61–70 of 269 posts
> They didn't lament the lack of operator overloading or polymorphism in Visual Basic 6, so they didn't say much.
Java still lacks operator overloading to this day. Also, VB6 had properties, something that Java lacks to this day (and no, Lombok doesn’t count).
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.
Sorta like Excel, then?
And yet, so much of the world runs on excel spreadsheets being sent back and forth. Why? Because 1) it has a low skill floor and very high ceiling, 2) everyone uses the same tool (or at least it's backward and forward-compatible), and (critically) 3) it has a "programming model" that actually makes sense to the vast majority of people.
Same with Arduino, by the way. I think Arduino is a masterpiece. It allows people that don't even consider themselves programmers to write code for embedded systems with ease (traditionally a very hard thing to do). They go to the Arduino website, download a program, open an example, click a button and it works.
Also, the libraries are designed to be used by non-experts. That's so rare in the software world (and I don't know why*).
* I have some guesses but they are not nice to the programmers that make and use trendy software libraries.
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For what it's worth, I am a bus driver these days; a real one, no metaphor involved. And I sufficently disliked and mistrusted Visual Basic that already in the mid nineties I instigated a complete ban on any vb**run.dll on all computers under my jurisdiction. Mainly a heuristic: VB applications tended overwhelmingly to not being worth the inevitable trouble. I have proudly carried this curmudgery into the present cen…
Mind if I ask what you allow on your systems, today? Or the last time you worked in IT? (Not clear if you moved away from it or not)
Growing up all I knew was Windows, so being able to create fairly reasonable looking GUI apps at the time seemed like magic. I remember building a "web browser" in VB, I put that in quotes because it was really just an IE webview/control wrapped in my own custom UI with features like not recording browser history.
I remember making a "virus" and sending it to a mate, and when he opened it, you could send messages to him and open the CD drive on his computer.
I remember making a lottery number generator program and sending it to my Dad.
I even remember doing work experience in a computer repairs shop, the guy that ran it used to sell PCs with not so legit software on it and he got me a copy of Visual Basic 6.0, which was amazing at the time.
Definitely attribute my interest in programming, computers and everything to VB, no matter how much its look down upon!
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Sorta like Excel, then?
And Access! That's one amazing piece of software.
Microsoft killed VB with a clear purpose: controlling more tightly as much as Windows development as possible, copying the Java model with .NET.
If that seems like too conspiranoic theory, let's say that their new Devs head, Anders Hejlsberg, wanted a more uniform development experience around .NET and its star, C#.
I'd bet for the former.
VB was the one thing that most closely approached the promise of object orientation: "bolt-together," "off-the-shelf" components that you could build software with. In VB you could slap together a CRUD app in days, with VBXs (later renamed OCXs). I worked for a company where a bunch of programmers turned up their nose at VB and insisted on using C++, and then they got canned when the VB prototype functioned perfectly…
> VB was the one thing that most closely approached the promise of object orientation: "bolt-together," "off-the-shelf" components that you could build software with. I think Delphi perfected it with the data aware components. If you had a DB you could throw together a CRUD application with several screens with tablegrids and edit fields without any code at all. Even Master:Detail relations are taken care of. (Of cou…
As I remember, making validation errors pretty was a bit of a chore, but on most of our backend stuff we just showed the SQL error and it usually made sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Access! That's one amazing piece of software.
Access could easily become a victim of its own success if the dataset got too large. I made some money off of a couple projects where that happened. I had to convert them to sqlserver to both handle the data load and for true multiuser.
Edit: 2gb!
It was surprising to us (here at Retool) that visual programming has never taken off, despite countless attempts over the past few decades. (That's why we started Retool, after all.) But Visual Basic is probably the product that came closest, and that's why we wrote this homage to it. It, along with Filemaker, Hypercard, are products that we loved. And we always wished that they had flourished, since then we wouldn't…
I wouldn't say it didn't take off, it just has 'landed' again somewhere over the last 10-20 years. VB, Xcode Interface Builder, Hypercard, Filemaker & Lotus Notes all had pretty good runs, we just never got something similarly successful for the web & even smartphones, probably due to compatibility issues with varying screen sizes. Once the screen can be wildly resized, it just becomes too murky. Maybe have the progr…
In fact, I get handed stuff made with tools like these somewhat regularly in order to develop a web app. At some point they become unwieldy and limiting.
I think it’s wonderful that anyone with some technical curiosity can make useful applications with these.
Of course they have a lot of limitations. But that’s fine. They can call a software developer when they actually need one.