5 ms·

VB used to be one of the most important technologies in our field. No, it was never "good" nor "elegant". But it allowed a huge humber small and medium business

VB used to be one of the most important technologies in our field. No, it was never "good" nor "elegant". But it allowed a huge humber small and medium businesses to benefit from computers. All those DVD/VHS rental stores? VB. Line of business applications for government? VB. Visual Basic allowed people with minimal knowledge of computers to write useful applications that powered the economy. This is something we often forget nowadays in the flood of frameworks, programming paradigms, microservices etc. Computers exist to serve humans, we must never lose the connection with how useful our systems are.

worik 3y ago
> VB used to be one of the most important technologies in our field. No, it was never "good" nor "elegant". Node.js for a modern take?
xtracto 3y ago
VB was the Macromedia Flash of our (pre-internet) generation. Too bad theres nothing as good an ubiquitous nowadays.
antonjs 3y ago
It also allowed a lot of young people (ie me) to learn to make legitimate looking GUI programs without a difficult barrier to entry, on whatever windows machines our schools/houses had lying around. That and Delphi, how I miss you.
MichaelZuo 3y ago
How would you compare VB in the early 90s to XCode in 2023?
- bdcravens 3y ago
  Not even close. VB was pure productivity.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    I honestly miss VB, there was just something about it.
  - CWuestefeld 3y ago
    Yup. Even for non-UI applications. Our site at the time was Active Server Pages, with a DCOM backend. We started out writing the DCOM components in C++, but way more than half of the C++ code was in just type conversions with the variant types that COM demanded. We got tired of that really fast, and started building the COM components with VB5/6. That was SO MUCH faster.
    - rqtwteye 3y ago
      Same here. When VB4 came out I wrote a COM based plugin system with it which worked perfectly.
- stcroixx 3y ago
  VB6 was the absolute high water mark for RAD tools. Nothing has come close since and yeah, productivity and software in general has suffered for it.
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    I'd say Delphi/C++ Builder back then (not sure for now) and nowadays Lazarus are better than VB6 in pretty much all aspects when it comes to RAD tooling. There are many more controls (and with way more features in them) than VB6 ever had, it has much better functionality for layouts (in VB6 controls do not even have automatic resizing and alignment is limited to "picture" controls - but even that is more limited than even Delphi 1), in VB6 non-visual controls/components (e.g. timer) felt more of an afterthrought and at least in Delphi and Lazarus/Free Pascal the language itself is designed so that any object can in theory be inspected by the object inspector. VB6 was easier to get started with and learn though, but IMO that was because it didn't provide as many features and on that front the earlier VBs (up to VB4, before the new IDE was made) were even easier.
  - wg0 3y ago
    Nothing comes close to VB even today. I can't recall anything like that. The language was almost English like. The interface was so advanced for it's time. The drag and drop form designer. XCode is nothing even Microsoft's own product line has nothing like that. Edit: typo
    - winter_blue 3y ago
      Yea, VB was quite something. I look back at it with fond reminiscence.
    - HideousKojima 3y ago
      Still not as accessible to non-techies as VB was, but I've been really enjoying using the Godot game engine for making simple GUI apps.
      - wg0 3y ago
heywire 3y ago
Believe it or not, the legacy point of sale product I work on still uses a VB6 app for the cash office and reporting functions. A number of large grocery stores still use it in the US and abroad. I don’t work on that part of the application, but it still works just fine on Windows 11.
- xnorswap 3y ago
  One of my previous jobs was working on a vb6 POS system, we had to use windows XP VMs just so that we could run an old visual studio to keep developing it. I left that company when it was clear their dreams of replacing it with a SaaS product wasn't headed in the right direction for me, but I sometimes wonder if that product is still going or whether they finally achieved their SaaS migration dream.
  - heywire 3y ago
    Very well could be the same company :)
- rahkiin 3y ago
  Sadly development is no longer possible on Win11 and requires a Win7 VM
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    I think the installer wont work and needs some workarounds to convince it to install but the program should work.
  - vb6sp6 3y ago
    I coded and compiled a vb6 program last week on windows 11.
  - heywire 3y ago
    I have not tried it myself, but apparently it can be done.
  - yukkuri 3y ago
helpfulContrib 3y ago
>Visual Basic allowed people with minimal knowledge of computers to write useful applications Over a weekend, I built a very useful application using only the `yad` [1] tool, sqlite3, and BASH scripts. Its a membership system with integrated Bluetooth, QR codes, Markdown for membership cards, and so on. I was impressed with how quickly it all came together. It was delightful to be programming forms, using BASH to validate the results, and then stuff things into a relational database - all with common tools available with ease on the newly installed Raspberry Pi. I was struck with how pleasant it felt to be coding this way. Immediate forms, very rapid validation logic, and a great set of tools to do data mangling. I even managed to convince ChatGPT to give me a "randomized test data" script that populated my nascent database with acceptable data for the purposes of continued development. Suddenly, rendering Markdown from the .sqlite3 database was fun! We've come a long way. I didn't have to fuss much to gain access to many of these tools. Of course it helps that I know a bit of `yad` to be dangerous, enough sqlite3 to be productive, and just enough BASH to tie it all together. I couldn't help but feel, somehow, that there was a way to make a GUI for these three tools, though .. [1] - https://github.com/v1cont/yad https://github.com/v1cont/yad
chaostheory 3y ago
> Visual Basic allowed people with minimal knowledge of computers to write useful applications that powered the economy. This is something we often forget nowadays in the flood of frameworks, programming paradigms, microservices etc. We haven’t forgotten anything. MS Power Apps is the spiritual successor for Access. Also, it’s the likely reason that startups like AirTable went unicorn, and if you look at Salesforce and ServiceNow they look a lot like enterprise versions of MS Access. Everything mentioned is a low code platform. I’m sure if you give me time I can name more major low code companies What you’ve forgotten in your nostalgia is the instability and insecurity related to VB and everything that relies on it. It’s probably why MS is trying to kill it for Windows 12.
- consumer451 3y ago
  > We haven’t forgotten anything. MS Power Apps is the spiritual successor for Access. I am pretty sure that having access to all of the events in VB6, I would be able to implement a bug-free Autocomplete Textbox. [0] In Power Apps, it is not possible to implement this exact UI, without major bugs - in 2023. Something was definitely forgotten along the way. [0] https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_autocomplete.asp https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_autocomplete.asp
  - mananaysiempre 3y ago
    > [H]aving access to all of the events in VB6, I would be able to implement a bug-free Autocomplete Textbox. .. That’d completely fall apart at the first hint of anything vaguely nontrivial going on with input, whether due to the user’s language, accessibility tech, or autocorrect on a touch keyboard. I remember being a non-Latin-script user in the age of localization patches and country-specific builds, and very much appreciate today’s “(try not to ruin) i18n first” approach (among other things implied by the above), but a simple input API absolutely was a casualty of that, even if you LoB app is completely fine being ASCII-only (however dubious a statement that is). (No experience with Power Apps, but I don’t think there is a single modern platform where that’ll be easy.)
- theonlybutlet 3y ago
nomel 3y ago
> No, it was never "good" nor "elegant". It was great for the time. I still don't see time travel debug in any of most modern IDEs.
discussDev 3y ago
Amen, all the structures in the world are useless if it's not producing something useful.
signaru 3y ago
Not just useful, but also user friendly. Not all computer users were savvy enough for command line apps or bare bones script source.
jotato 3y ago
You can use the Godot engine to build apps. It has a very similar drag/drop UI. Double click for events, and gdscript is very easy to pickup. Reminds me of VB everytime I use it
- chrisco255 3y ago
  Interesting, I've only ever heard it used as a game engine.
  - jotato 3y ago
    You totally can! I have a couple of apps that were made using it. There might even be a showcase on their site

