11–20 of 269 posts
Once I had it installed I had like 6mb free space.
I made a bunch of AO-progz and an mp3 player. And a bunch of friends in #vb6 on aol, which I keep to this day.
Visual Basic 4 is when I fell in love with programming. I remember staying up late (school nights no less) just playing around and designing GUIs. I had done some programming before with Pascal, C and even QBasic, but nothing was quite as fascinating as dragging and dropping fully functional controls and having them light up with functionality in minutes. Up until a few years ago, I was still reaching out to WinForms…
“Up until a few years ago, I was still reaching out to WinForms / C# to build quick prototypes” What replaced them for you? I still use Windows forms a lot for prototypes and utilities and was curious if there is something else I should be looking at.
Nerds just can't wrap their heads around this idea: no normal person wants to be a programmer. But they do want to make little custom things to help them get stuff done in life. Just like nobody wants to be a plumber, but they do want to be able to fix their faucet.
Ryan and David and team, I am so happy to see this posted! I'm quoted a few places in it. Yes, the story about the origin of the phrase "fire an event" is true and correct. I could even tell you exactly where I was sitting and which way I was facing when that event fired. Some things stick in your mind, doobies or not. Also mentioned is the VBX. In some ways, this may have been the worst API I ever designed. It was s…
Thanks, Michael! Finding your comments on HN about the design details of the original "Ruby" version of VB and VBX was part of my inspiration for writing this article in the first place. Your recollection of "firing an event" is my favorite kind of classic Silicon Valley story.
Ruby/VB was a labor of love for us. One of my favorite episodes of Silicon Valley was the TechCrunch Disrupt where every founder said "we want to make the world a better place." It's funny, but true! That is exactly what we wanted to do.
Anyone who likes the "fire an event" story may also enjoy What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff:
You know why Visual Basic was the best programming language ever made? Because it wasn't a programming language. Nerds just can't wrap their heads around this idea: no normal person wants to be a programmer. But they do want to make little custom things to help them get stuff done in life. Just like nobody wants to be a plumber, but they do want to be able to fix their faucet.
Ryan and David and team, I am so happy to see this posted! I'm quoted a few places in it. Yes, the story about the origin of the phrase "fire an event" is true and correct. I could even tell you exactly where I was sitting and which way I was facing when that event fired. Some things stick in your mind, doobies or not. Also mentioned is the VBX. In some ways, this may have been the worst API I ever designed. It was s…
Thanks for all your hard work! Without VB my career definitely wouldn't have happened.
I checked your HN profile, and my gosh, if I had even a small part in getting you started in this crazy business, that makes it all worth it.
I spent a couple weeks downloading a pirated vb6 with a download manager that could resume. I think it was 1GB, on dial-up. Once I had it installed I had like 6mb free space. I made a bunch of AO-progz and an mp3 player. And a bunch of friends in #vb6 on aol, which I keep to this day.
It wasn't the best language, no. But it was so damn easy to slap something together just to get things done. Draw me a window this size, put one of these there, one of these here, hook this method up to this button/slider/whatever... go!
Was it great for large-scale, complex stuff? Not so much, IMHO. But was it great for slapping together a quick, useful util or demo? Absolutely.
Visual Basic 4 is when I fell in love with programming. I remember staying up late (school nights no less) just playing around and designing GUIs. I had done some programming before with Pascal, C and even QBasic, but nothing was quite as fascinating as dragging and dropping fully functional controls and having them light up with functionality in minutes. Up until a few years ago, I was still reaching out to WinForms…
“Up until a few years ago, I was still reaching out to WinForms / C# to build quick prototypes” What replaced them for you? I still use Windows forms a lot for prototypes and utilities and was curious if there is something else I should be looking at.