4 ms·

I loved VB. I don't think I've ever been as productive as I was in VB - I could literally knock together a complete desktop application in an afternoon. It was

I loved VB. I don't think I've ever been as productive as I was in VB - I could literally knock together a complete desktop application in an afternoon. It wasn't perfect. There were lots of problems with it. It would never win prizes in CS competitions. But man you could build shit with it fast.

donatj 7y ago
100% this to a tee! In the mid to late aughts I knocked out soo many junky little desktop apps that scratched very specific business itches we had at work. A couple hours work in VB saved non-technical people hundreds if not thousands of hours of repeated effort. Killing it is a mistake in my opinion, Even if I haven't touched Windows since 2010, VB.Net is the one wonderful thing it had going for it.
dole 7y ago
“VB6 makes 95% of programming simple and the other 5% impossible.”
- hu3 7y ago
  More like "95% simple and 5% possible". VB6 can call win APIs and C++ code for when some arcane functionality is needed.
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    Take https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/oaidl/ns-oaidl-variant?redirectedfrom=MSDN https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/oaidl/ns-... and https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winbase/nf-winbase-readeventloga https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winbase/n... and try to sensibly read a bunch of _EVENTLOGRECORD's of varying lengths. "possible" is technically true but charitable.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      You don't need any of that. VB6 had C FFI (Lib/Alias), structs, and function pointers (AddressOf). So you could just implement a function in straight C, compile it into a DLL, and invoke it from VB.
      - throwaway5752 7y ago
        I know but already function prototyping of a DLL your write to get around language limitations isn't quite in the spirit of "things you can do in VB6". And technical you could do it in VB, but it was pulling teeth. I could just as easily write it in java and shell out to it. In VB it was hard pretty difficult. But you are completely correct, that's the right thing to do. I don't have bad feelings towards VB at all. Even today it was probably the most productive GUI development environment I've ever seen. But function prototypes returning structs / buffers? OnError GoTo <label>? Nostalgia only goes so far. ps - noticed the employer on the profile. Powershell + .NET assemblies crushed it, and VB.NET was a far superior language (though, just like all the jvm languages have the same feel, all the IL based ones did and why not use C# at that point?)
- OkGoDoIt 7y ago
  That’s an admirable achievement, honestly
Joeri 7y ago
Delphi is still around and just as fast to knock something together in. I switched from VB4 to delphi when that was released and never used VB again.
- mikewarot 7y ago
  And if you can't afford Delphi, Lazarus is okay, not as well documented, but works well, and the price is right. ($0.00)

donatj 7y ago

100% this to a tee! In the mid to late aughts I knocked out soo many junky little desktop apps that scratched very specific business itches we had at work. A couple hours work in VB saved non-technical people hundreds if not thousands of hours of repeated effort. Killing it is a mistake in my opinion, Even if I haven't touched Windows since 2010, VB.Net is the one wonderful thing it had going for it.

dole 7y ago

“VB6 makes 95% of programming simple and the other 5% impossible.”

hu3 7y ago
More like "95% simple and 5% possible". VB6 can call win APIs and C++ code for when some arcane functionality is needed.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Take https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/oaidl/ns-oaidl-variant?redirectedfrom=MSDN https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/oaidl/ns-... and https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winbase/nf-winbase-readeventloga https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winbase/n... and try to sensibly read a bunch of _EVENTLOGRECORD's of varying lengths. "possible" is technically true but charitable.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    You don't need any of that. VB6 had C FFI (Lib/Alias), structs, and function pointers (AddressOf). So you could just implement a function in straight C, compile it into a DLL, and invoke it from VB.
    - throwaway5752 7y ago
      I know but already function prototyping of a DLL your write to get around language limitations isn't quite in the spirit of "things you can do in VB6". And technical you could do it in VB, but it was pulling teeth. I could just as easily write it in java and shell out to it. In VB it was hard pretty difficult. But you are completely correct, that's the right thing to do. I don't have bad feelings towards VB at all. Even today it was probably the most productive GUI development environment I've ever seen. But function prototypes returning structs / buffers? OnError GoTo <label>? Nostalgia only goes so far. ps - noticed the employer on the profile. Powershell + .NET assemblies crushed it, and VB.NET was a far superior language (though, just like all the jvm languages have the same feel, all the IL based ones did and why not use C# at that point?)
OkGoDoIt 7y ago
That’s an admirable achievement, honestly

Joeri 7y ago

Delphi is still around and just as fast to knock something together in. I switched from VB4 to delphi when that was released and never used VB again.

mikewarot 7y ago
And if you can't afford Delphi, Lazarus is okay, not as well documented, but works well, and the price is right. ($0.00)