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Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

xyplorer.com

61–70 of 232 posts

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#61

VB3 was my first real intro to programming. Well, I started with C++ but abandoned it as an impatient child as describing a window in code wasn't fun. I wish we had a new drag and drop WYSIWYG to get people interested. Put Python or Go or even Basic behind it. QT maybe? Heck make it Electron. I'm not sure I would be where I am today without VB having existed, and it's a shame kids today don't have the same tools avai…

Even a tool like Frontpage was a game changer. Simple website in a minute without any need to know HTML. No free tool that does that today. Dreamweaver does, but it's paid.

That's how I learned HTML, building the page in Frontpage and then looking at the markup. I don't remember it being free though.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#63
post #49

> No multi-threading. A pity. But for a file manager not that important. It's honestly blazingly fast in comparison to Windows Explorer on Windows 11.

As much as I like C# the language, I honestly think that it and .NET are fundamentally flawed when it comes to performance.

Native Windows apps just never seem load that fast or work that great. It’s kind of crazy how much better the basic OS apps feel in macOS compared to Windows.

I wish Microsoft would have gone in a direction more similar to Apple, with an AOT compilation and reference counting.

JIT and garbage collection sound great in theory, but in practice I’ve found them both to be loaded with footguns that more than eliminate any benefits. At least with .NET, that is.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#64
I've been using XYplorer for 10 years now and it's fantastic. There are just so many features and quality of life improvements over the Windows explorer.

It's written by a single person, and they're very responsive. I've recently reported a bug with the search (the first that I've noticed in all those years), and it's been fixed within a day. I'm only worried about the bus factor a little.

I have a GitHub repo with some of my settings/scripts/notes for XYplorer if someone's interested: https://github.com/darekkay/config-files/tree/master/xyplore...

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#65
post #23
post #9

Early in my career, I worked in support for a company which made developer tooling. Male programmers would call in and do a bit of intro so you knew they were not dumb, just busy. VB6 programmers would say things like "I am a very senior VB developer". They were the only "very senior" programmers who did not seem to understand things about OS stuff. Like exported functions and their different calling conventions, why…

> They were the only "very senior" programmers... Don't forget nodejs.

Really? I feel like those of us maintaining PHP stacks are much more "senior" by now...

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#66

I used XYPlorer for about 5-6 years until I made the switch to using Linux on all my machines last year. The scripting, speed, dual panes, customization, portability between machines (i used Syncthing to sync my configs between 3 machines) on XyPlorer are phenomenal and I've sadly not been able to find a Linux native file manager that's at the same level. Dolphin comes close but even with qdbus commands it sadly not…

If you thought going from XYplorer to what's available on Linux was bad, now try going from Directory Opus to what's available on Linux :/

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#67
post #49

> No multi-threading. A pity. But for a file manager not that important. It's honestly blazingly fast in comparison to Windows Explorer on Windows 11.

As much as I like C# the language, I honestly think that it and .NET are fundamentally flawed when it comes to performance. Native Windows apps just never seem load that fast or work that great. It’s kind of crazy how much better the basic OS apps feel in macOS compared to Windows. I wish Microsoft would have gone in a direction more similar to Apple, with an AOT compilation and reference counting. JIT and garbage co…

Most Windows apps that are guilty of being slow and poorly made do not use the .NET you speak of at all. If they did they would work much better!

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#68

Works on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11 That's better than you can say for a lot of software these days

It's a feature of limiting yourself to the win32 api (and functions of it available since 2001 only).

Eg the moment you need to deal with security like certificate or whatever this goes out the window.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#69

I wonder how the code looks, it must be a maze of "on error goto" lines to not crash at the slightest error.

The person that has down voted this doesn't seem to know that error handling in VB6 works like that. Most functions don't return an error code you can check, neither are exceptions available.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#70

VB3 was my first real intro to programming. Well, I started with C++ but abandoned it as an impatient child as describing a window in code wasn't fun. I wish we had a new drag and drop WYSIWYG to get people interested. Put Python or Go or even Basic behind it. QT maybe? Heck make it Electron. I'm not sure I would be where I am today without VB having existed, and it's a shame kids today don't have the same tools avai…

Even a tool like Frontpage was a game changer. Simple website in a minute without any need to know HTML. No free tool that does that today. Dreamweaver does, but it's paid.

Not sure what you mean by “no free tool does that today”, there are plenty of free site builders out there, both on the web and desktop apps. Even more if you consider “freemium” site builders.
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