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BASIC was my first language and VB6 was shortly after my first intro to GUI programming. I tend to agree with all your points, but I've never been able to fully

BASIC was my first language and VB6 was shortly after my first intro to GUI programming. I tend to agree with all your points, but I've never been able to fully convince myself that VB6 was just objectively "good" or if it was a first skill/nostalgia effect. I still think there is a really successful app ecosystem waiting to be built that is semantically similar to VB6 + Access but built with a more modern stack like SQLite + Electron + TypeScript.

jenscow 5y ago
> objectively "good" or if it was a first skill/nostalgia effect. When you consider the mainstream alternatives back then, by the time you've got the message-loop boilerplate working... in VB6 you've already created a functioning form with a database connection.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  When you consider the mainstream alternatives back then What were the mainstream alternatives? Folks always seemed to rave about Delphi. That seemed like the "grown up", "better" version of VB, though I never used it.
  - jenscow 5y ago
    MFC, or plain C/C++ win32. But yeh, Delphi was much better than VB (like how turbo pascal was better than QBasic), however it was more of a niche environment used mostly by independent vendors making consumer apps.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Niche where? It was everywhere in Europe. There is a reason why we still have Delphi conferences over here.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  You were almost writing full-fledged VB apps if you started with MS Access, made some forms and had a switchboard menu. A little VB Script and you were there.
datavirtue 5y ago
Is there an API for Electron yet that doesn't require you to pass messages to the nodejs backend? I did not find Electron+Typescript (Ionic+Angular/React) to be very productive at all. On initially approaching it I expected to just be able to treat my local server (nodejs) like a remote one and keep my code the same for my desktop app and web app. No dice. Very disappointing. I think Angular has a way to intercept http calls but you would need to build a translation layer. None of this is obvious to someone picking this up for the first time. The whole paradigm is a hack that requires a very experienced dev to navigate. Maybe I'm missing something.
- rco8786 5y ago
  You're not wrong - Electron has 2 processes per "app" (1 chromium 1 nodejs) that need to communicate w/ each other and they do that via the traditional network stack/local sockets. That part won't change AFAICT, but you can imagine a reasonable abstraction over it as part of a "batteries included" ecosystem in which events from the UI (button press, keyboard capture, scroll event, etc) are mapped seemlessly via configuration to user-defined functions that happen to run within the nodejs process with an SDK that allows developers to interact back w/ the UI in a similar manner. Resulting in a developer experience very similar to what you got with VB6.
golemiprague 5y ago

jenscow 5y ago

> objectively "good" or if it was a first skill/nostalgia effect. When you consider the mainstream alternatives back then, by the time you've got the message-loop boilerplate working... in VB6 you've already created a functioning form with a database connection.

JohnBooty 5y ago
When you consider the mainstream alternatives back then What were the mainstream alternatives? Folks always seemed to rave about Delphi. That seemed like the "grown up", "better" version of VB, though I never used it.
- jenscow 5y ago
  MFC, or plain C/C++ win32. But yeh, Delphi was much better than VB (like how turbo pascal was better than QBasic), however it was more of a niche environment used mostly by independent vendors making consumer apps.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Niche where? It was everywhere in Europe. There is a reason why we still have Delphi conferences over here.
skeeter2020 5y ago
You were almost writing full-fledged VB apps if you started with MS Access, made some forms and had a switchboard menu. A little VB Script and you were there.

datavirtue 5y ago

Is there an API for Electron yet that doesn't require you to pass messages to the nodejs backend? I did not find Electron+Typescript (Ionic+Angular/React) to be very productive at all. On initially approaching it I expected to just be able to treat my local server (nodejs) like a remote one and keep my code the same for my desktop app and web app. No dice. Very disappointing. I think Angular has a way to intercept http calls but you would need to build a translation layer. None of this is obvious to someone picking this up for the first time. The whole paradigm is a hack that requires a very experienced dev to navigate. Maybe I'm missing something.

rco8786 5y ago
You're not wrong - Electron has 2 processes per "app" (1 chromium 1 nodejs) that need to communicate w/ each other and they do that via the traditional network stack/local sockets. That part won't change AFAICT, but you can imagine a reasonable abstraction over it as part of a "batteries included" ecosystem in which events from the UI (button press, keyboard capture, scroll event, etc) are mapped seemlessly via configuration to user-defined functions that happen to run within the nodejs process with an SDK that allows developers to interact back w/ the UI in a similar manner. Resulting in a developer experience very similar to what you got with VB6.

golemiprague 5y ago