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As an ex-VB6 programmer, my view is that Microsoft has been fairly supportive of VB users. - The IDE itself was supported for 10 years, till 2008 - The runtim

by jeswin 7y ago

As an ex-VB6 programmer, my view is that Microsoft has been fairly supportive of VB users. - The IDE itself was supported for 10 years, till 2008 - The runtime is supported till 2024, which is like 26 years. I think you can get it to work on Windows 10 as well, though I haven't tried it myself. I still see people using VB apps. My view is that VB.Net should never have been created, since it was closer to C# than it was to VB. Neither should it have been adopted by VB programmers (if they did a fair analysis), but Microsoft messaging around that time may have suggested it's a workable path forward.

roenxi 7y ago
The typical working career is 40 years. If 10-26 years is considered an acceptable lifetime for a language all your experience in the languages you use will be forcibly reset fairly early in your career. It isn't going to be major in itself, but becoming known for being a specialist in a corporate sponsored language is a pretty catastrophic career error. Anyone who learned C on the other hand looks pretty clever.
- hu3 7y ago
  I wouldn't use C as comparison. C's ubiquity and durability is not the norm for programming languages. It's an exception.
- kungito 7y ago
  To be honest it sounds pretty not clever knowing only 1 language and having your career depend on it
gus_massa 7y ago
It works in Windows 10. It's a problem to install because VB6 expect a very old version of Java and the 16 bit installer doesn't work in the 64 bit Window. But after a few trick, it still works.
cm2187 7y ago
On the other side the reason VB.net broke backward compatibility was to correct things that were obviously bad design decisions in VB6. Like parameters being byref by default, having to use the Set keyword for objects, inconsistent 0 or 1 based collection structures, etc. If VB was meant to survive and move the XXI century, these things had to be fixed.
- orthoxerox 7y ago
  VB.NET half-broke the compatibility, which got it stuck in the weird space where automatic translation from VB6 was no longer possible, but VB still had lots of quirks that made it harder to coevolve it with C#.
int_19h 7y ago
The VB6 runtime ships with Win10, in fact.

by jeswin 7y ago

roenxi 7y ago

The typical working career is 40 years. If 10-26 years is considered an acceptable lifetime for a language all your experience in the languages you use will be forcibly reset fairly early in your career. It isn't going to be major in itself, but becoming known for being a specialist in a corporate sponsored language is a pretty catastrophic career error. Anyone who learned C on the other hand looks pretty clever.

hu3 7y ago
I wouldn't use C as comparison. C's ubiquity and durability is not the norm for programming languages. It's an exception.
kungito 7y ago
To be honest it sounds pretty not clever knowing only 1 language and having your career depend on it

gus_massa 7y ago

It works in Windows 10. It's a problem to install because VB6 expect a very old version of Java and the 16 bit installer doesn't work in the 64 bit Window. But after a few trick, it still works.

cm2187 7y ago

On the other side the reason VB.net broke backward compatibility was to correct things that were obviously bad design decisions in VB6. Like parameters being byref by default, having to use the Set keyword for objects, inconsistent 0 or 1 based collection structures, etc. If VB was meant to survive and move the XXI century, these things had to be fixed.

orthoxerox 7y ago
VB.NET half-broke the compatibility, which got it stuck in the weird space where automatic translation from VB6 was no longer possible, but VB still had lots of quirks that made it harder to coevolve it with C#.

int_19h 7y ago

The VB6 runtime ships with Win10, in fact.