Microsoft MVPs Say They Want Old VB Back

[Jim Hubbard]

Maybe it was because C++ wasn't screwed up like VB6 was.

IYHO? Religous zeal is best relegated to religion.

Maybe MS didn't want the taint of VB6 at all associated with their
next-generation application development tool.

What "taint"? The opinions of programming language zealots? I, and
4,000,000+ others, respectfully disagree.

I've stated before that VB6 was a great tool for the time, but by today's
standards it's crap. I don't know C++, but my assumption was that it was
OK the way it was, whereas VB was long overdue for a major overhaul.

According to whom? Sure there were some issues, but never was there a call
by the classic Visual Basic community for a completely new language. This
hallucination is uniquely Microsoft's.

I think your statement above is evidence of the mixed signals in the
petition. The petition is calling for a major upgrade to VB6 and yet you
say that "we'd" be happy with just a better upgrade tool.

I said we'd all be happy to move on. Moving on is (if made possible by an
upgrade too that actually worked for larger projects) preferable to
rewriting our existing codebase.

(I don't think you are using the royal "we", so I'm assuming you are
speaking on behalf of the petitioners.)

Not all of them. As you will notice, I am only a supporter of the
petition.....not an author.

The conclusion I draw from this is that petitioners don't really want to
address the problems stated in the petition itself, but the unstated
"problem" that they think VB.NET should never have been developed in the
first place.

I don't draw that conclusion at all. I haven't seen anyhting in the
petition that says that Microsoft should not have produced a new programming
language. It deals mainly with backwards compatibility and continued use of
the HUGE VB6 codebase in use.

Which part of what I said don't you agree with? That a better upgrade
tool wouldn't solve the problems stated in the petition? That VB.COM
would be a major undertaking?

To your statement....."that the proposed solution is overkill." It is no
less than the C/C++ programmers recieved.

I've heard this argument used several times and I have the same response
every time. Just because VS.NET's support of C/C++ is in principle the
same as a theoretical support for VB6 in VS.NET it doesn't mean that it
makes economic sense to invest in this development. To use an analogy
I've used before, if I already have a mortgage, the principle of getting a
loan to buy a house is the same, but that doesn't mean I can buy *another*
house. So, just because Microsoft felt it was a good investment to
incorporate C/C++ into VS.NET doesn't mean that (especially so far after
the fact) it would be a good investment (from their perspective) to do it
for VB6.

I don't know the financial situation, costs or revenues gained from Visual
Basic or C++. Niether do you. This is pure speculation on your part. I
could just as easily argue that Visual Basic 6 was more financially feasable
because of the enormous 3rd party component market that supports it. But,
without hard data, that would be just as speculative as your argument.

(In all fairness, a great deal of this thread has been reduced to pure
speculation - including my speculation on the reasons for Microsoft's
abandonment of the largest programming group on history. Perhaps we should
stick to what can be tested and proven?)

I happen to think one of the biggest reasons that C/C++ was supported in
VS.NET and not VB6 is related to Doug's original point about VB.COM being
a "dead-end project". In practical terms, VB6 wasn't incorporated into
the original version of VS.NET (nor will it be with VB.COM) for the simple
reason that MS programmers themselves use C/C++ more than VB.

Finally we agree on something.

Too many programmers would have viewed being assigned to the "VB6.NET" as
a one-way ticket to professional oblivion. "Oh, so you worked on the
VB6.NET project, eh? That's nice. Next!"

If the development was continued (as requested in the petition, and has been
Microsoft's track record with Visual Basic since it's inception) it wouldn't
be a one-way ticket. In fact, those programmers would have a greater number
of companies desiring their services - just as they did with the most
popular programming language in the world - VB 6.

The old, tired argument that you are insinuating that these professional
developers at Microsoft buy into (that classic Visual Basic is a "toy
language") is only put forth by those ignorant of the business needs of the
businesses that have adopted Visual Basic 6 as their premier RAD tool.

Have you worked with many companies that have rapidly changing needs? What
size/type of companies have you done VB programming at?

