4 ms·

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
    I'd like to know more about that. If you've a blog or something.
  - nylonstrung 3y ago
    What are the reasons for using this vs a simple UI library like tkinter?
- MajimasEyepatch 3y ago
  The true successors to VB today are low code tools like Retool. Visually create an internal app for your business, then use a (relatively) simple language (this time JavaScript) to make it do basic CRUD stuff. For various reasons, we kind of lost that pragmatic approach when apps moved from the desktop to the web browser, and we've only just recently started to revisit it.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Tcl/Tk has entered the chat. Some of us don't want to spend an hour rat wrestling to get a form up -- a form that won't even tolerate resizing very well. Tcl/Tk is pretty much the fastest way to go from zero to functional GUI I've ever seen -- especially if you already have some functionality that works from the command line and just need to wrap it. It's also available from Python as Tkinter, and is amenable to repl driven development.
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    I've written both Tcl/Tk code and Lazarus and i think the latter is much faster to make things: not only you have a visual WYSIAWYG[0] editor but also a very rich framework. [0] A for Almost as technically the program can compile with different GUI backends (Win32, Gtk, Qt, etc) :-P
- mikewarot 3y ago
  Free Pascal/Lazarus is pretty close, but the documentation needs work. It's my go to for Windows GUI development.
m_mueller 3y ago
I'd actually counter this with Lotus Notes 6.5; On top of what VB offered it had a built-in locally replicated, fully encryptable and access manageable DBMS for every application you developed. Plus, it had a formula expression language that could take many tasks without needing to drop into the basic derived scripting language. To create simple CRUD apps that you could still work on in airplanes & trains it was really powerful. One of my favourite moments was when I sat in a corporate meeting with 12 or so different stakeholders for a project management software, and while they were discussing things to change, I just took the projector and implemented it live.

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
  I'd like to know more about that. If you've a blog or something.
- nylonstrung 3y ago
  What are the reasons for using this vs a simple UI library like tkinter?
MajimasEyepatch 3y ago
The true successors to VB today are low code tools like Retool. Visually create an internal app for your business, then use a (relatively) simple language (this time JavaScript) to make it do basic CRUD stuff. For various reasons, we kind of lost that pragmatic approach when apps moved from the desktop to the web browser, and we've only just recently started to revisit it.
bitwize 3y ago
Tcl/Tk has entered the chat. Some of us don't want to spend an hour rat wrestling to get a form up -- a form that won't even tolerate resizing very well. Tcl/Tk is pretty much the fastest way to go from zero to functional GUI I've ever seen -- especially if you already have some functionality that works from the command line and just need to wrap it. It's also available from Python as Tkinter, and is amenable to repl driven development.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  I've written both Tcl/Tk code and Lazarus and i think the latter is much faster to make things: not only you have a visual WYSIAWYG[0] editor but also a very rich framework. [0] A for Almost as technically the program can compile with different GUI backends (Win32, Gtk, Qt, etc) :-P
mikewarot 3y ago
Free Pascal/Lazarus is pretty close, but the documentation needs work. It's my go to for Windows GUI development.

m_mueller 3y ago

I'd actually counter this with Lotus Notes 6.5; On top of what VB offered it had a built-in locally replicated, fully encryptable and access manageable DBMS for every application you developed. Plus, it had a formula expression language that could take many tasks without needing to drop into the basic derived scripting language. To create simple CRUD apps that you could still work on in airplanes & trains it was really powerful. One of my favourite moments was when I sat in a corporate meeting with 12 or so different stakeholders for a project management software, and while they were discussing things to change, I just took the projector and implemented it live.