The Microsoft Empire Reboots • Hacker News Board

Re: The Microsoft Empire Reboots

#21

Post by Joeri » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 1:44 PM UTC

gurkendoktor wrote: post #16

Immortalin wrote: post #15

Their greatest mistake(s) were the removal of visual basic 6 line of products and windows 10. Visual basic 6 is my first programming language and is probably still my favourite. The problem with lua and python and most other "beginner friendly" languages is that it is hard to do anything useful when u are just starting other than printing hello world to terminal. My intro to vb6 was creating a simple calculator, it w…

I was a huge fan of Delphi 5 at the time, and hoped it would win over VB6 (I guess it's a Coke/Pepsi thing). Now I'm in the same boat as you, because it seems both Delphi and its competitor, VB, have lost. I'm not even sure if there are any winners. I wish someone would build a robust OS & GUI toolkit and ship it with developer tools...

The irony is that the present day version of delphi is the best it has ever been, and competitive feature wise with other platforms, but because it has a non-trivial price tag everyone pretends it's defunct. The reality is that the only programming languages which remain are either open source, or the default solution for a mass market OS, and all of them are free. You can't build an entry level dev solution like classic vb or Delphi and sell it to hobbyists these days, so unless some open source developers make it happen for free, it won't happen.

Re: The Microsoft Empire Reboots

#22

Post by 300bps » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 1:52 PM UTC

Immortalin wrote: post #15

Their greatest mistake(s) were the removal of visual basic 6 line of products and windows 10. Visual basic 6 is my first programming language and is probably still my favourite. The problem with lua and python and most other "beginner friendly" languages is that it is hard to do anything useful when u are just starting other than printing hello world to terminal. My intro to vb6 was creating a simple calculator, it w…

It is still fairly early in the morning for me on a Saturday, so please excuse me if I missed that your comment was sarcasm. I still have an MCSD in VB6 and programmed millions of lines of code in it but honestly I haven't used it in about a decade and would never consider using it again.

ASP.NET WinForms are just as obsolete in my book. I programmed dozens of applications using it but I would never consider using it today for modern web development.

I still use Microsoft development tools. C# and ASP.NET MVC are great, modern technologies that allow me to make stable and scalable web applications very rapidly. The modern versions of Visual Studio fulfill all the things you said you liked about VB6 and are otherwise incomparably superior.

Re: The Microsoft Empire Reboots

#23

Post by gvb » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 1:52 PM UTC

There is a Macintosh in the background of the picture "JUST KIDS Gates and former C.E.O. Steve Ballmer at Microsoft’s offices in Bellevue, 1985."

Not unexpected given the date and the relationship between Apple and Microsoft at the time, but interesting that it shares the desk (albeit off in a corner) with the IBM-PC.

Re: The Microsoft Empire Reboots

#24

Post by Immortalin » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 2:01 PM UTC

300bps wrote: post #22

Immortalin wrote: post #15

Their greatest mistake(s) were the removal of visual basic 6 line of products and windows 10. Visual basic 6 is my first programming language and is probably still my favourite. The problem with lua and python and most other "beginner friendly" languages is that it is hard to do anything useful when u are just starting other than printing hello world to terminal. My intro to vb6 was creating a simple calculator, it w…

It is still fairly early in the morning for me on a Saturday, so please excuse me if I missed that your comment was sarcasm. I still have an MCSD in VB6 and programmed millions of lines of code in it but honestly I haven't used it in about a decade and would never consider using it again. ASP.NET WinForms are just as obsolete in my book. I programmed dozens of applications using it but I would never consider using it…

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj133828.aspx

Re: The Microsoft Empire Reboots

#25

Post by grokys » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 2:04 PM UTC

> The holy grail for Microsoft would be getting developers to write new software for Windows again, putting Windows back at the center of a new virtuous circle.

And yet there is no currently properly supported way to write desktop applications for Windows! MFC = obsolete, WinForms = maintenance mode, WPF = Dead on arrival, WinRT = Metro only.

For all the people saying "web is where it's at", there are some things that are simply still best done on desktop. And native development in iOS and Android is still going strong.