Jim Hubbard

Jim Hubbard

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

Mitchell,

I can understand that there are people that are angered that VB.NET breaks
language stability, but I don't see how anyone would have been *surprised*
by this.

Maybe you missed presentations of the "real" VB7:

<URL:http://groups.google.de/[email protected]>

Imagine Microsoft working on Word n+1, showing demos with lists of features,
and then overnight presenting a completely different, and incompatible
version of Word, which cannot even be used to open Word documents which were
created using Word n (well, there might be an upgrade wizard which will
import old documents in ASCII format into Word n + 1).

Even that won't cause such big problems and confusion as the VB7 -> VB.NET
switch did, because documents can be converted more easily from one word
processor to another. That's an unacceptable betrayal of trust.

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

You do your argument a disservice by using these types of easily
disprovable statements. MS may not have provided an upgrade path that was
satisfactory as you define it, but they did provide an upgrade path.

Of course it matters. It is for the very reason that MS chose to break
compatibility and language stability that they chose a different name.

Well, then it's even worse. Would you trust in a company that disposes your
investments every 10 years?

This statement makes no sense to me. MS *does* see VB.NET as a new
language and they *did* discontinue VB6.

I cannot believe that they decided to discontinue VB6 (and consequently
dispose customers' assets) only to create a new, incompatible programming
language. I still believe that Microsoft doesn't believe the size of the
damage caused by the disposal of VB6.

Do you think they created VB.NET and didn't realize they were breaking
language stability?

Maybe they didn't think of the consequences. Or maybe they believed that
people would convert their code quickly, within a few years. I honestly
don't know. I like Microsoft's technologies and I like VB6, but I cannot
understand why Microsoft discontinued VB6 without being asked by their
customers to do so. And I do not understand why they decided not to follow
the #1 principle "Preserve customers' assets".

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

Maybe it was because C++ wasn't screwed up like VB6 was.

Any samples of things that were screwed up and couldn't be fixed easily
without breaking existing code? I have asked this question several times
and I never got a satisfactory answer, so I must assume that it's a big
myth.

 

[Mitchell S. Honnert]

Maybe you missed presentations of the "real" VB7:
I did miss the announcements about VB7 to which you refer. I believe at
that time, I was programming in Delphi. I had become so disgusted with the
cumulative kludge that Visual Basic had become with VB6, that I "jumped
ship" to another language. It was only when I heard that they scrapped VB6
and started over with VB.NET that I "came back to the fold" of Visual Basic.

In any case, what's your point? MS announced VB7 and later changed its mind
and instead chose to develop VB.NET. So what? Did you "miss" the onslaught
of information available at that time concerning the nature of VB.NET? Did
you stop listening to MS and other industry sources after your
oft-referenced Munich BASTA conference?

Imagine Microsoft working on Word n+1, showing demos with lists of
features, and then overnight presenting a completely different, and
incompatible version of Word, which cannot even be used to open Word
documents which were created using Word n (well, there might be an upgrade
wizard which will import old documents in ASCII format into Word n + 1).

It's a good analogy. I think the key difference between Word "n+1" and
VB.NET, though, is the internal structure. In Word, the internal structure
(the binary format of the file) is hidden from the end-user. Only the MS
programmers need worry about the inner workings of the doc file format. But
with VB.NET, there are millions of programmers who have to deal with the
"internal structure" of VB i.e. the source code. My point all along is that
the sad state that VB was in with VB6 warranted the rewrite of the language
and any subsequent breaking of language stability. The switch was/is hard,
but it's worth it when considering all of the future programmers who will be
using VB.

- Mitchell S. Honnert

 

[Mitchell S. Honnert]

Would you trust in a company that disposes your investments every 10 years?
That's a loaded question. I'll answer it this way: Microsoft's decision to
make VB.NET instead of VB7 didn't affect my level of trust in the company.

I cannot believe that they decided to discontinue VB6 (and consequently
dispose customers' assets) only to create a new, incompatible programming
language.

LOL. And I can't believe it took them so long.

