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Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

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Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#101

Post by bandysc »

0xmarcin wrote: post #88

When you dig into the code you can see that the author did the bare minimum to have a nice demo. For example only 2 functions are supported: MsgBox and InputBox: https://github.com/BAndysc/AvaloniaVisualBasic6/blob/383a005... Still it is impressive to create something complex like this in a matter of 4 days (looking at the commit history). And it is a good start to develop a full fledged IDE. The more advanced featur…

Syntax Highlighting actually is there, it was added after the gif was recorded (you can see that on the web version), autocomplete, hmm, maybe later? :)

VB6 language is limited as well, it was more a toy/proof of concept, but given the positive feedback I am tempted to implement more functionality. Especially since the save format is compatible with VB6. It is still gonna be a toy, but actually working toy?

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#103

Post by bandysc »

kristianp wrote: post #41

I appreciate the amount of work that might have gone into this, but a small annoyance: > Antlr4BuildTasks library couldn't automatically download Java. It would be nice if more effort was put into avoiding large dependencies, like a java runtime for a .net product. Edit: It's not just the size of the dependency, it's the complexity this adds to the deployment and development.

I don't know any better alternative than ANTLR for grammar generation, this is unfortunately written in Java, so there is not a good way to avoid it. I mean, I could manually generate .cs files and commit them to the repo.

Antlr4BuildTasks at least automates this step (both downloading java and building antlr4).

Long story short, I don't see a better alternative for grammar generation now.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#104

Post by bandysc »

larodi wrote: post #11

Interestingly it also downloads Java for the antlr grammar support.

Antlr is build with Java so in order to build the grammar, it needs to either use system java or download one. I don't know any better alternative to Antlr. Of course I could manually generate .cs files and commit them to the repo, but Antlr4BuildTasks automates everything which is very convenient.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#105

Post by pjmlp »

anthk wrote: post #94
analog31 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things initially drew me to VB. Being able to draw the GUI was certainly a very cool and empowering thing. I could make software that "looked like software" by the standards of the day, with minimal effort. The other was that the alternative to VB for GUI creation was wrestling with class libraries, at a point when OOP was utterly baffling to many casual programmers like myself. Just the bare minimum "hello world…

Ditto with Motif under Unix, a Hello World was crazily verbose (even more with Xaw), while something in TCL/Tk was about two or three brief lines.

One of the reasons I hardly bothered with Motif back on its heyday, was that it was much worse than Win32.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#106

Post by pjmlp »

RandallBrown wrote: post #7
wiseowise wrote: post #2

Still don't understand how we went from this to modern GUI toolkits. It looks and works so intuitively.

This is fairly similar to how Interface Builder in Xcode works for macOS and iOS apps. Like others have said, it works well until you need to support different screen sizes, layouts, animations, touch interaction, etc.

Most of those builders, including VB, have the option to support dynamic layouts, it is up to devs to actually learn to use them, instead of the default approach.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#107

Post by pjmlp »

Onavo wrote: post #3
wiseowise wrote: post #2

Still don't understand how we went from this to modern GUI toolkits. It looks and works so intuitively.

The answer is simple, mobile and relative layouts. GUI builders are easy when you can just use absolute positioning for everything (see Retool and the dozens of Retool clones). They become insanely complex when you can't.

Layout managers are supported for decades now.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#108

Post by pjmlp »

wiseowise wrote: post #9
Onavo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is simple, mobile and relative layouts. GUI builders are easy when you can just use absolute positioning for everything (see Retool and the dozens of Retool clones). They become insanely complex when you can't.

I don’t buy it. Android has amazing Constraint/Motion layout that adapts on screen size. Instead of improving XML tooling they’ve decided to follow latest fad and created Compose.

Thank the Kotlin crowd at Mountain View.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#109

Post by pjmlp »

VB 6, back when doing COM was still easy, then the macho team took over, and COM development experience has been a mess ever since, even though it is the main API surface since Windows Vista.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#110

Post by xandrius »

wiseowise wrote: post #2

Still don't understand how we went from this to modern GUI toolkits. It looks and works so intuitively.

It's that when we were kids we didn't really care about whether was free, open source, made by M$ or not, we didn't care about politics or how things should be (tm).

We were just amazed things existed at all.

Now, people shame people using WYSIWYG or VSCode or whatever else makes the life of people easier, other than top hard-core users.

And that's why even placing a centred text in the middle of a web page requires to know a whole stack of tech, and no step is you actually placing it there directly.

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