Tab -Function MenuComplete
Set-PSReadLineOption -ShowToolTips
PowerShell is my full-time shell in Windows now (and it will be in Linux also when I get back into it); I rarely use CMD for anything and parsing text in bash just seems antiquated.
To me, this shows the huge risk of building on a language/platform that depends on a single company. This even happened earlier. Visual Basic .NET is grossly incompatible with Visual Basic 6, so much so that Visual Basic .NET is essentially a different language and was derisively called Visual Fred http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/V/Visual-Fred.html ... Of course, it was possible to rewrite software so that would wor…
As an ex-VB6 programmer, my view is that Microsoft has been fairly supportive of VB users. - The IDE itself was supported for 10 years, till 2008 - The runtime is supported till 2024, which is like 26 years. I think you can get it to work on Windows 10 as well, though I haven't tried it myself. I still see people using VB apps. My view is that VB.Net should never have been created, since it was closer to C# than it w…
It isn't going to be major in itself, but becoming known for being a specialist in a corporate sponsored language is a pretty catastrophic career error. Anyone who learned C on the other hand looks pretty clever.
To me, this shows the huge risk of building on a language/platform that depends on a single company. This even happened earlier. Visual Basic .NET is grossly incompatible with Visual Basic 6, so much so that Visual Basic .NET is essentially a different language and was derisively called Visual Fred http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/V/Visual-Fred.html ... Of course, it was possible to rewrite software so that would wor…
As an ex-VB6 programmer, my view is that Microsoft has been fairly supportive of VB users. - The IDE itself was supported for 10 years, till 2008 - The runtime is supported till 2024, which is like 26 years. I think you can get it to work on Windows 10 as well, though I haven't tried it myself. I still see people using VB apps. My view is that VB.Net should never have been created, since it was closer to C# than it w…
VB3 was my first real language. I'd attempted stuff before on spectrum and BBC BASIC and later QBASIC, but VB3 not only allowed easy development of a GUI application, it allowed you to distribute an EXE -- a real grownup program, not a ".bas" file. I wrote my first commercial program in VB3 or VB4, to look after book orders, had an access database behind it, and all sorts of oddness to do printing if I recall rightly…
I was just a kid, maybe 10 or 12, when I learned to program with QBASIC and later VB5. I remember strongly feeling that a ".bas" file wasn't a real program. I so much wanted to be able to run my programs as real .EXE files. There was some kind of QBASIC compiler that made an .EXE but I felt like that was just... still not real enough. That desire for making a real bonafide .EXE was one of the driving reasons I (tried to) learn C.
Previous submission at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22559045 I thought HN was supposed to collapse duplicate submissions to a single topic? URL appears to be identical. Is there some kind of cache issue in HN's backend?
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I used to think this too, but everything you can do in VB6 you can do in powershell, and do it better. Try/Catch, windows forms.. literally anything you can think of. You can even mix powershell and C# together in the same script. Once I realized I had a better version of everything I wanted, it became my new favorite.
Quickly and easily design and make a GUI program with n real training? VB6 got me into programming as a kid. I mostly use python for stats stuff. I sorta understand how to run up a GUI using tkinter, but it seems like a huge pain in the ass. I'm sure Visual Studio offers the ability to do whatever VB6 could with a GUI, but it isn't obvious how to get there. VB6 was one nice thing - build 'a program' as you understand…
I loved VB6. Of all the languages and IDE's I've ever used, I've never been more efficient in any other one. As long as MS doesn't break my workarounds to run that old IDE or its EXE's, I'm happy. VB.NET was a great stepping stone, but after switching to C# I never looked back. The only thing I miss is global functions that don't need a class qualifier in front of them. And I still find the Edit-and-Continue debuggin…
I loved VB6. Of all the languages and IDE's I've ever used, I've never been more efficient in any other one. As long as MS doesn't break my workarounds to run that old IDE or its EXE's, I'm happy. VB.NET was a great stepping stone, but after switching to C# I never looked back. The only thing I miss is global functions that don't need a class qualifier in front of them. And I still find the Edit-and-Continue debuggin…
I used to think this too, but everything you can do in VB6 you can do in powershell, and do it better. Try/Catch, windows forms.. literally anything you can think of. You can even mix powershell and C# together in the same script. Once I realized I had a better version of everything I wanted, it became my new favorite.