worik 3y ago

> VB used to be one of the most important technologies in our field. No, it was never "good" nor "elegant". Node.js for a modern take?

xtracto 3y ago

VB was the Macromedia Flash of our (pre-internet) generation. Too bad theres nothing as good an ubiquitous nowadays.

antonjs 3y ago

It also allowed a lot of young people (ie me) to learn to make legitimate looking GUI programs without a difficult barrier to entry, on whatever windows machines our schools/houses had lying around. That and Delphi, how I miss you.

MichaelZuo 3y ago

How would you compare VB in the early 90s to XCode in 2023?

bdcravens 3y ago
Not even close. VB was pure productivity.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  I honestly miss VB, there was just something about it.
- CWuestefeld 3y ago
  Yup. Even for non-UI applications. Our site at the time was Active Server Pages, with a DCOM backend. We started out writing the DCOM components in C++, but way more than half of the C++ code was in just type conversions with the variant types that COM demanded. We got tired of that really fast, and started building the COM components with VB5/6. That was SO MUCH faster.
  - rqtwteye 3y ago
    Same here. When VB4 came out I wrote a COM based plugin system with it which worked perfectly.
stcroixx 3y ago
VB6 was the absolute high water mark for RAD tools. Nothing has come close since and yeah, productivity and software in general has suffered for it.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  I'd say Delphi/C++ Builder back then (not sure for now) and nowadays Lazarus are better than VB6 in pretty much all aspects when it comes to RAD tooling. There are many more controls (and with way more features in them) than VB6 ever had, it has much better functionality for layouts (in VB6 controls do not even have automatic resizing and alignment is limited to "picture" controls - but even that is more limited than even Delphi 1), in VB6 non-visual controls/components (e.g. timer) felt more of an afterthrought and at least in Delphi and Lazarus/Free Pascal the language itself is designed so that any object can in theory be inspected by the object inspector. VB6 was easier to get started with and learn though, but IMO that was because it didn't provide as many features and on that front the earlier VBs (up to VB4, before the new IDE was made) were even easier.
- wg0 3y ago
  Nothing comes close to VB even today. I can't recall anything like that. The language was almost English like. The interface was so advanced for it's time. The drag and drop form designer. XCode is nothing even Microsoft's own product line has nothing like that. Edit: typo
  - winter_blue 3y ago
    Yea, VB was quite something. I look back at it with fond reminiscence.
  - HideousKojima 3y ago
    Still not as accessible to non-techies as VB was, but I've been really enjoying using the Godot game engine for making simple GUI apps.
    - wg0 3y ago

heywire 3y ago

Believe it or not, the legacy point of sale product I work on still uses a VB6 app for the cash office and reporting functions. A number of large grocery stores still use it in the US and abroad. I don’t work on that part of the application, but it still works just fine on Windows 11.

