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Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

xyplorer.com

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Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#71

Post by Joker_vD »

chii wrote: post #51
unscaled wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And COM/OLE/ActiveX components (whatever Microsoft fancied calling them that year) could have been used just as easily from Delphi. And you don't even need COM. You could do the same things today with RAD components in, say, Java. But it's just no longer a fad. Programmers nowadays don't think that dragging a component that makes phone calls and linking it to a button. Nowadays, they would just write "npm install tel…

The way COM model worked, is that an application (for example, microsoft word) would implement this COM interface (that they'd have to anyway, for various reasons such as interoperability), and it would become available as a component to be used in another application. It's a grandiose vision. It just didnt work out because of how complicated it is in practise to implement the COM interface(s), and not enough apps di…

I personally think one of the main design problems of COM was that, ironically (given its name), it never really had "component" as a first-class concept. It was all about interfaces, and the rules on how implementation of IUnknown's QueryInterface must behave really highlight that: it's almost impossible to delegate to/compose over another component if that component was not written with this scenario in mind.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#73

Post by wruza »

unscaled wrote: post #46
chii wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was magical that dropping a telephony component into a form enabled the form to make phone calls the magic of COM[0]! But when it crashed it crashed hard. And the underlying programming model (beyond just using premade ones) are a bit hard to grok and fraught with footguns that shoot not only yourself, but the OS as well. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model

And COM/OLE/ActiveX components (whatever Microsoft fancied calling them that year) could have been used just as easily from Delphi. And you don't even need COM. You could do the same things today with RAD components in, say, Java. But it's just no longer a fad. Programmers nowadays don't think that dragging a component that makes phone calls and linking it to a button. Nowadays, they would just write "npm install tel…

The closest I can actually find on npm is this:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-native-telephony

And it’s nowhere near these neat 3 lines. Same for ui.

I agree that the spirit of VB/Delphi is in theory easily transferrable to any modern runtime. But in practice we suck at it and there’s nothing even remotely close to just dropping a component on a form. All we have is miles of vaguely explained boilerplate and the most convoluted idioms that don’t connect. The basic technology is lost and only miraculously exists as a windows support artifact.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#74

Post by nolok »

For no specific reason other than life random offers I've gone through a few of those "dead and bad" reputational language in my career (VB6, Delphi, PHP), mostly as a case of "there is a lot of money being a decent programmer who can use these correctly".

And there are three things I learned about it

1. There is a lot more money in it than you would think. The good part of "there is a lot of newbie using it" is that there is a lot of newbie using it and tons of software in it out there, and once you prove you know what you're doing you drown in high paid work, and with a bit of job selection it's not the bad horrible maintenance kind but decent fun too.

2. There is no need trying to argue with people about it online or whatever. You're not going to convince anyone they're better language than they think. PHP 8 is a top notch language and people are still dumping on it using php 4 things.

3. Ultimately there are people who spend their time talking about what language is right and people who get things done, build something great and it doesn't matter if it's cpp or Javascript or whatever. So at the end of day I've made a fair bit of money improving or building stuff used by lots of people to generate tons of revenue, and everyone involved is happy about it.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#75

Post by jamesfmilne »

silisili wrote: post #13

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…

https://www.xojo.com/

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#76

Post by agarren »

chii wrote: post #51
unscaled wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And COM/OLE/ActiveX components (whatever Microsoft fancied calling them that year) could have been used just as easily from Delphi. And you don't even need COM. You could do the same things today with RAD components in, say, Java. But it's just no longer a fad. Programmers nowadays don't think that dragging a component that makes phone calls and linking it to a button. Nowadays, they would just write "npm install tel…

The way COM model worked, is that an application (for example, microsoft word) would implement this COM interface (that they'd have to anyway, for various reasons such as interoperability), and it would become available as a component to be used in another application. It's a grandiose vision. It just didnt work out because of how complicated it is in practise to implement the COM interface(s), and not enough apps di…

It was (is) an ABI, more stable than something available through a C/C++ compiler. It’s been years since I’ve lived in a Windows world, but as I understand it, it’s still very much alive and well. It didn’t fail because it was complicated, although it was, but it continued to evolve and was eventually superseded by .net. I worked with win32 & mfc quite a bit and had to interface with Com/activex a little, usually through wrappers of some kind, but it was always under the covers. I also wouldn’t say that it failed because not enough apps did it. I can’t speak to drivers or system components, but if you were distributing windows apps prior to and early into .net, you dealt with com directly or indirectly.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#77

Post by lionkor »

silisili wrote: post #13

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…

QtCreator has a WYSIWYG editor

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#79

Post by sedatk »

brokencode wrote: post #63
qwertox wrote: 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…

.NET supports native AOT for a while now.
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