Bring back Classic Visual Basic

[FluxTorpedoe]

+ a few more...

[admin]

1) Indeed, things look very different now than some weeks ago. We have 64bit menus, and I know much more about NET and about the costs of migration.
2) Too slow.

So why migrating? AFAIC understand, no bitness will give XY a "full" 32+64bit context menu (only Windows shell can do this). So, what else will give NET that VB doesn't already give you/us?

Nothing. I dropped the .NET plan. Migration to .NET is far too expensive and far too much work, and working in .NET is ridiculously clumsy and frustatingly slow. It is simply the wrong language for rapid application development. So I will stay with VB6. There is nothing better today.

[admin]

BTW, here is another one: http://www.change.org/petitions/microso ... ompilation

[TheQwerty]

Apparently Microsoft was pushing this company at their developer conference: http://mobilize.net/BUILD
I know it talks a lot about converting to web apps, but reading further they do VB6 to .NET as well.

More details: http://mobilize.net/solution/vb-upgrade-companion/

[admin]

No, no, forget it. .NET is crap.

[TheQwerty]

No, no, forget it. .NET is crap.

I don't agree, but I just thought it was interesting.

At least with .NET there is Mono and now Rosalyn is open source so the chances of it meeting a death similar to classic VB has lessened.


As PropertyHandlers and IFilters put XY into yet another bitness-war my hope for an undead VB or even a 64-bit compiler wanes.

Sometimes the only way forward requires wading through the crap rather than around it.

[Stef123]

Sometimes the only way forward requires wading through the crap rather than around it.

Good one.
I am in no position to judge either language (or framework?) Whether it's for better or worse to keep a dinosaur alive in modern environments.

From an end user's perspective, my experience with .NET has been worry-free. Not one instance where I had to fight error message or struggle with updates. In stark contrast to say, Java, which repeatedly messed up my machines so badly that I have stopped downloading anything that mentions Java. It's become a red flag for me: different programs requiring different versions that cannot be run parallel, special removal tools required to get rid of old Java remnants, endless help desk assistance, forum advice, System restore points ...nothing but aggravation
If XY were written in Java, I'd have never bought it.

[admin]

Well, I am in the position to judge it: from the developer's perspective .NET is crap.

That was my final word on this. Resistance is futile.

[Stef123]

Resistance is futile.

Who ever mentioned resistance? Just making sure you won't flirt with Java (considering your obsession with coffee)

[bdeshi]

you could help the cause by voting on this page (each person can put 3 votes!)

Yes, I placed my votes there long ago, when I got interested in VB. But the multiple email voters gave me an idea...
BTW, I'm very under-informed (read: noob) in these stuff, but there are many variants of the Basic language available, such as FreeBasic, BlitzMax etc. Are they a viable option?

[admin]

1. This voting site unfortunately got crowded by idiots.

2. There is no viable replacement AFAIK. VB6 was the work of geniuses. Where are those folks now?

[rgs]

Don, I know you checked out all the alternativrs to VB6 a while back. Just out of curiosity can I ask what you didn't like about PureBasic?

[admin]

If I remember correctly it was lacking too many things. And with 200,000+ lines of code that can easily become too much extra work.

[autocart]

Hi all and Don,

Wow, I just has a look at PureBasic (from a hobby programmers point of view). It is commercially actively developed (http://www.purebasic.com/news.php). It has 32 and 64 bit compilers for Win, Linux and Mac OS producing self-contained exe files on Win and Linux, as I understand it. It claims to produce very fast code and other stuff (http://www.purebasic.com/faq.php).

It has, as it seems, an active forum and good official and user base support (http://www.purebasic.fr/english/index.php, http://www.purebasic.com/links.php, http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Programmi ... PureBasic/).

There also is quite a bit positive feedback on the net (http://www.activevb.de/rubriken/kolumne ... basic.html (German from the year 2010, regarding huge projects: http://forums.purebasic.com/english/vie ... ed8aef996f), http://basic.mindteq.com/index.php?i=108, http://www.impulsegamer.com/igversion01 ... dition.htm, http://download.cnet.com/PureBasic/3000 ... 62653.html, http://www.softpedia.com/get/Programmin ... asic.shtml and others).

Maybe worth keeping an eye on it?

Maybe they even implement wishes from someone who sells a popular file manager and wants to switch prog language?
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewfor ... 29748234fb (Feature Requests and Wishlists)
http://www.purebasic.com/support.php

Of course all of the above does not change the fact that the code would have to be reworked - how intensively I do not know.

Regards, Stephan

[rgs]

I'm a big fan of PureBasic, though I don't do much coding these days. It does create very small and fast executables, the compiler converts the Basic code to assembly language then compiles it.
It has some nice features like not needing Windows APIs to be declared before using them, and of course having OS-independent code is great.
However the syntax is sufficiently different to VB that Don would have probably had to rewrite all of his code, though I imagine a lot of that could be automated. Still a huge job though. Also the IDE isn't as slick as VB6, in fact I haven't seen an IDE that I like better that VB's.

I'm contemplating using PureBasic to write a file manager for Linux as I haven't seen one that I like yet. It would be a big job though and given that I still haven't even found the time to get XYplorer running under Wine yet, writing my own wlll probably never happen. But who knows... and if I did then at least I'd know where to go to get ideas for cool new features