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I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up

evilgeniuslabs.ca

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Re: I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up

#21

Post by bnr »

MBCook wrote: post #18

This sounds great but I’m genuinely unable to figure out how to get to part one. Not the thumbnail. Not the pink text “A History of Visusl Basic”. Not the number one on the list of chapters. Not the chapter ousted at the very bottom. The next button is for a different article. How am I supposed to navigate to the thing the article is advertising to me? It’s a very strange decision not to make it really easy with a st…

I found it on the site's books section: https://evilgeniuslabs.ca/books/visual-basic-history

Re: I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up

#22

Post by aaronbrethorst »

jszymborski wrote: post #5
vunderba wrote: post #2

Why on earth would you use an AI-generated image [1] (let me be clear: POOR AI IMAGE) for the banner of this project? If you're going to use genai, you need to make sure it actually looks acceptable. Do at least one careful pass over it before publishing. Just look at the details: - The text on the book spines doesn’t even spell “Microsoft” correctly. - Dartmouth is spelled "Darmouth". SIGH. - The screenshot on the C…

It won't be long before people realize that having poor AI images looks worse than having no images, in the same way that having a reaction GIF every other paragraph of a blog post fell out of style or deeply generic and unillustrative clip art or stock photos of puzzle pieces or featureless-white-3D-figure-with-hard-hat-holding-question-mark. I sympathize with the motivations behind it, but it does look cruddy and c…

Guy_pointing_up_saying_this.gif

Re: I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up

#23

Post by giancarlostoro »

Any time VB comes up I repeat my same wishlist item. I would love for Microsoft to open source it, in any way, shape or form. I would love for the community to take a crack at adding things to VB6 like bugfixes, any missing features (my understanding is they don't own everything about VB6) and just overall general improvements, imagine VB6 with threading. I know its ancient, but it can still produce a native GUI application effortlessly.

Re: I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up

#24

Post by InvisibleUp »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #23

Any time VB comes up I repeat my same wishlist item. I would love for Microsoft to open source it, in any way, shape or form. I would love for the community to take a crack at adding things to VB6 like bugfixes, any missing features (my understanding is they don't own everything about VB6) and just overall general improvements, imagine VB6 with threading. I know its ancient, but it can still produce a native GUI appl…

I’d want this if only because I’m stuck maintaining old industrial software written in VB6 (it is omnipresent in manufacturing) and I’d like to have a development experience that is actually somewhat usable.

(No, TwinBasic isn’t adequate. No, a VB.NET migration isn’t feasible.)

Re: I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up

#25

Post by CamperBob2 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #23

Any time VB comes up I repeat my same wishlist item. I would love for Microsoft to open source it, in any way, shape or form. I would love for the community to take a crack at adding things to VB6 like bugfixes, any missing features (my understanding is they don't own everything about VB6) and just overall general improvements, imagine VB6 with threading. I know its ancient, but it can still produce a native GUI appl…

How hard could it be to just clone it, at this point?

Re: I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up

#27

Post by VimEscapeArtist »

You might want to mention the comedy series Microsoft used to run on MSDN. I think it was called “The .NET Show” or “VBTV”. It featured characters like the “VB Rapper” and “Head in a Box” (Ari and Chris). It was genuinely funny and they made at least a few episodes. I loved Microsoft back in those days. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any trace of it online now. This was really long ago - around 2002, I believe.

Re: I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up

#28

Post by VimEscapeArtist »

vunderba wrote: post #2

Why on earth would you use an AI-generated image [1] (let me be clear: POOR AI IMAGE) for the banner of this project? If you're going to use genai, you need to make sure it actually looks acceptable. Do at least one careful pass over it before publishing. Just look at the details: - The text on the book spines doesn’t even spell “Microsoft” correctly. - Dartmouth is spelled "Darmouth". SIGH. - The screenshot on the C…

These AI images are an absolute plague these days. I’m glad more people think they’re genuinely awful. To me they’re absolutely disgusting. I think I’d honestly prefer Macromedia Flash ads over this.

Re: I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up

#29

Post by qingcharles »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #25
giancarlostoro wrote: post #23

Any time VB comes up I repeat my same wishlist item. I would love for Microsoft to open source it, in any way, shape or form. I would love for the community to take a crack at adding things to VB6 like bugfixes, any missing features (my understanding is they don't own everything about VB6) and just overall general improvements, imagine VB6 with threading. I know its ancient, but it can still produce a native GUI appl…

How hard could it be to just clone it, at this point?

I used to run it on a very crappy PC when it came out. The binary is probably pretty tiny and can likely be decompiled quite nicely with modern tools.
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