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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.
1. Microsoft did a good thing at that time with Visual Basic. Building visual interfaces with RAD tools is the most efficient way, as defining visual elements with code is harder. VB was great at its time, Borland Delphi and C++ Builder were good, QT Builder was good, Windows Forms was good. Of course, why use good models when you can inflict pain and let people define UIs by using plain code?
WPF used XAML and the new MAUI uses XAML, and while it is a better experience to define the visuals with XAML, a RAD tool like VB or C++ builder is much better. We should have RAD tools for desktop apps and mobile apps.
In my software career I've not only built apps and websites and web applications and backends, but I worked as a game programmer, too. And people preferred game engines like Unreal and Unity because they were rapid tools with which is was much easier to build game levels and UIs than doing that by code.
2. I didn't use VB, because by the time I've encountered VB, I already knew C and C++ and felt they were more powerful and fast. I enjoyed using Borland C++ builder very much, and I wondered why MS didn't provide such a tool and enforced Win32 over programmers. I thought Microsoft hated programmers. And being that failed to provide one API for desktop programming, switching from Win32 to MFC to Windows Forms, to WPF, to MAUI - I still sometime think MS doesn't do the best job with providing tools for programmers. Now that MAUI is the thing, I hope it will stay and won't be replaced in two years by another thing.
3. If people think using Haskell or Rust is hard, they should buy Petzold's Book and try to program Windows with the info provided in that book. To do very simple things like apps with menus and child Windows, you really had to spend hours, correct compile errors, have the program crash, debug it, make it not crash, observe that things don't work as they should, change the code, solve errors, observe that the program crashes, solve those bugs, make it not crash, observe that things don't work as they should. And all that without having learn.microsoft.com, stackoverflow, YouTube to learn from.
Hilarious quote (notwithstanding the fact that bus drivers usually have to work shifts, also on weekends): > Almost all Visual Basic 6 programmers were content with what Visual Basic 6 did. They were happy to be bus drivers: to leave the office at 5 p.m. (or 4:30 p.m. on a really nice day) instead of working until midnight; to play with their families on weekends instead of trudging back to the office. They didn't la…
I'd say that Microsoft heard the voices of the poor souls that had to convert the buggy code from the idiots into usable applications.
That's how we ended up with CRUD apps that are practically indistinguishable from their Visual Basic 6 predecessors, except they're deployed on k8s clusters instead of a 133 MHz Pentium in the corner.
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.
https://twitter.com/dosnostalgic/status/803339511845552128?l...
Couple of thoughts: 1. Microsoft did a good thing at that time with Visual Basic. Building visual interfaces with RAD tools is the most efficient way, as defining visual elements with code is harder. VB was great at its time, Borland Delphi and C++ Builder were good, QT Builder was good, Windows Forms was good. Of course, why use good models when you can inflict pain and let people define UIs by using plain code? WPF…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
I think the implication was that his radical puritanism left him unemployable except as a literal bus driver.
Also, I believe the word you're looking for is purism. I'll certainly go along with that.
Also also, out of curiosity, where did you dredge up the "he"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say that Microsoft heard the voices of the poor souls that had to convert the buggy code from the idiots into usable applications.
Or: Microsoft heard the voices of the entitled souls who looked at working applications and thought they were bad because they weren't DRY enough or something. That's how we ended up with CRUD apps that are practically indistinguishable from their Visual Basic 6 predecessors, except they're deployed on k8s clusters instead of a 133 MHz Pentium in the corner.
Hilarious quote (notwithstanding the fact that bus drivers usually have to work shifts, also on weekends): > Almost all Visual Basic 6 programmers were content with what Visual Basic 6 did. They were happy to be bus drivers: to leave the office at 5 p.m. (or 4:30 p.m. on a really nice day) instead of working until midnight; to play with their families on weekends instead of trudging back to the office. They didn't la…
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…