4 ms·

Take a computer user who hasn't written a single line of code ever. Fire up VB6-, drop a button, double click, write MessageBox "Hello Word" and press the play

by sytelus 12y ago

Take a computer user who hasn't written a single line of code ever. Fire up VB6-, drop a button, double click, write MessageBox "Hello Word" and press the play button. I have often got looks with amazement "Wow! Is creating applications that easy? I can do that!". I know of no other development tool or languages that demands same response from complete non-programmers. The minute people see angle/curly/curvy brackets, there is just too much explaining to do that would eventually end up in talking about how stack works. Many of us thrive on complexities and are wired to handle large hierarchies of concepts that is required to make sense of things, but large majority apparently wants things to be simple and VB of an excellent way for them to experience the joy of programming. Professionally VB6- was however too limiting and its purpose seemed to be mostly churning out CRUD data entry screens faster than ever. So it's best used as introduction/launchpad in to programming with clear plan to weaning off after you had enough fun.

eterm 12y ago
Professionally it wasn't even that limiting. It handled COM calls OK so you could off load to other libraries if you wanted. I was still developing professionally in VB6 as recently as this time last year (exactly 1 year ago in fact). While I am extremely glad I got away from VB6, the old dog still had life in her. The main limitation was having to develop in a windows XP virtual machine for better IDE compatability. By the end we did much of the newer development was in .NET libraries we called from the VB6 front-end, but the front end was still handling most of the data.
TsomArp 12y ago
Borland Delphi was capable of the same feat.
- martinrame 12y ago
  (and the resulting executable is smaller and WAY FASTER then VB).
LunaSea 12y ago
I've gotten the same reactions by showing alert boxes and changing background / font colors using JavaScript.
- isaacdl 12y ago
  I agree! That was actually my first introduction to programming - copying snippets of JS that popped alert boxes to impress my friends in elementary school. More recently, I've explained the whole idea of web programming to non-developers by showing them the developer tools/JavaScript console in the browser, and how you can use it to edit CSS styles and run random bits of JS that do cool things to the current page. It cool to see people "get it" -- the reaction is generally something like "wow...is that it??"
teh_klev 12y ago
> Professionally VB6- was however too limiting and its purpose seemed to be mostly churning out CRUD data entry screens faster than ever I beg to differ. I worked on a lot of VB5/6 code between 1997 and 2002, during that time we did some fairly sophisticated things. At one banking/finance gig I wrote a large amount of code that ran inside Microsoft Transaction Server and COM+, support for this was rather impressive. At another gig I wrote front ends for a document scanning server written in Java - we had a COM/CORBA bridge etc. We did image scanning and manipulation in VB 6 without a lot of fuss. There was also a rich and diverse market for third party controls, widgets and libraries. Hell, if you knew what you were doing you could hook directly into the windows message pump, subclass and create your own windows. Take a look at Matt Curland's "Advanced Visual Basic 6" which was published in 2000, VB6 was no toy: http://powervb.com/ http://powervb.com/
bloblaw 12y ago
This is so true. I was blown away by VB6, especially after working with Visual C++ (and MFC). Shortly after I got into VB6 I was turned onto Delphi 7...and never looked back. For me, Delphi is a superior alternative to VB6 and Visual C++...and I say that as someone that really learned a lot from, and enjoyed using VB6 I still use Delphi to this day and am using a modern release of Delphi (XE7, the latest version). They've added a 64-bit compiler and support creating native OSX, iOS, and even Android applications now too. If you value high performance, easy to develop GUI's, small EXE's with no dependencies, native generics, and awesome DB support, I highly recommend using Delphi. However, to each their own. I know Delphi is not as popular these days, but it really offers programmers huge productivity gains. If you prefer an open-source alternative to Delphi, have a look at the Lazarus IDE which uses FreePascal. The Lazarus IDE is very reminiscent of Delphi 7 and runs on Linux, OSX, and Windows. You can also create native GUI's on all of those platforms as well: http://www.lazarus-ide.org/ http://www.lazarus-ide.org/

by sytelus 12y ago

eterm 12y ago

Professionally it wasn't even that limiting. It handled COM calls OK so you could off load to other libraries if you wanted. I was still developing professionally in VB6 as recently as this time last year (exactly 1 year ago in fact). While I am extremely glad I got away from VB6, the old dog still had life in her. The main limitation was having to develop in a windows XP virtual machine for better IDE compatability. By the end we did much of the newer development was in .NET libraries we called from the VB6 front-end, but the front end was still handling most of the data.

TsomArp 12y ago

Borland Delphi was capable of the same feat.

martinrame 12y ago
(and the resulting executable is smaller and WAY FASTER then VB).

LunaSea 12y ago

I've gotten the same reactions by showing alert boxes and changing background / font colors using JavaScript.

isaacdl 12y ago
I agree! That was actually my first introduction to programming - copying snippets of JS that popped alert boxes to impress my friends in elementary school. More recently, I've explained the whole idea of web programming to non-developers by showing them the developer tools/JavaScript console in the browser, and how you can use it to edit CSS styles and run random bits of JS that do cool things to the current page. It cool to see people "get it" -- the reaction is generally something like "wow...is that it??"

teh_klev 12y ago

> Professionally VB6- was however too limiting and its purpose seemed to be mostly churning out CRUD data entry screens faster than ever I beg to differ. I worked on a lot of VB5/6 code between 1997 and 2002, during that time we did some fairly sophisticated things. At one banking/finance gig I wrote a large amount of code that ran inside Microsoft Transaction Server and COM+, support for this was rather impressive. At another gig I wrote front ends for a document scanning server written in Java - we had a COM/CORBA bridge etc. We did image scanning and manipulation in VB 6 without a lot of fuss. There was also a rich and diverse market for third party controls, widgets and libraries. Hell, if you knew what you were doing you could hook directly into the windows message pump, subclass and create your own windows. Take a look at Matt Curland's "Advanced Visual Basic 6" which was published in 2000, VB6 was no toy: http://powervb.com/ http://powervb.com/

bloblaw 12y ago

This is so true. I was blown away by VB6, especially after working with Visual C++ (and MFC). Shortly after I got into VB6 I was turned onto Delphi 7...and never looked back. For me, Delphi is a superior alternative to VB6 and Visual C++...and I say that as someone that really learned a lot from, and enjoyed using VB6 I still use Delphi to this day and am using a modern release of Delphi (XE7, the latest version). They've added a 64-bit compiler and support creating native OSX, iOS, and even Android applications now too. If you value high performance, easy to develop GUI's, small EXE's with no dependencies, native generics, and awesome DB support, I highly recommend using Delphi. However, to each their own. I know Delphi is not as popular these days, but it really offers programmers huge productivity gains. If you prefer an open-source alternative to Delphi, have a look at the Lazarus IDE which uses FreePascal. The Lazarus IDE is very reminiscent of Delphi 7 and runs on Linux, OSX, and Windows. You can also create native GUI's on all of those platforms as well: http://www.lazarus-ide.org/ http://www.lazarus-ide.org/