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VB6 is as stretch, but I'd love to see Microsoft Visual Basic 1.0 for MS-DOS open-sourced. It is the only DOS version of Visual Basic. What is remarkable about

VB6 is as stretch, but I'd love to see Microsoft Visual Basic 1.0 for MS-DOS open-sourced. It is the only DOS version of Visual Basic. What is remarkable about VB for DOS is that it's a complete text-mode RAD IDE [1] for TUIs. There is no TUI builder that I know of like it. It is obscure and barely discussed by retrocomputing enthusiasts. Your best resource outside of early-1990s books and magazines is a 2020 blog post [2] that demonstrates building a "Hello, world!" project with screenshots. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface_builder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface_build... [2] https://www.cloudwisp.com/exploring-visual-basic-1-0-for-ms-dos/ https://www.cloudwisp.com/exploring-visual-basic-1-0-for-ms-...

deleted 1y ago
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asdefghyk 1y ago
Microsoft Visual Basic 1.0 for MSDOS - Sounds like competitor For Vermont Views or the previous product Windows for Data and windows for C No sure of the names ... my recollection this software was in use in early 90s and maybe late 80s
- asdefghyk 1y ago
  Google of 3 words Vermont Views, software still picks up several links Borland Turbo Pascal and Borland Delphi where also (similar) products from around that time. These products where popular at the time. ( The development system provide include some kind of windows system for the application ) Microsoft even hired key Delphi person ....
tom_ 1y ago
Add me to the VB for DOS fan club! I was a user in the mid to late 90s. TurboVision was beyond me at the time (I didn't really know Pascal well at all, and I wasn't good enough at C++), but VB for DOS was just the ticket (mostly) - the language was not terrible, and the form designer was super easy to use. Much easier than me attempting to recreate a nice text UI in C. I wrote a few programs in it. I do recall the 640 KB barrier being a limitation. I've forgotten the exact details, but, as I recall, the docs implied it shouldn't generally be an issue - but in practice it was. And it'd always be a problem at the most annoying time. (But it could just have been some large model thing that experienced real mode fiends would instinctively know to avoid? Coming from a 68000 background, for DOS stuff I'd used Borland's huge model or a DOS extender of some kind, to avoid the segmentation one way or another. Maybe that was the problem.) Despite the occasional problems I had, I always generally liked it, and felt the UIs I created with it looked really rather nice.
qingcharles 1y ago
That's wild that it passed me by. I've never seen that before. I used the Windows version from 1.0, but all my main development was still in TUI apps like Borland until about 1995. Funny that the DOS version came out after the Windows one. It amuses me that I'm sat here at my desktop right now using the exact same interface in Visual Studio 34 years later to build a WinForms app.

deleted 1y ago

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asdefghyk 1y ago

Microsoft Visual Basic 1.0 for MSDOS - Sounds like competitor For Vermont Views or the previous product Windows for Data and windows for C No sure of the names ... my recollection this software was in use in early 90s and maybe late 80s

asdefghyk 1y ago
Google of 3 words Vermont Views, software still picks up several links Borland Turbo Pascal and Borland Delphi where also (similar) products from around that time. These products where popular at the time. ( The development system provide include some kind of windows system for the application ) Microsoft even hired key Delphi person ....

tom_ 1y ago

Add me to the VB for DOS fan club! I was a user in the mid to late 90s. TurboVision was beyond me at the time (I didn't really know Pascal well at all, and I wasn't good enough at C++), but VB for DOS was just the ticket (mostly) - the language was not terrible, and the form designer was super easy to use. Much easier than me attempting to recreate a nice text UI in C. I wrote a few programs in it. I do recall the 640 KB barrier being a limitation. I've forgotten the exact details, but, as I recall, the docs implied it shouldn't generally be an issue - but in practice it was. And it'd always be a problem at the most annoying time. (But it could just have been some large model thing that experienced real mode fiends would instinctively know to avoid? Coming from a 68000 background, for DOS stuff I'd used Borland's huge model or a DOS extender of some kind, to avoid the segmentation one way or another. Maybe that was the problem.) Despite the occasional problems I had, I always generally liked it, and felt the UIs I created with it looked really rather nice.

qingcharles 1y ago

That's wild that it passed me by. I've never seen that before. I used the Windows version from 1.0, but all my main development was still in TUI apps like Borland until about 1995. Funny that the DOS version came out after the Windows one. It amuses me that I'm sat here at my desktop right now using the exact same interface in Visual Studio 34 years later to build a WinForms app.