Re: The Microsoft Empire Reboots

#26

Post by thomasahle » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 2:05 PM UTC

Immortalin wrote: post #15

Their greatest mistake(s) were the removal of visual basic 6 line of products and windows 10. Visual basic 6 is my first programming language and is probably still my favourite. The problem with lua and python and most other "beginner friendly" languages is that it is hard to do anything useful when u are just starting other than printing hello world to terminal. My intro to vb6 was creating a simple calculator, it w…

Young programmers today tend to start with the Javascript family. There have probably never been languages with the same visual tools built in, rapidness of feedback and ease of sharing with friends.

Re: The Microsoft Empire Reboots

#27

Post by Immortalin » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 2:07 PM UTC

david927 wrote: post #19

Nitramp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish someone would build a robust OS & GUI toolkit and ship it with developer tools... I think that's the web. The development that used to happen in VB6 & Delphi simply has migrated there, desktop apps from that segment are dead.

I think you're right, and it's a huge indictment. The web, as an application platform, is worse than VB ever was. Think about that for a moment: We've regressed from VB. The usual tradeoff is: easy to write, hard to extend and maintain. But the web is hard to write and hard to extend/maintain. We have some of the smartest people in the world in our industry, and evidently we're all idiots.

I concur, the combination of css + js + html is an nightmare especially if you are are trying to design a simple database-backed website for your startup. Webforms might have been hard to maintain for some, but at least it worked well. There was no need to figure out all the background stuff if you are not a professional developer. If I need a fancier website based on mvc, I would have hired a fullstack django developer instead.

Re: The Microsoft Empire Reboots

#28

Post by alex_hitchins » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 2:07 PM UTC

gurkendoktor wrote: post #16

Immortalin wrote: post #15

Their greatest mistake(s) were the removal of visual basic 6 line of products and windows 10. Visual basic 6 is my first programming language and is probably still my favourite. The problem with lua and python and most other "beginner friendly" languages is that it is hard to do anything useful when u are just starting other than printing hello world to terminal. My intro to vb6 was creating a simple calculator, it w…

I was a huge fan of Delphi 5 at the time, and hoped it would win over VB6 (I guess it's a Coke/Pepsi thing). Now I'm in the same boat as you, because it seems both Delphi and its competitor, VB, have lost. I'm not even sure if there are any winners. I wish someone would build a robust OS & GUI toolkit and ship it with developer tools...

I cut my teeth with VB 5/6. I still think there is nothing on the market that is as fast in creating applications.

If you did things properly (MVP! remember that?) it was quite maintainable. I still know of several VB apps still in service.

Re: The Microsoft Empire Reboots

#29

Post by damian2000 » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 2:08 PM UTC

300bps wrote: post #22

Immortalin wrote: post #15

Their greatest mistake(s) were the removal of visual basic 6 line of products and windows 10. Visual basic 6 is my first programming language and is probably still my favourite. The problem with lua and python and most other "beginner friendly" languages is that it is hard to do anything useful when u are just starting other than printing hello world to terminal. My intro to vb6 was creating a simple calculator, it w…

It is still fairly early in the morning for me on a Saturday, so please excuse me if I missed that your comment was sarcasm. I still have an MCSD in VB6 and programmed millions of lines of code in it but honestly I haven't used it in about a decade and would never consider using it again. ASP.NET WinForms are just as obsolete in my book. I programmed dozens of applications using it but I would never consider using it…

Same here, used VB6 in the past and pushed it to its limits, then .NET came along and ate its lunch, far superior in all ways, including speed of development.

Re: The Microsoft Empire Reboots

#30

Post by damian2000 » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 2:17 PM UTC

grokys wrote: post #25

> The holy grail for Microsoft would be getting developers to write new software for Windows again, putting Windows back at the center of a new virtuous circle. And yet there is no currently properly supported way to write desktop applications for Windows! MFC = obsolete, WinForms = maintenance mode, WPF = Dead on arrival, WinRT = Metro only. For all the people saying "web is where it's at", there are some things tha…

AFAIK WPF isn't dead, its popular with line of business apps. But yeah, disappointing there's been only minor improvements to it in the last 4 years, during which they've been focusing their efforts on WinRT.

I was just reading something about the subject here http://pragmateek.com/is-wpf-dead-the-present-and-future-of-...