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Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

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Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#111

Post by neonsunset »

brokencode wrote: post #89
neonsunset wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Do you have some examples of large and complex C# applications with really good performance? I’m hard pressed to think of any Microsoft software at all that I think feels really nice. Except for VSCode, which is of course built on Electron and not .NET. The only thing that comes to mind is Paint.NET, which doesn’t seem like all that big of an application. It’s very nicely done, but I think it’s only got like a single…

> Do you have some examples of large and complex C# applications with really good performance?

Most of them. An implementation would have to go out of its way to make itself perform poorly if it is built on top of, say, .NET 8.

Have you heard of Ryujinx? Or Nethermind? Or Garnet? Or have you seen that .NET's Regex engine, written in pure C#, is the third fastest in the world after Intel's Hyperscan and Rust's Regex crate?

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#112

Post by neonsunset »

Kwpolska wrote: post #99
brokencode wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 applications that ship with Windows are not written in C#/.NET. Microsoft tried to rewrite everything this way around Vista, but they failed hard due to stability and performance issues. In Windows 11/Server 2025, the only things written in .NET are administrative tools, like most MMC snap-ins (e.g. Event Viewer), Virtual Machine Connection, or Server Manager.

To be fair, .NET back then was just not where it is today. And the C++ faction within Microsoft did not help that either.

But a lot of people are completely out of touch, thinking something along the lines of "Clearly Golang is managed by YouTube and Google Search teams" except about .NET whenever complaining about whatever happens to Windows nowadays.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#113

Post by IshKebab »

dalemhurley wrote: post #106
stefanfisk wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend all of my working hours with modern PHP. IMHO, although its improved A LOT it’s still a mess. But with the right tooling you can kinda-sorta make it behave like a sane language if you squint a bit.

Every single language is a mess. Just look at time and floating point numbers in Java (not having a go at Java).

Every single language has parts that are a mess, or at least not perfectly designed. But that doesn't mean that languages all have an equal amount of mess. Python clearly has less mess than Perl. Rust clearly has less mess than C++. Zig clearly has less mess than C.

There should be a name for the "nothing is perfect so everything is equally bad" fallacy. It's surprisingly common.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#114

Post by pjmlp »

While VB.NET 1.0 had indeed lots of compatibility issues with VB 6, most of them were fixed in later versions, so I wonder why not at least VB on .NET Framework (Core brings quite a few compatibility issues)

I do know VB since VB 3.0 days, did quite a couple of VB 6 to VB.NET, and VB.NET to C# portings, so it isn't like I don't know the subject.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#115

Post by pantulis »

I think it was Joel Spolsky who said that the sweet spot with VB was throwing seasoned C++ programmers at it, and that became a huge productivity boost to the teams. I think this goes to say that the bad name of VB6 is due to its lower entry barrier, which made it easy for beginner devs to deliver terrible software.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#116

Post by DanielHB »

dalemhurley wrote: post #106
stefanfisk wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend all of my working hours with modern PHP. IMHO, although its improved A LOT it’s still a mess. But with the right tooling you can kinda-sorta make it behave like a sane language if you squint a bit.

Every single language is a mess. Just look at time and floating point numbers in Java (not having a go at Java).

There are lasting languages and good languages, but there are no lasting good languages.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#117

Post by jeroenhd »

nolok wrote: post #74

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…

Delphi is a funny one. Delphi applications certainly have a certain feel (and often instability) with them, but thanks to everything being a website now, they're incredibly fast and responsive compared to what we have now. Sure, they don't do fancy transitions and they look like someone wrote a Windows 8 theme for Windows 95, but when they work, they work.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#119

Post by jeroenhd »

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…

Windows still has Windows Forms with C#. Download Visual Studio Community edition for free (not VSCode), create a new forms project, and you'll have a GUI in minutes. Even beats VB6 in areas like automatic resizing because it has better docking support. It'll only target Microsoft's proprietary .NET but because Mono has supported that forever, you can run those applications anywhere Mono exists.

There are also tools like Gambas and Gnome Builder that'll let you drag and drop UI components, but I find the software designed to run on Linux kind of lacking in comparison.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#120

Post by gus_massa »

self_awareness wrote: post #55
unscaled wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your conclusion, but when you say "VB is totally fine" do you mean VB6? I can get Modern iterations of Visual Basic such as VB.Net. The syntax and semantics hurt my eye and my brain, but if that's your thing, yeah the language is very serviceable. It's a modern language with modern features and a lot of legacy baggage. It's not worse than PHP or maybe even JavaScript (though I would much prefer JavaScrip…

Could you specify what legacy baggage you would like to eliminate, and what modern features you miss in VB6?

I still have a VB6 program in production. I miss a nice `sort` function.

Also opening the standard window to open/save a file is a missing feature. You can use a vbx control but it's difficult to distribute, or you can use the API, but the null characters are a small problem.

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