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

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

#61

Post by CWuestefeld »

SilentM68 wrote: post #17

Excellent Idea :) VB was practical and useful at the time, especially as a learning tool in school. I enjoyed testing the competitors that arose to emulate its abilities, including RapidQ Basic, Envelope Basic (a.k.a Phoenix Object Basic), some of which are documented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC I think it would be cool to see a Documentary on programming languages, e.g. their history, rivalries, succes…

I think you mean "Envelop" (note the lack of trailing "e"). That was a neat tool, and community, back in the day. Too bad it didn't get anywhere.

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

#62

Post by teddyh »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #22
jszymborski wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this>

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

#63

Post by CWuestefeld »

smackeyacky wrote: post #19
SilentM68 wrote: post #17

Excellent Idea :) VB was practical and useful at the time, especially as a learning tool in school. I enjoyed testing the competitors that arose to emulate its abilities, including RapidQ Basic, Envelope Basic (a.k.a Phoenix Object Basic), some of which are documented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC I think it would be cool to see a Documentary on programming languages, e.g. their history, rivalries, succes…

There is definitely a story to be told in GUI based development environments, from VisualWorks / Digitalk smalltalk to VB to Delphi. Along with the also rans (PowerBuilder, the death of Clipper and dBase systems). GUI interfaces were going to be a massive productivity goldmine compared to green screens and TUI interfaces. Now here we are back to those again in various forms and web browsers won in the end anyway. Was…

I recall an internal (never released) project at IBM in the late 1980s. It was a tool for creating client-server GUI apps, programming them with the REXX language. You may remember that client-server was all the rage at the time, and REXX was IBM's favorite scripting language. IIRC, the internal name of the project was "Red October", but I can't find any reference to this online.

The tools lacked the visual GUI builder of VB, but really, that's just a detail. The rest of the framework was really quite powerful, and a GUI builder could have been added. But in true IBM fashion, they had no idea how to market something that wasn't mainframe targeted, and they killed the project. There was a fair amount of acrimony on internal forums about this at the time.

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

#64

Post by TeaVMFan »

I couldn't open the chapter, but in case anyone else is trying to make a nicely formatted ebook, take a look at EPublish: https://frequal.com/epublish/

It's a software-engineer-friendly tool for converting HTML to EPUB. It handles all the annoying little details. Binaries coming later today.

A book created with EPublish: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYCZJVGX

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

#65

Post by bigtech »

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…

Not that the author needs my defense, but that image says to me, 'hey, I'm just a guy who wrote a book and there's no budget for art' -- which fits a DIY aesthetic in 2026

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

#66

Post by SilentM68 »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #63
smackeyacky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely a story to be told in GUI based development environments, from VisualWorks / Digitalk smalltalk to VB to Delphi. Along with the also rans (PowerBuilder, the death of Clipper and dBase systems). GUI interfaces were going to be a massive productivity goldmine compared to green screens and TUI interfaces. Now here we are back to those again in various forms and web browsers won in the end anyway. Was…

I recall an internal (never released) project at IBM in the late 1980s. It was a tool for creating client-server GUI apps, programming them with the REXX language. You may remember that client-server was all the rage at the time, and REXX was IBM's favorite scripting language. IIRC, the internal name of the project was "Red October", but I can't find any reference to this online. The tools lacked the visual GUI build…

You are correct. The only reference I could find to Red October is a dead link which was never archived (or has since been removed from) @ Wayback Machine Internet Archive: https://www.ibm.com/history/innovation/red-october

Otherwise, the other links point to the game, the movie and the cyberespionage malware attack.

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

#67

Post by nosioptar »

What an awful site. I suggest you read about prefers - reduced - motion [0]. People who set this preference have a good reason for doing so, you should respect your users a bit.

(I set this preference because motion while I'm trying to read makes me nauseated.)

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/A...

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

#68

Post by vunderba »

bigtech wrote: post #65
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…

Not that the author needs my defense, but that image says to me, 'hey, I'm just a guy who wrote a book and there's no budget for art' -- which fits a DIY aesthetic in 2026

Not to me it doesn't, to me it says, "Hey I couldn't be bothered to put in the bare minimum of effort to look over an image that is going to be the LITERAL face of my upcoming book".

Took me 10 minutes to do this with an equal "budget" and the freeware graphics program Krita. Still has problematic issues (the curvature on that CRT looks like its suffering from bloody glaucoma), but it's vastly better than the original.

https://mordenstar.com/share/vb-history-book

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

#69

Post by hnlmorg »

hnlmorg wrote: post #50
eapriv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the use of AI. It’s a reliable indicator that the author doesn’t actually care about the quality of the work, so I shouldn’t bother to read the text.

Using AI to generate an image isn’t any different to embedding a generated meme or grabbing a stock photo. Plus the image isn’t even part of the article content. It’s ostensibly just a front cover to it. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” ;)

To the people who downvoted me, care to explain what was factually incorrect?

I get there’s a lot of hysteria around Gen ai but as someone who’s worked in publishing I can tell you I’m not in the wrong here.

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

#70

Post by dingaling »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #60
jim_lawless wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to check out the book "FoxTales : Behind the Scenes at Fox Software" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005KUH4GI

I've seen that, but always assumed it would be a more accessible account, and not tickle the technical developer itch. I recently read Jordan Mechner's The Making of Prince of Persia , and while it was interesting, it wasn't what I'd hoped for. It was a biography covering his life during the creation of the game, and very little about the internals and technology of it. That's fine, but for my tastes, the book that i…

Extrapolating from a single datum is worse than AI hallucinations.

It's $4, the reviews are good, just buy it.

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