6 ms·

I've been programming since... well... technically since I was a kid in the 1980s and professionally since 1998. I think several areas have regressed quite a bi

by api 5y ago

I've been programming since... well... technically since I was a kid in the 1980s and professionally since 1998. I think several areas have regressed quite a bit. The biggest one by far is desktop GUI programming. From the late 1980s until the mid-2000s GUIs had all kinds of standardized visual cues, context sensitive help, UIs usable by both mouse and keyboard, standard interface designs across apps, data binding, and most of all WYSIWYG GUI design software that worked exceptionally well. We had this on 80286 CPUs with 1MiB of RAM and similarly tiny machines. Today's desktop UIs are a fucking disaster on both the developer side and the user side. For developers you have a choice between a hypertext language hacked endlessly into a UI and native UI tooling that's far less intuitive and much uglier than what we had back then. Compare the UI designer (not the language) in Visual Basic in the 1990s to today. You could not only design but data bind a complex app that looked decent in 30 minutes. For users you have no consistency, no keyboard shortcuts (or different ones for every app), no help or help that only works online, etc.

sharemywin 5y ago
I miss VB. it was really easy to use. There are tools out there but you have to pay every month for them.
- kbr2000 5y ago
  Check Lazarus [0] for Free Pascal [1]. Another viable option would be Visual Tcl [2] for Tcl/Tk [3]. Given the event-based nature of Tcl and Tk, I find it matches well for a methodology like VB provided. And it's far from the only one I remember (although you'll need to do some research here [4]). For example, Komodo IDE used to have a Tk GUI builder that provided for the same kind of methodology, which has been split off in [5]. Enjoy! [0] https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ [1] https://www.freepascal.org/ https://www.freepascal.org/ [2] http://vtcl.sourceforge.net/ http://vtcl.sourceforge.net/ [3] https://www.tcl-lang.org/ https://www.tcl-lang.org/ [4] https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/GUI+Building+Tools https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/GUI+Building+Tools [5] http://spectcl.sourceforge.net/ http://spectcl.sourceforge.net/
- pjmlp 5y ago
  What is preventing you to use VB.NET with WinForms? Still out there.
  - TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
    Yeah. I know VB gets a lot of derision in these parts, but Visual Studio community edition is free, and .NET is free. So it's totally free to write applications with.
darkwater 5y ago
How comes that circa 2000 VB6 was the most hated and belittled programming language out there? I was there, I remember it. Now it's suddenly part of the golden age of desktop programming? I think you should put your nostalgia glasses off.
- jhbadger 5y ago
  Because the language itself was terrible. The RAD tooling/UI designer was excellent. There was a product that had those but included a better language -- Borland's Delphi, but Borland and its successors squandered its initial success and didn't invest in improving it.
- cabalamat 5y ago
  VB was good at some things (e.g. UI design) and bad at others (e.g. doing complex computation).
- ale42 5y ago
  I think that the most hated part of VB6 was more the BASIC language rather than the GUI design part... but maybe I'm wrong.
  - bzzzt 5y ago
    I think it had more to do with VB being so easy it attracted lots of inexperienced programmers who didn't care about performance or correctness as long as the job got done. Sort of like a pre-internet PHP ;)
  - darkwater 5y ago
    I also remember DLL hell and all the issues to make safely run on every Windows installation a VB6 program and its runtime. But I agree with the other commenters that the IDE and the visual part was really nice (too nice for the average skilled developer of the time, VB6 was the NodeJS of that time)
- jjkaczor 5y ago
  The language was crap - the IDE/designer was excellent. For me - the sweet-spot that I used for all of my own personal projects after outgrowing VB1-6 was... Borland Delphi. The IDE/designer was at least as good as VB - but the Object Pascal language was so powerful. It was truely object-oriented and if one wanted, one could work at a high level of abstraction. Yet it could also natively drop-down to low-level Windows API's, and handle pointer-based work if necessary. Unfortunately - for my professional career, Delphi never captured the large-scale Enterprise market - that went to .NET or Java and the rest is history... (Occasionally I noodle about with FreePascal for the nostalgia factor)
usrbinbash 5y ago
That's not a problem of the craft however, it's a problem of the culture. We are perfectly capable of writing native GUIs, and we have powerful tools for it as well. QTDesigner comes to mind as a well known example. The problem is, about 12 years ago, application design went through a gameification and "toy-i-fication" phase, from which it has yet to recover, because suddenly, everything had to look like it was designed for tablets or gaming consoles. Then the "javascript for everythiiiing!" happened, and suddenly the tools and workflows behind all the bloated, inefficient, low-information-density apps were swept into the desktop world. But, since the modern definition of an "App" is basically everything that is displayed on a phone ever, and devices got so powerful that no matter how badly devs f* it up it still kinda-ish works (if we ignore the battery screaming for dear life), and this situation has generally been accepted.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  The problem is when this culture extends a couple of generations the craft gets lost.
  - usrbinbash 5y ago
    Not really, because there is always a high demand for good software. Just because cookware nowadays is usually made from cheap, industrially pressed sheet metal, doesn't mean high-quality copper and cast-iron cookware is no longer made.
- jfengel 5y ago
  It is a culture problem, but it goes back before phones and Javascript. Even before that, application design was usually terrible. Apps were almost universally ugly. Developers just aren't very good at it; it's not in their skill sets. They're good at making apps fast and small, but not at making them usable. Rare companies would hire separate designers, and the apps could be functional and attractive, but they were the exception. It was a lot of money for something generally considered ancillary. Browser-based apps get to leverage the work done by browser makers, who put in the effort to make toolkits that looked nice by default. They're not small or fast -- though Moore's Law has made them usable anyway. They also favor the things that designers like -- including not overwhelming the user with dense information. You can still use them badly, but by default any programmer can make an app that isn't awful. There never was a golden age when developers made good, small, fast apps. It was usually a "pick two" situation, except by spending a lot of money. I'm just as happy to let my battery scream and not cringe at every single app that comes up, and so cheaply that they can give it away or cost dollars rather than tens or hundreds. Others disagree, of course, but I think the market tends to show a heavy thumb on one side of that scale.
WalterBright 5y ago
Is it indeed annoying that every app isn't "cool" unless it attempts to reinvent the user interface.