xnorswap 3y ago
One of my previous jobs was working on a vb6 POS system, we had to use windows XP VMs just so that we could run an old visual studio to keep developing it. I left that company when it was clear their dreams of replacing it with a SaaS product wasn't headed in the right direction for me, but I sometimes wonder if that product is still going or whether they finally achieved their SaaS migration dream.
- heywire 3y ago
  Very well could be the same company :)
rahkiin 3y ago
Sadly development is no longer possible on Win11 and requires a Win7 VM
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  I think the installer wont work and needs some workarounds to convince it to install but the program should work.
- vb6sp6 3y ago
  I coded and compiled a vb6 program last week on windows 11.
- heywire 3y ago
  I have not tried it myself, but apparently it can be done.
- yukkuri 3y ago

helpfulContrib 3y ago

>Visual Basic allowed people with minimal knowledge of computers to write useful applications Over a weekend, I built a very useful application using only the `yad` [1] tool, sqlite3, and BASH scripts. Its a membership system with integrated Bluetooth, QR codes, Markdown for membership cards, and so on. I was impressed with how quickly it all came together. It was delightful to be programming forms, using BASH to validate the results, and then stuff things into a relational database - all with common tools available with ease on the newly installed Raspberry Pi. I was struck with how pleasant it felt to be coding this way. Immediate forms, very rapid validation logic, and a great set of tools to do data mangling. I even managed to convince ChatGPT to give me a "randomized test data" script that populated my nascent database with acceptable data for the purposes of continued development. Suddenly, rendering Markdown from the .sqlite3 database was fun! We've come a long way. I didn't have to fuss much to gain access to many of these tools. Of course it helps that I know a bit of `yad` to be dangerous, enough sqlite3 to be productive, and just enough BASH to tie it all together. I couldn't help but feel, somehow, that there was a way to make a GUI for these three tools, though .. [1] - https://github.com/v1cont/yad https://github.com/v1cont/yad

chaostheory 3y ago

> Visual Basic allowed people with minimal knowledge of computers to write useful applications that powered the economy. This is something we often forget nowadays in the flood of frameworks, programming paradigms, microservices etc. We haven’t forgotten anything. MS Power Apps is the spiritual successor for Access. Also, it’s the likely reason that startups like AirTable went unicorn, and if you look at Salesforce and ServiceNow they look a lot like enterprise versions of MS Access. Everything mentioned is a low code platform. I’m sure if you give me time I can name more major low code companies What you’ve forgotten in your nostalgia is the instability and insecurity related to VB and everything that relies on it. It’s probably why MS is trying to kill it for Windows 12.

consumer451 3y ago
> We haven’t forgotten anything. MS Power Apps is the spiritual successor for Access. I am pretty sure that having access to all of the events in VB6, I would be able to implement a bug-free Autocomplete Textbox. [0] In Power Apps, it is not possible to implement this exact UI, without major bugs - in 2023. Something was definitely forgotten along the way. [0] https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_autocomplete.asp https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_autocomplete.asp
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  > [H]aving access to all of the events in VB6, I would be able to implement a bug-free Autocomplete Textbox. .. That’d completely fall apart at the first hint of anything vaguely nontrivial going on with input, whether due to the user’s language, accessibility tech, or autocorrect on a touch keyboard. I remember being a non-Latin-script user in the age of localization patches and country-specific builds, and very much appreciate today’s “(try not to ruin) i18n first” approach (among other things implied by the above), but a simple input API absolutely was a casualty of that, even if you LoB app is completely fine being ASCII-only (however dubious a statement that is). (No experience with Power Apps, but I don’t think there is a single modern platform where that’ll be easy.)
theonlybutlet 3y ago

nomel 3y ago

> No, it was never "good" nor "elegant". It was great for the time. I still don't see time travel debug in any of most modern IDEs.

discussDev 3y ago

Amen, all the structures in the world are useless if it's not producing something useful.

signaru 3y ago

Not just useful, but also user friendly. Not all computer users were savvy enough for command line apps or bare bones script source.

jotato 3y ago

You can use the Godot engine to build apps. It has a very similar drag/drop UI. Double click for events, and gdscript is very easy to pickup. Reminds me of VB everytime I use it

chrisco255 3y ago
Interesting, I've only ever heard it used as a game engine.
- jotato 3y ago
  You totally can! I have a couple of apps that were made using it. There might even be a showcase on their site