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- A programming language with rudimentary OO - A complete IDE - A relational database with multi-user access and transactions - A visual form editor - Drag-

by jasim 12y ago

- A programming language with rudimentary OO - A complete IDE - A relational database with multi-user access and transactions - A visual form editor - Drag-and-droppable Components - A debugger that lets you mutate code and even the instruction pointer, while running. - A compiler that generates distributable EXEs in a single click - All of this inside 2mb. vb3.exe, released in 1993, 22 whole years ago. We're still playing catch up.

rzimmerman 12y ago
Also: - asynchronous/event-based programming - importing C/native code from a DLL is trivial - fantastic documentation (so good you don't need the Internet) If you want a button that does something, you literally draw the button on your form, double click it, and write the code for that event. I agree - one day we'll catch up. Also VB6 autocomplete rocked.
pjmlp 12y ago
Depends on where you are. We on the the native side don't need to catch up.
- jasim 12y ago
  Quite true. I'm coming from the web world, and we have a lot of accidental complexity. However some of it is inevitable, owing to what it lets you do: run the same site across platforms and devices, built from the ground-up to enable communication and collaboration, seamless updates, infrastructure support for caching etc.
jawngee 12y ago
And all of this existed in 1988 with NeXT Project Builder/Interface Builder. Which was used to write the first web browser.
- ja27 12y ago
  Yes. When Visual Basic first came out, I assumed it was very much inspired by Interface Builder on the NeXT. Kind of weird to not even see it mentioned.
- teh_klev 12y ago
  Sure, but you needed several thousand dollars ($10k?) own a NeXT box or by a stroke of luck your college or university might have such a machine. I'm sure there are many other great things that existed to do the same thing but VB was the tool that brought this type of capability to the masses on plain old PC hardware.
mgkimsal 12y ago
I've got icons bigger than 2mb these days...
mgkimsal 12y ago
vb3 and then 4 were, for me, sort of the real 'sweet spot' for productivity stuff back in those days. By the time vb5 came about, it started to get rather complicated from a UI standpoint, and VB6 even moreso to the point where I found myself getting lost a lot (had somewhat moved on in to web work at that point too, so I wasn't doing VB projects every day then).

by jasim 12y ago

rzimmerman 12y ago

Also: - asynchronous/event-based programming - importing C/native code from a DLL is trivial - fantastic documentation (so good you don't need the Internet) If you want a button that does something, you literally draw the button on your form, double click it, and write the code for that event. I agree - one day we'll catch up. Also VB6 autocomplete rocked.

pjmlp 12y ago

Depends on where you are. We on the the native side don't need to catch up.

jasim 12y ago
Quite true. I'm coming from the web world, and we have a lot of accidental complexity. However some of it is inevitable, owing to what it lets you do: run the same site across platforms and devices, built from the ground-up to enable communication and collaboration, seamless updates, infrastructure support for caching etc.

jawngee 12y ago

And all of this existed in 1988 with NeXT Project Builder/Interface Builder. Which was used to write the first web browser.

ja27 12y ago
Yes. When Visual Basic first came out, I assumed it was very much inspired by Interface Builder on the NeXT. Kind of weird to not even see it mentioned.
teh_klev 12y ago
Sure, but you needed several thousand dollars ($10k?) own a NeXT box or by a stroke of luck your college or university might have such a machine. I'm sure there are many other great things that existed to do the same thing but VB was the tool that brought this type of capability to the masses on plain old PC hardware.

mgkimsal 12y ago

I've got icons bigger than 2mb these days...

mgkimsal 12y ago

vb3 and then 4 were, for me, sort of the real 'sweet spot' for productivity stuff back in those days. By the time vb5 came about, it started to get rather complicated from a UI standpoint, and VB6 even moreso to the point where I found myself getting lost a lot (had somewhat moved on in to web work at that point too, so I wasn't doing VB projects every day then).