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Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

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Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#131

Post by throwaway2037 »

happyweasel wrote: post #82
signaru wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having built both desktop-native and browser-based apps, I think there is an efficiency in doing the widget layouts textually via code/markup once you get over the learning curve. I believe Qt and wxWidgets also have automatic layout features, but doing this on top of C++ maybe makes the experience less smooth. So far form designers in Visual Studio require manual pixel layouting, which becomes tedious as the GUI evo…

mfc has resizable ui layouts called Dynamic layouts (since the 2015 update?), and for wxwidgets there is wxformbuilder. Most stuff for mfc can be set in the dialog builder wrt to resizing, or in code. I cant remember doing manual pixel layouting ever, there are dialog base units or sth like this. People have been setting the ui to 120dpi from the 96dpi standard already decades ago. And the dialogs automatically readj…

I had no idea about Dynamic Layouts for MFC. Check it out! https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/mfc/dynamic-layout?vie...

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#132

Post by [deleted] »

wiseowise wrote: post #92
qingcharles wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every version of Visual Studio since this has the same builder. I use this builder every day to build little apps for myself. It is practically 100% identical in the new version of Visual Studio 2022 that came out yesterday. In fact, it's better now because it's easier to line things up and change their properties etc, but the interface is the same. It has literally not changed in 25 years. Here, I booted VS2022 and…

That’s Windows only.

[deleted]

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#133

Post by 0xmarcin »

bandysc wrote: post #101
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?

Indeed you are right, there is syntax highlighting.

Also my last comment sounds a bit harsh. That wasn't my intention. It is a great project.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#135

Post by sixothree »

makmanalp wrote: post #12

Oh my GOD I have to comment. This is how I learned to program as a kid. I found a copy of "Write Your Own Adventure Programs" (1983 - Usborne: https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/Write%... ) as a kid in my primary school's bookshelf. I remember the code was written in BASIC and my family didn't really own a computer back then. Fast forward a few years later I saw this "Visual Basic" thing and though…

I've literally never seen this book before. This would have been a really good one to have when I was younger. Thank you for sharing!

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#136

Post by sigzero »

1oooqooq wrote: post #121
mmerlin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

twinBasic.com is a revamp of VB6 using current tech

why all those products keep backwards compatibility with vb6?!? it's this a niche for some industry? or all those products are aimed at people's nostalgia of running their old programs?

Maybe. I have a friend that only does VB6 programming support even today. He seems to be doing okay with it.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#138

Post by wvenable »

1oooqooq wrote: post #121
mmerlin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

twinBasic.com is a revamp of VB6 using current tech

why all those products keep backwards compatibility with vb6?!? it's this a niche for some industry? or all those products are aimed at people's nostalgia of running their old programs?

VB6 is arguably the most popular and influential version of Basic it only makes sense to keep backwards compatibility with it. Why would anyone not want that from their Visual Basic clone?

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#139

Post by lelanthran »

Pxtl wrote: post #127
wiseowise wrote: post #2

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

Because web. That said, the VB6 drag-and-drop interface was always flawed. 90% of the time you want to lay out controls in some kind of nest of layouts with clearly-defined resize and reflow behavior instead of "drag and drop wherever and YOLO if something changes size". A good GUI framework would nudge you towards that instead of free-form drag-and-drop wherever.

> Because web.

Which is a pity; I was watching a client do some crud work in a webapp.

Web - 1 form per page:

Click "back". Copy some text. Click forward. Paste it. Repeat for 3 different fields. Click submit.

Native apps (VB/Delphi/etc) used to be:

Open both forms. Copy and paste from one to the other. Open another one on the side to lookup some information, etc.

Webapps, even moreso with MPA, force a wizard-style interface - you only go forward through the form. This is not how people used to work; they would frequently have multiple forms in the same app open at the same time.

With SPA and html "windows" made out of movable divs you can probably support multiple forms open at the same time, but who does that?

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#140

Post by Kwpolska »

liontwist wrote: post #125
alkonaut wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time it's common to hear "how does this not support high DPI?" or "How does this app not have a dark mode, it's 2024!" etc. Modern toolkits just do a lot of stuff that older toolkits didn't. Some times at the expense of not being as quick to get off the ground as VB was. The original winforms implementation in the early 2000's was pretty close to VB in terms of efficiency but its warts were numerous, e.g.…

Dark mode would have been trivial with old toolkits because they used standardize look and feel. In fact motif lets you customize the color scheme through a text file. Which can make each app fit the appearance of the given desktop. Old guis also had more accssibility features. The only thing modern ones have going for them is animation and visual customization.

Old toolkits make it much easier to set the text color of some label to #444, which looks fine on a light background, but is very hard to read on a black background. Setting it to some well-defined MutedText color requires more effort, and it requires the toolkit vendor to have thought about named colors in the first place (and if there are named colors, they might not be meaningful like Muted or Success, but instead ButtonBackground or TooltipText).
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