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Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

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Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#231

Post by ak39 »

pjmlp wrote: post #223
ak39 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>but I came from Delphi to Java so that makes sense. Same. But I have remained with Delphi. I think we are now known as the lost generation. :-)

Doing .NET and Java nowadays, started using Borland products with Turbo Basic, jumped into Turbo Pascal 3.0, all the way up to Delphi 1.0 and C++ Builder, before caving in to the MFC world back then. Accepting new members into the club? :)

Delphi club membership is only for those who possess a ruthless, deep and time-transcending sense of commitment to these two aspects of software development:

1."No bullshit" - stick to the fundamentals and don't waste time over-engineering, relying on complex builds, producing ambiguous compiles (ok, we're still fixing this), relying on bulky runtime architectures. Have straightforward source code. Native. Straight-talking. Quick-compiling. Hard-hitting. Because Shipping Matters(tm). Only thing that matters. Shipping. No bullshit.

2. "Fiercely independent mindset" - Members know that they must use the right tools for the right job, but members must also display a strong ability to not be swayed by what employers are hiring for. Latest shiny flavour of tech, framework, language, might look good on your CV but many times the conclusion for "What is the right tool for this job?" can still be answered: "Delphi". Stand your ground.

So, if you are a CV-oriented programmer, you will most likely not want to do Delphi. There is an indelible and horribly misinformed meme out there that there are no Delphi jobs or that Delphi is dead, is old, outdated and irrelevant in modern software architectures. I have seen this ageist misinformation come out as lame attempts to ridicule Delphi programmers (jealousy?), branding them luddites and dinosaurs. We never retaliate. Quiet stoicism is a prerequisite for club membership.

Finally, the Delphi club also has a new membership protocol: always buy them a beer. No matter whether they eventually get accepted in the hallowed halls of this quiet corner. :-)

Cheers!

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#232

Post by bpizzi »

gerdesj wrote: post #62
kjaftaedi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>but everything you can do in VB6 you can do in powershell Excel modules? OK not quite exactly the same but close. I wrote a finite capacity planner system for a factory a fair few years ago in Excel to replace a huge number of Lotus 1-2-3 thingies with a vast amount of copy n paste from text screens and random sheets and what not. I started with an automated forecast. We used an (memory may be fading) exponential fi…

Thanks for sharing, absolutely interesting!

I'm pretty sure that if you partner with someone that can package your food supply chain knowledge into a nice UI/UX experience (or doing it yourself, idk), you could produce and sell a decent piece of niche software for planning in food plants.

At $work we are into software for managing plants (not in the food industry), and the demand for tailor made planning functions is obvious.

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#234

Post by dirtydroog »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #93
stcredzero wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I loved VB6. Of all the languages and IDE's I've ever used, I've never been more efficient in any other one. Other than the amount of work it would take, what's to keep someone from taking all of the specs and docs, and implementing a language compatible with VB6 and VB.NET?

VB6 and VB.NET are barely related. But, ignoring that, almost any app of any complexity in VB6 land will rely on bugs, quirks, and implementation details. (Also, I was never clear if the binary format for editing forms was actually documented somewhere). Someone could implement their own VB6 parser, but it seems like a ton of work for a vanishing market. All of that said, while typing this, a quick search revealed ht…

My final year project was a VB6 -> JVM compiler. I underestimated how big VB6 actually was and so only had time to implement a small fraction of the language. I did discover a bug in the IDE's code completion/formatter that would cause a compilation failure when the project was next loaded. That code is on a floppy somewhere

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#235

Post by dirtydroog »

trent_lott wrote: post #91
kjaftaedi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Same. My brother brought home an illegal copy of visual studio and I was hooked pretty much immediately. We had no internet at the time so I found myself using the MSDN knowledge base articles for potential explanations.

It really annoyed me that I couldn't get nice bitmaps in menus so I eventually learned about Ownerdraw. That changed my life. Having to hook into the wndproc and all the other windows api calls introduced me to C, and so I naturally started experimenting with C++. All without internet, stackoverflow or groups.

I'm now write C++ for a living.

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#237

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

I find that strategically unsound.. shouldnt you want to have a educational language ladder - from excel "programming" onwards toward some "real" powerful language like c#..

A ecosystem, that tries to upgrade people into softwaredevs, instead of having them thrive in there local pond, until they reach the limits of performance and then depend on large external software projects for the rescue?

Can you integrate c# into excell now as replacement..

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#238

Post by dirtydroog »

hermitdev wrote: post #103
mysterydip wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. I was a huge fan of VB6, spent thousands of hours writing all kinds of things. When I first heard of VB.NET, I was excited to see what new features were implemented, expecting something like VB4->VB5->VB6. Boy was I in for a surprise. It seemed more like C wrapped in VB syntax. I started looking to other languages at that point, but as some other posters said I never found anything quite able to match the…

I never did VB6 or VB.Net, but I've done VBscript with classic ASP and VBA in Excel. Glad I went with C# instead of VB.Net. Not trashing VB, but C# was always more capable and fully featured than VB (VB couldnt even do unsigned integers, and I dont it can even now), and almost immediately more widely adopted in even .Net 1.0. Hell, C++ with COM was more capable (if not extremely annoying amd error prone). Of course V…

Java still doesn't do unsigned

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#239

Post by leommoore »

I got started with VB1 and did my first commercial product in VB3. I wrote many applications in VB6 over the years and I was maintaining one application continually from 2000 to 2019. It worked great, with excellent debugging but was getting a bit long in the tooth over the last few years and the big fear not so much VB itself but the continued compatibility of third party components.

Like most developers I migrated to the curly braces languages (C# -> JavaScript -> TypeScript) but my first love will always be VB.

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#240

Post by pjmlp »

ak39 wrote: post #231
pjmlp wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing .NET and Java nowadays, started using Borland products with Turbo Basic, jumped into Turbo Pascal 3.0, all the way up to Delphi 1.0 and C++ Builder, before caving in to the MFC world back then. Accepting new members into the club? :)

Delphi club membership is only for those who possess a ruthless, deep and time-transcending sense of commitment to these two aspects of software development: 1."No bullshit" - stick to the fundamentals and don't waste time over-engineering, relying on complex builds, producing ambiguous compiles (ok, we're still fixing this), relying on bulky runtime architectures. Have straightforward source code. Native. Straight-t…

Still delivering stuff on ASP.NET Framework 4.7.x, have delivered a couple of Forms/WPF projects during the last decade to lifetime science R&D labs, own all Delphi books from Packt, I guess it kind of qualifies for the membership pitch. :)
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