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Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

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Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#141

Post by rbanffy »

jeroenhd wrote: post #121
alexvitkov wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've forgotten how to do it - the idea of dragging a button offends our modern sensibilities. You can't just drag a button, what about the layout?! What about responsive design, how will it look on a 300x200 screen and a 8k one? What about scaling? Reactivity?

Visual Studio's form editor had decent solutions for that. And most application developers don't care about tiny or huge screens anyway, applications will just be broken if you resize them too much. The software stack they're using should allow them to make the design work on any form factor and resolution, but most of the time nobody cares about those edge cases.

And even then, UI designers worked on abstract units and changing screen density changed the size of the elements (if you used bitmaps you would suffer, but that would be on you). VB6 paid for my first apartment in Brazil.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#142

Post by rbanffy »

VB was the he first viable way to easily tap the “business programmer” who was writing code in Clipper for building competent-looking GUI applications. Along with Windows for Workgroups, it was a game changer for Windows in small businesses who could now afford bespoke Windows applications.

Other options all had their quirks that made their apps look out of place on Windows. It was easy to say an app was built with Delphi or FoxPro. VB apps just looked like Microsoft apps and felt perfectly at home.

I remember how easy it was to even get the 3D look popularised by Office in VB apps.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#143

Post by IshKebab »

networked wrote: post #123
IshKebab wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fallacy of gray? https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fal... > The Sophisticate: “The world isn’t black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It’s all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else.” > The Zetet: “Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view . . .” > —Marc…

Ah nice, thanks!

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#144

Post by IshKebab »

AlienRobot wrote: post #131
IshKebab wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PHP 8 is a top notch language Maybe the things they've added lately have been well designed, but did they ever actually fix the WTFs from PHP 4? JavaScript has the same problem. They added `let` and `const` but never removed `var` or `==`. If you take a look at ESLint rules there are dozens of footguns that could have been fixed in the language. Not as bad as PHP's footguns, but still...

It's not possible to remove anything without potentially breaking backwards compatibility. Removing ANYTHING in Javascript would be a tremendously bad idea. If webpages from 30 years ago stopped working because 2025 developers favor aesthetics and disrespect legacy, I'd be pretty angry.

> It's not possible to remove anything without potentially breaking backwards compatibility

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#145

Post by deergomoo »

IshKebab wrote: post #86
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…

> PHP 8 is a top notch language Maybe the things they've added lately have been well designed, but did they ever actually fix the WTFs from PHP 4? JavaScript has the same problem. They added `let` and `const` but never removed `var` or `==`. If you take a look at ESLint rules there are dozens of footguns that could have been fixed in the language. Not as bad as PHP's footguns, but still...

> but did they ever actually fix the WTFs from PHP 4

Depends what you class as a WTF. The older parts of the standard library are still wildly inconsistent in function naming and argument order, but that’s never going to change because it’s simply not worth the BC break.

But they’ve done a good job cleaning up the actually problematic bits of the language. Previous horribly insecure defaults like register_globals and magic quotes are long gone. And in recent years they’ve worked on tightening things up: many obviously incorrect behaviours have been promoted from notices or warnings to outright errors.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#146

Post by tonyedgecombe »

deergomoo wrote: post #140
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I'd not put PHP in the same league of "dead and bad" with it. It's dead to the extent that you are unlikely to start a new project in it but I wouldn't classify it as bad. It's just of it's time.

There’s still tons of new projects being started in PHP. Frameworks like Laravel and Symfony are massive and actively popular.

Oops, I meant to refer to Delphi rather than PHP.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#147

Post by tonyedgecombe »

stefanfisk wrote: post #102
IshKebab wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PHP 8 is a top notch language Maybe the things they've added lately have been well designed, but did they ever actually fix the WTFs from PHP 4? JavaScript has the same problem. They added `let` and `const` but never removed `var` or `==`. If you take a look at ESLint rules there are dozens of footguns that could have been fixed in the language. Not as bad as PHP's footguns, but still...

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.

>I spend all of my working hours with modern PHP.

I'd love to see a PHP without the warts. Something that is trivial to embed in a web page just the way PHP is but without the foot guns.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#148

Post by tonyedgecombe »

AlienRobot wrote: post #131
IshKebab wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PHP 8 is a top notch language Maybe the things they've added lately have been well designed, but did they ever actually fix the WTFs from PHP 4? JavaScript has the same problem. They added `let` and `const` but never removed `var` or `==`. If you take a look at ESLint rules there are dozens of footguns that could have been fixed in the language. Not as bad as PHP's footguns, but still...

It's not possible to remove anything without potentially breaking backwards compatibility. Removing ANYTHING in Javascript would be a tremendously bad idea. If webpages from 30 years ago stopped working because 2025 developers favor aesthetics and disrespect legacy, I'd be pretty angry.

I do like the way Rust has language editions which let you work around this, at least partially.

Mostly though I don't care if we break old stuff. It happened all the time when developing for the desktop. People just dealt with it. The ones most impacted are lazy enterprises and I have no sympathy for them.

Clinging on to the past stifles innovation.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#149

Post by andai »

deergomoo wrote: post #145
IshKebab wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PHP 8 is a top notch language Maybe the things they've added lately have been well designed, but did they ever actually fix the WTFs from PHP 4? JavaScript has the same problem. They added `let` and `const` but never removed `var` or `==`. If you take a look at ESLint rules there are dozens of footguns that could have been fixed in the language. Not as bad as PHP's footguns, but still...

> but did they ever actually fix the WTFs from PHP 4 Depends what you class as a WTF. The older parts of the standard library are still wildly inconsistent in function naming and argument order, but that’s never going to change because it’s simply not worth the BC break. But they’ve done a good job cleaning up the actually problematic bits of the language. Previous horribly insecure defaults like register_globals and…

>depends on what you class as a WTF

It might take a while to enumerate them all ;)

https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#150

Post by deergomoo »

andai wrote: post #149
deergomoo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but did they ever actually fix the WTFs from PHP 4 Depends what you class as a WTF. The older parts of the standard library are still wildly inconsistent in function naming and argument order, but that’s never going to change because it’s simply not worth the BC break. But they’ve done a good job cleaning up the actually problematic bits of the language. Previous horribly insecure defaults like register_globals and…

>depends on what you class as a WTF It might take a while to enumerate them all ;) https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

There’s some fair points in there, some unfair ones, and some outdated ones (unsurprisingly given it’s nearly 13 years old).
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