4 ms·

As I said, I wasn't sure about the details :-) But as you seem to know a bit about it, what was the standard database that was being used as the backend? SQLS

As I said, I wasn't sure about the details :-) But as you seem to know a bit about it, what was the standard database that was being used as the backend? SQLServer? And were the db requests being generated by the app efficient? And most importantly, considering the thrust of the article, was efficiency easy to achieve? I'm thinking about this in terms of the skills needed by a single programmer to be able to do anything useful - if you needed to be a full on DB wonk to produce an effective VB6 app, then it wasn't really as simple as the author was making out.

llimllib 18y ago
SQLServer or FoxPro or Oracle, you wrote the db requests yourself (probably just hooking up to stored procs, as he says) and you're totally missing the point here. Efficiency in a small business app just doesn't matter. What bugs him, AFAICT, is that it's harder to throw together an app for a few users that solves some pain they have. VB6 is possibly the best environment for doing this ever, so I see where he's coming from. So rails is more efficient, written in a vastly superior language, more conveniently hooked to the DB, and more scalable than VB6. But! Designing a UI is still basically manual labor with it, labor he used to be able to toss off with ease in VB6. (Also, you don't need to be a "full-on db wonk" to write a simple stored procedure.)
- gaius 18y ago
  A typical app for me starts with some set of conditions, runs for a bit doing data access and computation, and produces some result. The middle bits would be about the same amount of work in any reasonable language. But take the input, if I use getopt() and the command line, I could do that bit of it in say 15 minutes, an hour at most. Using Tcl/Tk, which is broadly analogous to VB6, a couple of hours. In J2EE is could take days or longer, just to plumb it all together, longer if I had to sort out a J2EE environment from scratch. And I don't care about that bit of my program! I just want to crunch my numbers. And the output step, it's trivial to write some numbers to a file and also a PS file if I want a graph too. Or I could spend a few more days doing AJAX graphs in front of my J2EE... Fortunately getopt and so on haven't gone anywhere, they're still just as usable as they were.
- kragen 18y ago
  Can't you write Rails templates with DreamWeaver? Is it a lot harder than assembling dialog boxes in VB? I've basically never used DreamWeaver and I haven't used VB since 1997, so I don't really know.
  - llimllib 18y ago
    heck if I know. MS also has a DnD-style form assembler for ASP.Net, I don't know why he didn't/couldn't use that. I was just trying to show where he was coming from.
    - kragen 18y ago
      Oh, sure. I thought he was complaining more about the excessive complexity of modern computing environments, though, the way that mainframe people used to do around 1970, and the way minicomputer people used to do around 1980. Maybe he should try programming an 8-bit AVR.
      - llimllib 18y ago
        > I thought he was complaining more about the excessive complexity of modern computing environments There was definitely that, too, but I'm much less sympathetic to that point. The .net libraries, like java before them, are gratuitously baroque.
- coryrc 18y ago
  > VB6 is possibly the best environment for doing this ever, so I see where he's coming from. The open-source descendant of Foxpro is Dabo: http://www.dabodev.com http://www.dabodev.com As easy as anything MS but with a real programming language (Python).
- ido 18y ago
  > What bugs him, AFAICT, is that it's harder to throw together an app for a few users that solves some pain they have. VB6 is possibly the best environment for doing this ever, so I see where he's coming from. Thank you! This 2008, why can't i get a platform independent way of quickly and easily coding up a GUI app like I could in VB4 in '95?

llimllib 18y ago

SQLServer or FoxPro or Oracle, you wrote the db requests yourself (probably just hooking up to stored procs, as he says) and you're totally missing the point here. Efficiency in a small business app just doesn't matter. What bugs him, AFAICT, is that it's harder to throw together an app for a few users that solves some pain they have. VB6 is possibly the best environment for doing this ever, so I see where he's coming from. So rails is more efficient, written in a vastly superior language, more conveniently hooked to the DB, and more scalable than VB6. But! Designing a UI is still basically manual labor with it, labor he used to be able to toss off with ease in VB6. (Also, you don't need to be a "full-on db wonk" to write a simple stored procedure.)

gaius 18y ago
A typical app for me starts with some set of conditions, runs for a bit doing data access and computation, and produces some result. The middle bits would be about the same amount of work in any reasonable language. But take the input, if I use getopt() and the command line, I could do that bit of it in say 15 minutes, an hour at most. Using Tcl/Tk, which is broadly analogous to VB6, a couple of hours. In J2EE is could take days or longer, just to plumb it all together, longer if I had to sort out a J2EE environment from scratch. And I don't care about that bit of my program! I just want to crunch my numbers. And the output step, it's trivial to write some numbers to a file and also a PS file if I want a graph too. Or I could spend a few more days doing AJAX graphs in front of my J2EE... Fortunately getopt and so on haven't gone anywhere, they're still just as usable as they were.
kragen 18y ago
Can't you write Rails templates with DreamWeaver? Is it a lot harder than assembling dialog boxes in VB? I've basically never used DreamWeaver and I haven't used VB since 1997, so I don't really know.
- llimllib 18y ago
  heck if I know. MS also has a DnD-style form assembler for ASP.Net, I don't know why he didn't/couldn't use that. I was just trying to show where he was coming from.
  - kragen 18y ago
    Oh, sure. I thought he was complaining more about the excessive complexity of modern computing environments, though, the way that mainframe people used to do around 1970, and the way minicomputer people used to do around 1980. Maybe he should try programming an 8-bit AVR.
    - llimllib 18y ago
      > I thought he was complaining more about the excessive complexity of modern computing environments There was definitely that, too, but I'm much less sympathetic to that point. The .net libraries, like java before them, are gratuitously baroque.
coryrc 18y ago
> VB6 is possibly the best environment for doing this ever, so I see where he's coming from. The open-source descendant of Foxpro is Dabo: http://www.dabodev.com http://www.dabodev.com As easy as anything MS but with a real programming language (Python).
ido 18y ago
> What bugs him, AFAICT, is that it's harder to throw together an app for a few users that solves some pain they have. VB6 is possibly the best environment for doing this ever, so I see where he's coming from. Thank you! This 2008, why can't i get a platform independent way of quickly and easily coding up a GUI app like I could in VB4 in '95?