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Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

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Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#161

Post by j-a-a-p »

amtamt wrote: post #47
dghlsakjg wrote: post #30

I think for a lot of purposes, the internet kind of took over. VB was great if you needed to do something limited to a single machine. These days, we want data to be available across machines which requires using a network, and the default network is the internet. If I'm going to be using the internet anyway, I can knock up something in HTML + JS + firebase/whatever data store, and have an application that works on a…

> VB was great if you needed to do something limited to a single machine. VB6 used to work with oracle across network.

Same here, we did a VB6 project that allowed the customer to chat with their remote mortgage advisor using a webcam, around '98.

The client was supposed to go to a local branch of the bank and then connect to the banks HQ.

I have also wondered why the software industry with the arrival of Internet went away from all these excellent tools. Not just VB6, but remember all the 4GL and model driven development tools. All gone and never really replaced.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#162

Post by layer8 »

Microsoft effectively killed VB because they decided everyone should be using .NET. While they created VB .NET in an attempt to make the transition palatable to VB programmers, this was a second-class citizen to the CLR, and more importantly too different from VB, more akin to an inferior C# with VB-like syntax than actual VB. It was widely decried by VB developers [0], and nick-named "Visual Fred" due to really being a different language than VB. Microsoft ignored that, and also didn't bring a VB-like experience to .NET. It didn't help that mainstream software development started drifting to the web, and later also to mobile apps.

[0] https://classicvb.net/vfred/breaks.asp

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#163

Post by polotics »

codeulike wrote: post #101

People want more these days. With VB you could write a CRUD application that saved data to a database and ran some reports. But now people want the database to pull in multiple feeds from other businesses via API, people want it to be available on the web, it needs to have a self service component so the customer can also log in, at the back end the database is connected to several other systems with daily feeds comi…

VB6 could do all these things and more, in the 90's I built just the right small parts in C++ to glue things together, and we could do multi-processing, resilient multi-server setups, and much much more. Serving HTTP for some always-limiting browser was an obvious easy sidenote, ie. what your mantra "available on the web" wraps in silver, but leveraging the full power of the desktop and OS was what power users actually wanted, and would still want now if the apps were there. I think some people at Microsoft realized VB had the potential to canibalize a lot of what they wanted as their proprietary backyard, and they killed the baby before it would grow into more of a mass movement. Now they succeeded, many that would have been educated into owning their computers now mindlessly click on "Yes" and are lost in the adds panopticon, but then MS had to non-compete some of the pie off to Google and co...

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#164

Post by dahwolf »

Not just VB, but also things like Borland Delphi.

25 years ago, you could visually compose a UI using standardized components, including advanced concepts like a layout manager. You could do data-binding visually by navigating a linked database. You can write logic/events just by double-clicking a button and the event is created. Here you'd write your code which would typically be pretty easy because all contextual objects are readily available.

Sure enough, I understand that the above development model also has its limitations and doesn't serve all common modern needs. But still, it's pretty pathetic what we ended up with. Our tool chains are much more complicated and we program at a lower abstraction level whilst requiring a laundry list of skills.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#165

Post by steve1977 »

bonzini wrote: post #154
mamcx wrote: post #134

The reason is even bigger than just VB. MS at the time just decide to fully kill the "enthusiast" developer and the "single/truly small" team developer. This is mostly covered under the "RAD" umbrella. It kills VB, FoxPro, and now more evidently, Access (more like let it slowly die). .NET + Visual Studio + Sql Server are not a substitute in this market. Them are for "professional developer"/"a small cog in a big mach…

Serious question: what is a good alternative to Access (edit: to build a GUI frontend to a database)? The database design tools and basic forms were incredibly easy to use, and there were very good tutorials for everything else. LibreOffice Base is different and not even close in comprehensiveness, and there seems to be nothing replacing it that isn't a super expensive SaaS.

For a long time I would have said FileMaker, but considering the strategic moves of Claris in the last few years probably not anymore

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#166

Post by alberth »

dwheeler wrote: post #87

Visual Basic (both of them) still exist, but their use has dropped dramatically through some big changes: * "Visual .NET" (aka "Visual Fred" http://catb.org/jargon/html/V/Visual-Fred.html ) was released by Microsoft. This was an incompatible language confusingly also called Visual Basic. I don't think Microsoft realized how angry this made developers and businesses, who were being asked to spend hundreds of billions…

ASP & ASP.NET

You forget to mention those two, which are important to the history of events.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#167

Post by nerdix »

Visual Basic was mostly used for LOB applications. That stuff mostly migrated to the web. When businesses decided to move those applications to the web, they had a choice between C# and VB.NET (if they stuck to the MS stack). C# ultimately won. Most of the old VB developers that are still around have converted over to being C# developers now.

When everything was a desktop app then the choice was C++ or VB and there were a lot of situations where VB "won". Today C# does everything VB used to do but better on the desktop and non-performance sensitive applications are increasingly using Electron anyway.

Performance sensitive desktop app = C++ Windows focused non-performace sensitive desktop app = C# Cross platform non-performace sensitive desktop app = JS/TS in Electron Web app = anything but VB

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#168

Post by Biganon »

bonzini wrote: post #154
mamcx wrote: post #134

The reason is even bigger than just VB. MS at the time just decide to fully kill the "enthusiast" developer and the "single/truly small" team developer. This is mostly covered under the "RAD" umbrella. It kills VB, FoxPro, and now more evidently, Access (more like let it slowly die). .NET + Visual Studio + Sql Server are not a substitute in this market. Them are for "professional developer"/"a small cog in a big mach…

Serious question: what is a good alternative to Access (edit: to build a GUI frontend to a database)? The database design tools and basic forms were incredibly easy to use, and there were very good tutorials for everything else. LibreOffice Base is different and not even close in comprehensiveness, and there seems to be nothing replacing it that isn't a super expensive SaaS.

Filemaker?

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#169

Post by dijit »

bonzini wrote: post #154
mamcx wrote: post #134

The reason is even bigger than just VB. MS at the time just decide to fully kill the "enthusiast" developer and the "single/truly small" team developer. This is mostly covered under the "RAD" umbrella. It kills VB, FoxPro, and now more evidently, Access (more like let it slowly die). .NET + Visual Studio + Sql Server are not a substitute in this market. Them are for "professional developer"/"a small cog in a big mach…

Serious question: what is a good alternative to Access (edit: to build a GUI frontend to a database)? The database design tools and basic forms were incredibly easy to use, and there were very good tutorials for everything else. LibreOffice Base is different and not even close in comprehensiveness, and there seems to be nothing replacing it that isn't a super expensive SaaS.

The parents point is that there is no alternative, because everyone left the market chasing Microsoft.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#170

Post by LeifCarrotson »

bonzini wrote: post #154
mamcx wrote: post #134

The reason is even bigger than just VB. MS at the time just decide to fully kill the "enthusiast" developer and the "single/truly small" team developer. This is mostly covered under the "RAD" umbrella. It kills VB, FoxPro, and now more evidently, Access (more like let it slowly die). .NET + Visual Studio + Sql Server are not a substitute in this market. Them are for "professional developer"/"a small cog in a big mach…

Serious question: what is a good alternative to Access (edit: to build a GUI frontend to a database)? The database design tools and basic forms were incredibly easy to use, and there were very good tutorials for everything else. LibreOffice Base is different and not even close in comprehensiveness, and there seems to be nothing replacing it that isn't a super expensive SaaS.

SQLite. It's not close in terms of ease-of-use of the GUI administration and forms, but as a single-server database solution to embed into a line-of-business app it's fantastic.
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