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Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic

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Re: Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic

#181

Post by runlaszlorun »

jdiez17 wrote: post #62
Pamar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorta like Excel, then?

Excel is another amazing piece of software, that is almost universally looked down upon by programmers. Why make complex calculations in a GUI if you can just write a Python script with numpy and pandas!? 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 forwa…

As someone with an MBA (I know… forgive me father for I have sinned) I actually had been thinking that simple Python and maybe something like Jupiter might actually be a great alternative for spreadsheets while teaching business.

I not knocking spreadsheets- they’ve obviously stood the test of time. I feel their weakness is that the formulae are hidden and you’d need to click on individual cells to make sure their isn’t a logic error.

Re: Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic

#184

Post by afavour »

deafpolygon wrote: post #55
Pamar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorta like Excel, then?

And Access! That's one amazing piece of software.

IMO Access is the real undervalued hero. Most spreadsheets using more than a few VLOOKUPs should really be a simple database instead.

Re: Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic

#185

Post by marcus_holmes »

rob74 wrote: post #28

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 see this in the Golang forums a lot.

The people who moved to Go a while back, when it was unpopular, because they loved it, aren't that vocal (apart from the continuous cries of "just use the standard library!").

The people coming to the language from other languages, not because they like Go but because they need to use it for work (because it's now a popular language), are very vocal about how they don't like it because it's not what they're used to (though usually this is phrased differently - usually complaints about Go's "inexpressiveness").

I was one of the people who loved VB6 and struggled with VB.Net, wandering through JS and PHP, until I found Go and fell in love with it immediately. I would hate for history to repeat itself and the Go team to make the same mistake that MS did with VB.

Re: Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic

#186

Post by jdiez17 »

runlaszlorun wrote: post #181
jdiez17 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel is another amazing piece of software, that is almost universally looked down upon by programmers. Why make complex calculations in a GUI if you can just write a Python script with numpy and pandas!? 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 forwa…

As someone with an MBA (I know… forgive me father for I have sinned) I actually had been thinking that simple Python and maybe something like Jupiter might actually be a great alternative for spreadsheets while teaching business. I not knocking spreadsheets- they’ve obviously stood the test of time. I feel their weakness is that the formulae are hidden and you’d need to click on individual cells to make sure their is…

Don't get me wrong, I think Jupyter Notebooks are great if you are a programmer or want to learn programming.

But there's a massive usability gap between downloading an application and "open the command line, run pip install jupyter, oh pip is not installed, google the error message, copy and paste this command from a random website, try again, etc". It's better now with JupyterLab Desktop, but that's only been around for a few months.

Re: Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic

#187

Post by Kwpolska »

DeathArrow wrote: post #92
Kwpolska wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WPF’s and Android’s approach are the best of both worlds. You get both a visual designer that can get you far, and human-editable XML, which is useful for more complicated layouts or for copy-pasting similar widgets around.

WPF is dead, now we have MAUI for both desktop and mobile development. Let's hope MS doesn't find a new shiny thing.

WPF is definitely not dead. It may not be the latest shiny thing, but it works, it is maintained (judging by https://github.com/dotnet/wpf or https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/wpf-on-dotnet-7/), and it is fully and officially supported on the modern .NET platform.

Re: Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic

#188

Post by mixdup »

mhd wrote: post #79
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #13

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.

> Nerds just can't wrap their heads around this idea: no normal person wants to be a programmer. I'm coming to the exact opposite conclusion: A lot of people benefit from programmin a little . Which, at the time when VB came out, was a very popular opinion. Still enough computers around with BASIC as their interface. User-focused databases like dBase. Spreadsheets. VB was a bit in the uncanny valley between "professi…

>> Nerds just can't wrap their heads around this idea: no normal person wants to be a programmer.

>I'm coming to the exact opposite conclusion: A lot of people benefit from programmin a little.

These are actually the same thing. There's a difference between having a little power to shave off the rough edges of your computing day as say an inventory specialist for a warehouse and being a kernel developer

People benefit from a little bit of programming ability, but they don't want to be programmers

Just like people benefit from being able to change their own oil but don't want to be mechanics

Re: Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic

#189

Post by bena »

cutler wrote: post #152
bena wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Fuck Access. Access is a useless piece of software that serves no purpose well. Either your data is small enough to be managed by Excel or your data is complex enough to be better served by a database and frontend. Dealing with the idiosyncrasies of Access is never worth it.

So how do you build a desktop database with a staff user interface for a small business running on a couple of Windows desktops?

If you're ok with your data being duplicated in multiple files, you're ok with Excel.

If you want your data centralized, with the application being a portal to that data, you use a database with a frontend built in your choice of language.

Re: Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic

#190

Post by namaria »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #13

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.

I think you're conflating programming with coding. Us nerdy types like coding because it's so flexible and powerful. But setting an alarm is programming, as much as building a spreadsheet etc. Using a computer device for anything more then consuming media involves some degree of programming it. Everyone is a programmer now.

But there is a big difference between being able to build and deliver software starting from nothing but a directory full of code and configuring point and click interfaces. Most people don't need to be coders. They just need to be able to program their computers a little bit.

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