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Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

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Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#511

Post by lelanthran »

askvictor wrote: post #229
dahwolf wrote: post #164

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 o…

Having used both early in my career, Delphi absolutely shat on VB. But I'd be really interested to see the code I wrote in the 90s and see how it stands up in terms of reliability, maintainability, testability etc. The closest thing I've found in the modern age is https://anvil.works - basically works like Delphi/VB, but web based, and in Python. For both frontend and backend.

> The closest thing I've found in the modern age is https://anvil.works - basically works like Delphi/VB, but web based, and in Python

You haven't used Lazarus (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/)?

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#512

Post by jacquesm »

ralphc wrote: post #510
jacquesm wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came across such a project recently built using FileMaker in 2001 or so. On the original hardware, no less.

Please encourage them to make a backup and get it into a VM. You should be able to find Windows 2000 if it will run on that.

I actually did just that. But I can't enforce things, only recommend.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#513

Post by popashack »

I totally agree. VB 1-6 was an interesting ride. Abolishing VB6 was a travesty. Once upon a time we had true RAD code, it was VB6. I do not code seriously much anymore, but when I do I miss the simplicity of fixing problems and not worrying about the code as much.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#514

Post by rvba »

harry8 wrote: post #483
rvba wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is funny how you talk tjat Excel is bad and the examples just dont work. Also lack of accuracy in calculating some complicated statistics that "nobody" uses is not really a calculation bug. Also most of those come from the fact that Excel has a precision of 15 digits.

My fav was when ms announced they'd paid an academic to fix =rand(), ignoring all the others. Let's see it. Fill the visible part of a sheet with it, conditional format the cells, red for negative etc. hit f9 to recalc and see a big bunches of cells turn red. Fixed random function to return a random number between 0 and 1. I haven't worked on gnumeric for a long time - examples came from gnumeric.org Excel was really…

> My fav was when ms announced they'd paid an academic to fix =rand(), ignoring all the others.

I am not sure what that means.

Excel keeps all the bugs for backwards compatibility. So the sheets made years ago still provide same results. In few cases the depreciated some functions -> the old ones still work, but are relatively hidden and the users are encouraged to use the new ones.

They probably should do the same with the statistical functions that supposedly have problems due to rounding. But that cannot be fixed - precision is up to 15 digits.

Also if you wanted an article that talks on Excel precision, you can start with the wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeric_precision_in_Microsoft...

Excel has many problems, but you linking to few website that supposedly prove that "Excel bad" - but at the same time - those exiles simply dont work, is somehow very funny.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#515

Post by sn_master »

Turskarama wrote: post #382
sn_master wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WinForms in C# was pretty decent tbh. Not so sure about WCF/Metro/Modern and whatever it is now that Microsoft been releasing. They just stopped caring about consistent UI for apps on Windows altogether since ~2010 or so.

You say was but winforms is still supported in VS2022 and is probably my go-to if I need to hack together a small windows program.

Correct, but it hasn't been upgraded in over a decade. It no longer produces apps that are consistent with Microsoft's own the way it was until Windows 7.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#516

Post by analog31 »

emodendroket wrote: post #501
Khartoum wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem was, nobody was willing to claim ownership. The business guy who wrote it was long gone, and IT would not accept an Access app. If the business relies upon that Access app, and IT refuses to accept it, then it's a failure of IT to accept it and then replace it. IT exists to serve the business.

OK but does IT exist to serve the business by accepting responsibility for stuff that doesn’t meet their standards and they can’t really support? Why have qualified people at all then?

I can't speak to IT specifically, but generally the answer would be yes. Stuff happens, resulting in "nonstandard" or unexpected requests, and the decision on how to deal with them rests with the business, with reasonable input from the people involved. In my own work, this can often happen by accident when departments and business units are reorganized and acquired. I once got an entire product line dropped in my lap, that didn't work at all, hardware or software.

Many, if not most, professions are not nearly as well organized and optimized as IT, so we don't have things like silos and ticketing systems to regularize our work. I can imagine an IT worker who has never experienced a nonstandard request, but I can't imagine it in my own occupation.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#517

Post by qingcharles »

Unpopular opinion: VB.NET was superior to C#, especially in code-readability.

I've coded in dozens of languages, including a long spell as a video game developer writing x86 and C++. VB.NET was my favourite development language and I wrote some insanely complicated code in it.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#518

Post by harry8 »

rvba wrote: post #514
harry8 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fav was when ms announced they'd paid an academic to fix =rand(), ignoring all the others. Let's see it. Fill the visible part of a sheet with it, conditional format the cells, red for negative etc. hit f9 to recalc and see a big bunches of cells turn red. Fixed random function to return a random number between 0 and 1. I haven't worked on gnumeric for a long time - examples came from gnumeric.org Excel was really…

> My fav was when ms announced they'd paid an academic to fix =rand(), ignoring all the others. I am not sure what that means. Excel keeps all the bugs for backwards compatibility. So the sheets made years ago still provide same results. In few cases the depreciated some functions -> the old ones still work, but are relatively hidden and the users are encouraged to use the new ones. They probably should do the same w…

it's the web. links die. There's enough there to find the papers if you care. Which you clearly don't.

>Excel keeps all the bugs for backwards compatibility

They /fixed/ rand(). Announcements. Fanfare. The fixed version returned numbers less than zero.

yet again excel's calculating issues go way beyond double precision floating point truncation.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#519

Post by harry8 »

pillefitz wrote: post #507
harry8 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fav was when ms announced they'd paid an academic to fix =rand(), ignoring all the others. Let's see it. Fill the visible part of a sheet with it, conditional format the cells, red for negative etc. hit f9 to recalc and see a big bunches of cells turn red. Fixed random function to return a random number between 0 and 1. I haven't worked on gnumeric for a long time - examples came from gnumeric.org Excel was really…

First rule of Excel development: Don't use sheet formulas, stick to VBA and apply normal dev practices

what proportion of excel use does this? 0.000000001% or not as much as that in your view?

Re: Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?

#520

Post by mike_hearn »

SoftTalker wrote: post #509
mike_hearn wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an ability to force web-style updates on the client apps (which a tool like Conveyor supports, see my other posts or profile), then all you need is a database that supports many connections. You can then atomically upgrade all the clients by e.g. writing a version number to a db table that's checked as part of each transaction, if the version doesn't match the app proceeds to upgrade itself before continu…

IIRC back in the day, Windows could not replace a file if the file was open by any process. So an application could not update itself, without doing something like launching a separate "updater" and then exiting. Another thing people tried was putting the VB app on a network share so it wasn't installed on each machine, but I think all the ODBC and other config still had to be local on each client. Powerbuilder apps…

Yes, back then it was definitely a huge problem and one of the big reasons for the web's success.
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