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Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

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Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#31

I first learned how to program in VB4. I can see why as a professional programmer it lost favor, but it was a great learning language.

I first learned it by myself in VB5. I didn't even understand functions, but writing those MessageBoxes with buttons and then having them create even more message boxes was so great! I remember a high school friend bringing me 5 diskettes with VB4 installer because I didn't have it on my home computer.

Then next year I enrolled in AP Comp Sci - hardcore turbo c++. Just blew my mind!

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem is that Powershell as language is pretty bad. I wouldn’t want to write my vB6 projects in Powershell.

It’s definitely one of the ugliest languages (syntax wise) that enjoys widespread usage, at least in Microsoft land.

Is it widespread? I've never seen anyone else using powershell 'in the wild', admittedly for the last 3 years I've mainly worked alone, but I still see people using CMD scripts.

I usually get frustrated with it and bash out a quick cmdlet instead.

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely one of the ugliest languages (syntax wise) that enjoys widespread usage, at least in Microsoft land.

It seems that shell scripting languages tend to be quite ugly out of necessity? I mean bash is not a looker.

Possibly, though bash is from a much earlier time when shell scripting language design probably wasn’t a very well known topic and bash evolved more naturally from open source. Powershell is much more recent plus had much more complete control over the language to prevent the kind of syntax warts bash has. Even then I would still probably take bash over Powershell for scripting but that’s probably more because of familiarity than anything else.

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely one of the ugliest languages (syntax wise) that enjoys widespread usage, at least in Microsoft land.

It seems that shell scripting languages tend to be quite ugly out of necessity? I mean bash is not a looker.

They had an opportunity to make a whole new, good, scripting language. And blew it spectacularly.

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#37
post #6

I loved VB6. Of all the languages and IDE's I've ever used, I've never been more efficient in any other one. As long as MS doesn't break my workarounds to run that old IDE or its EXE's, I'm happy. VB.NET was a great stepping stone, but after switching to C# I never looked back. The only thing I miss is global functions that don't need a class qualifier in front of them. And I still find the Edit-and-Continue debuggin…

I programmed in VB6 for thousands of hours, if not more. I loved the language.

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#38
post #6

I loved VB6. Of all the languages and IDE's I've ever used, I've never been more efficient in any other one. As long as MS doesn't break my workarounds to run that old IDE or its EXE's, I'm happy. VB.NET was a great stepping stone, but after switching to C# I never looked back. The only thing I miss is global functions that don't need a class qualifier in front of them. And I still find the Edit-and-Continue debuggin…

Back in the very old days I wrote Excel Apps in VBA. You could pull an entire range in as a 2d array and dump it back out the same way.

The debugging environment was better than any I have used since. You could drag the execution point anywhere, edit code in between steps, view everything. It was amazing.

IntelliJ is pretty good now, but not like that.

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely one of the ugliest languages (syntax wise) that enjoys widespread usage, at least in Microsoft land.

Is it widespread? I've never seen anyone else using powershell 'in the wild', admittedly for the last 3 years I've mainly worked alone, but I still see people using CMD scripts. I usually get frustrated with it and bash out a quick cmdlet instead.

It’s pretty widespread if you have to do sysadmin scripting. There are a lot of useful cmdlets. I am embarrassed to admit that I also run it on my Mac with good success.

Re: Microsoft plots the end of Visual Basic

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely one of the ugliest languages (syntax wise) that enjoys widespread usage, at least in Microsoft land.

Is it widespread? I've never seen anyone else using powershell 'in the wild', admittedly for the last 3 years I've mainly worked alone, but I still see people using CMD scripts. I usually get frustrated with it and bash out a quick cmdlet instead.

bash out

Freudian slip?

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