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Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

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Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#31

Post by DidYaWipe »

I worked for a company that was prototyping a ground-up rewrite of their flagship product in VB, while a team of Visual C++ programmers was building the "real" version. It was basically an industry-specific CRUD application.

I probably don't even need to finish this story, because you know what happened: We knocked out a fully functional application in VB while the C++ programmers struggled to replicate it with a less-rich environment. Back then VC++ lacked numerous controls that were available in VB.

The app connected to the database with ODBC and it was easy. Management saw that and said WTF are we building this other thing for, and asked the C++ to join the VB effort and finish the product. They turned their noses up at it, and were all summarily fired. I was put in charge of design and continued working with a team of contractors to finish the app.

I was pretty young and learned a couple of obvious lessons there.

And oh yeah, I actually started my professional programming career writing complicated macros in Word. If I ever meet the guy who approved WordBasic, I will buy him a drink. A word processor with a freaking GUI builder in it! I wrote a macro that could parse and rewrite thousands of SQL modules when a bunch of table structures changed.

I lived in Word. What a great product it was, and what a sorry state it's in now.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#32

Post by mixmastamyk »

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.

90s toolkits had "layout managers" to avoid hardcoding widget locations and sizes. Might need to extend a feature or two but probably could have been done without starting from scratch.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#33

Post by jchw »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #31

I worked for a company that was prototyping a ground-up rewrite of their flagship product in VB, while a team of Visual C++ programmers was building the "real" version. It was basically an industry-specific CRUD application. I probably don't even need to finish this story, because you know what happened: We knocked out a fully functional application in VB while the C++ programmers struggled to replicate it with a les…

On one hand, assuming no embellishments are made: Clearly a triumph for the simplicity and effectiveness of VB.

On the other hand: A pretty good illustration of why every modern app is now a webview.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#34

Post by rietta »

wolpoli wrote: post #20

How I missed the frame component in modern day applications. They all seem to think that a bold heading and some extra whitespace at the end is sufficient to group things together.

HTML has a fieldset that looks like that. But too many CSS frameworks wreck it. I actually like the look.

To prove it to yourself, place the following in a empty HTML file and see how it renders.

Frame1 HTML
CSS
JavaScript

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#37

Post by magospietato »

calimoro78 wrote: post #30
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…

This! I want my kids to do the same but are really unclear as to how this is done today without BASIC. I am not psyched about tools that help you merely build platformers with WYSIWYG. Any ideas?

This is the smartest intentioned educational device I've found.

https://microbit.org/

It's rough around the edges, but what it does well is offer a wide array of sensor inputs, and very simple text output. And wraps it in a simple API.

You can compute temperature, direction, orientation, do GPIO, network via Bluetooth or direct radio, and drive it with a simple two button and marquee text UI.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#38

Post by jonah-archive »

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…

> Then I remember using our dialup to download every possible 3rd party VB form control and throwing them in a Form to see what they did. I don't know why I found this entertaining enough to keep doing it.

Wow, that takes me back. My local library also had a copy of "Visual Basic How-To: The Definitive Vb3 Problem Solver" and at some point I'd renewed my loan of it so many times they told me I couldn't anymore. I remember building a working interface based on the "Peanut Computer" interface from the beginning of _Out of this World_.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#39

Post by xmstr »

wiseowise wrote: post #2

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

Microsoft carried this style of layout builder into the original asp.net web-forms in the first couple versions of Visual Studio.NET. If I remember correctly it worked just like the form builder for VB6/MFC-C++, but it's been a while.

Re: Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

#40

Post by waldrews »

The Property Grid control was the greatest general purpose UI ever created. Using it (in the .Net, Windows Forms incarnation) for custom types in non-VS application was a tremendous productivity shortcut for LOB apps. Put attributes on your user exposed objects, done.

To this day, we don't have anything equivalent for web or mobile. Dynamic form generation from JSON schema gets part of the way there, but not quite.

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