4 ms·

> Nostalgic for VB? No. I actually liked VB when I was a teenager. It was very easy and (using ms parlance at the time) quick to develop small applications. Fo

> Nostalgic for VB? No. I actually liked VB when I was a teenager. It was very easy and (using ms parlance at the time) quick to develop small applications. For me it was not much more from a mere toy. I know some people used it for serious purposes, but I'm sure many of these uses were makeshift prototypes that eventually nobody had the time or money to rewrite. I don't think many serious and popular apps were written in VB and were maintained for a long time. I don't think it was adequate for that purpose and I don't know anyone who thought it was.

RajT88 4y ago
I used to do support for software developers. I used to joke that anyone claiming to be a "Very senior VB developer" was basically saying, "I don't know how computers work". While it was a funny way of blowing off steam (and indeed senior VB devs didn't seem to know things like calling conventions or static linking), therein lies the miracle of VB. People could make business applications without having to know that stuff. Often enough, they had VB devs for the frontend, and the heavy lifting done in *.dll's written by more hardcore C++ devs. I guess it worked out well enough that way.
jdwithit 4y ago
I also got a copy of VB (I think VB4) as a teenager and it was a perfect stepping stone into GUI programming. I had been writing DOS games in QBASIC for years, and some basic (heh) C/C++. But the leap to writing Windows apps in C++ was terrifying. There was so much more to learn. What the heck is an SDK and why does the Windows SDK contain like 5 trillion different functions, many of which have ALMOST the same name and method signature? What is an event? What on earth is a CORBA or an OLE? As a teen with no mentor and no resources besides books and the early web it was overwhelming. But VB did so much of the work for you. And it was BASIC, which I already knew well. So it was exactly what I needed to understand the fundamentals without having to boil the whole ocean at once just to get a window with a button on my screen. Agree it wasn't really suitable for large scale projects (although it got used for them anyway heh). Somehow VB apps always looked and felt "wrong", like they were a cheap knockoff. But for learning, and writing quick non-commercial apps, it was just right. All that said, I feel no nostalgia or desire to go back.

RajT88 4y ago

I used to do support for software developers. I used to joke that anyone claiming to be a "Very senior VB developer" was basically saying, "I don't know how computers work". While it was a funny way of blowing off steam (and indeed senior VB devs didn't seem to know things like calling conventions or static linking), therein lies the miracle of VB. People could make business applications without having to know that stuff. Often enough, they had VB devs for the frontend, and the heavy lifting done in *.dll's written by more hardcore C++ devs. I guess it worked out well enough that way.

jdwithit 4y ago

I also got a copy of VB (I think VB4) as a teenager and it was a perfect stepping stone into GUI programming. I had been writing DOS games in QBASIC for years, and some basic (heh) C/C++. But the leap to writing Windows apps in C++ was terrifying. There was so much more to learn. What the heck is an SDK and why does the Windows SDK contain like 5 trillion different functions, many of which have ALMOST the same name and method signature? What is an event? What on earth is a CORBA or an OLE? As a teen with no mentor and no resources besides books and the early web it was overwhelming. But VB did so much of the work for you. And it was BASIC, which I already knew well. So it was exactly what I needed to understand the fundamentals without having to boil the whole ocean at once just to get a window with a button on my screen. Agree it wasn't really suitable for large scale projects (although it got used for them anyway heh). Somehow VB apps always looked and felt "wrong", like they were a cheap knockoff. But for learning, and writing quick non-commercial apps, it was just right. All that said, I feel no nostalgia or desire to go back.