by api 5y ago

sharemywin 5y ago

I miss VB. it was really easy to use. There are tools out there but you have to pay every month for them.

kbr2000 5y ago
Check Lazarus [0] for Free Pascal [1]. Another viable option would be Visual Tcl [2] for Tcl/Tk [3]. Given the event-based nature of Tcl and Tk, I find it matches well for a methodology like VB provided. And it's far from the only one I remember (although you'll need to do some research here [4]). For example, Komodo IDE used to have a Tk GUI builder that provided for the same kind of methodology, which has been split off in [5]. Enjoy! [0] https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ [1] https://www.freepascal.org/ https://www.freepascal.org/ [2] http://vtcl.sourceforge.net/ http://vtcl.sourceforge.net/ [3] https://www.tcl-lang.org/ https://www.tcl-lang.org/ [4] https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/GUI+Building+Tools https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/GUI+Building+Tools [5] http://spectcl.sourceforge.net/ http://spectcl.sourceforge.net/
pjmlp 5y ago
What is preventing you to use VB.NET with WinForms? Still out there.
- TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  Yeah. I know VB gets a lot of derision in these parts, but Visual Studio community edition is free, and .NET is free. So it's totally free to write applications with.

darkwater 5y ago

How comes that circa 2000 VB6 was the most hated and belittled programming language out there? I was there, I remember it. Now it's suddenly part of the golden age of desktop programming? I think you should put your nostalgia glasses off.

jhbadger 5y ago
Because the language itself was terrible. The RAD tooling/UI designer was excellent. There was a product that had those but included a better language -- Borland's Delphi, but Borland and its successors squandered its initial success and didn't invest in improving it.
cabalamat 5y ago
VB was good at some things (e.g. UI design) and bad at others (e.g. doing complex computation).
ale42 5y ago
I think that the most hated part of VB6 was more the BASIC language rather than the GUI design part... but maybe I'm wrong.
- bzzzt 5y ago
  I think it had more to do with VB being so easy it attracted lots of inexperienced programmers who didn't care about performance or correctness as long as the job got done. Sort of like a pre-internet PHP ;)
- darkwater 5y ago
  I also remember DLL hell and all the issues to make safely run on every Windows installation a VB6 program and its runtime. But I agree with the other commenters that the IDE and the visual part was really nice (too nice for the average skilled developer of the time, VB6 was the NodeJS of that time)
jjkaczor 5y ago
The language was crap - the IDE/designer was excellent. For me - the sweet-spot that I used for all of my own personal projects after outgrowing VB1-6 was... Borland Delphi. The IDE/designer was at least as good as VB - but the Object Pascal language was so powerful. It was truely object-oriented and if one wanted, one could work at a high level of abstraction. Yet it could also natively drop-down to low-level Windows API's, and handle pointer-based work if necessary. Unfortunately - for my professional career, Delphi never captured the large-scale Enterprise market - that went to .NET or Java and the rest is history... (Occasionally I noodle about with FreePascal for the nostalgia factor)

usrbinbash 5y ago

That's not a problem of the craft however, it's a problem of the culture. We are perfectly capable of writing native GUIs, and we have powerful tools for it as well. QTDesigner comes to mind as a well known example. The problem is, about 12 years ago, application design went through a gameification and "toy-i-fication" phase, from which it has yet to recover, because suddenly, everything had to look like it was designed for tablets or gaming consoles. Then the "javascript for everythiiiing!" happened, and suddenly the tools and workflows behind all the bloated, inefficient, low-information-density apps were swept into the desktop world. But, since the modern definition of an "App" is basically everything that is displayed on a phone ever, and devices got so powerful that no matter how badly devs f* it up it still kinda-ish works (if we ignore the battery screaming for dear life), and this situation has generally been accepted.

pjmlp 5y ago
The problem is when this culture extends a couple of generations the craft gets lost.
- usrbinbash 5y ago
  Not really, because there is always a high demand for good software. Just because cookware nowadays is usually made from cheap, industrially pressed sheet metal, doesn't mean high-quality copper and cast-iron cookware is no longer made.
jfengel 5y ago
It is a culture problem, but it goes back before phones and Javascript. Even before that, application design was usually terrible. Apps were almost universally ugly. Developers just aren't very good at it; it's not in their skill sets. They're good at making apps fast and small, but not at making them usable. Rare companies would hire separate designers, and the apps could be functional and attractive, but they were the exception. It was a lot of money for something generally considered ancillary. Browser-based apps get to leverage the work done by browser makers, who put in the effort to make toolkits that looked nice by default. They're not small or fast -- though Moore's Law has made them usable anyway. They also favor the things that designers like -- including not overwhelming the user with dense information. You can still use them badly, but by default any programmer can make an app that isn't awful. There never was a golden age when developers made good, small, fast apps. It was usually a "pick two" situation, except by spending a lot of money. I'm just as happy to let my battery scream and not cringe at every single app that comes up, and so cheaply that they can give it away or cost dollars rather than tens or hundreds. Others disagree, of course, but I think the market tends to show a heavy thumb on one side of that scale.

WalterBright 5y ago

Is it indeed annoying that every app isn't "cool" unless it attempts to reinvent the user interface.