I like Microsoft's technologies and I like VB6, but I cannot understand
why Microsoft discontinued VB6 without being asked by their customers to
do so.

Not being asked? Of course I can't speak for the entire industry, but in my
experience, every VB6 programmer I knew would have begged Bill Gates
personally to fix Visual Basic. From my own experience, I actually stopped
using VB6 in preference to a truly OO language. The popularity of Delphi at
the time couldn't have sent a clearer message to MS that both programmer and
companies were "asking" for a better alternative for RAD than VB6.

And I do not understand why they decided not to follow the #1 principle
"Preserve customers' assets".

Who says this is the "#1 principle"? In my opinion and (based on their
choice to develop VS.NET) in MS's opinion too, the number one principle when
creating a programming language is "Make programming easier".

- Mitchell S. Honnert

 

[Mitchell S. Honnert]

Sorry, Herfried. I don't have any example for you. I've successfully
blocked out those memories away like a bad childhood experience. I'm sure
if I loaded up VB6, the horrors would come rushing back, but I'm not
prepared to put myself through that trauma for any person.

But seriously folks...I don't think it's an uncommon experience for people
to fully appreciate VB.NET until they have to "go back" to VB6. I think
there was someone in this very thread who said the same thing.

- Mitchell S. Honnert

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

Mitchell,

I did miss the announcements about VB7 to which you refer. I believe at
that time, I was programming in Delphi. I had become so disgusted with
the cumulative kludge that Visual Basic had become with VB6, that I
"jumped ship" to another language. It was only when I heard that they
scrapped VB6 and started over with VB.NET that I "came back to the fold"
of Visual Basic.

In any case, what's your point?

What I want to say is that it was unforseeable for Classic VB users that
Microsoft would drop Classic VB. There was no indication for that, even
after VB6 has been released. VB users dreamed the pipe dream of an enhanced
but compatible language, Microsoft didn't do anything to disturb this
dream -- but suddenly Classic VB users found themselves confronted with a
radical change they didn't request and thus didn't expect.

MS announced VB7 and later changed its mind and instead chose to develop
VB.NET. So what?

In business "suddenly changing ones mind" is a very bad thing, because it
breaks trust, which reduces trustworthiness. Business is not a game.
People who are involved cannot laugh when they loose like they do when
playing a game. As the Petition FAQ
(<URL:http://classicvb.org/petition/faq.asp>) states, Microsoft has been
characterized as acting in an "unacceptable", "morally indefensible",
"unconscionable" manner that "should be illegal" by (at least) one of their
most enthusiastic supporters

Did you "miss" the onslaught of information available at that time
concerning the nature of VB.NET? Did you stop listening to MS and other
industry sources after your oft-referenced Munich BASTA conference?

Does listening to Microsoft's marketing of VB.NET help to upgrade existing
VB6 code? It doesn't. We are not talking about applications developed
since the "big break" (the announcement of VB.NET); instead we are talking
about applications developed in the period 1976-2001.

It's a good analogy. I think the key difference between Word "n+1" and
VB.NET, though, is the internal structure. In Word, the internal
structure (the binary format of the file) is hidden from the end-user.
Only the MS programmers need worry about the inner workings of the doc
file format.

This applies to VB6/VB.NET too. Code can be compared to the documents, the
internal structure can be compared to the VB6 runtime library and the
internal format of EXE and DLL files created using VB6. This format can
change over time, but the compiler will still compile the same source code
without rejecting it. Sometimes rejection and small changes are necessary
because of platform changes, such as 16-bit to 32-bit, but typically not
because of an additional runtime environment/library.

 

[Mitchell S. Honnert]

IYHO? Religous zeal is best relegated to religion.

"Religious zeal"? I mention in the post that I don't know C++, so why would
I be a C++ zealot? Notice the word "maybe" there. I really did mean maybe.

What "taint"? The opinions of programming language zealots? I, and
4,000,000+ others, respectfully disagree.

I'm not doubting the veracity of your data, but I do have an honest question
here: what is the "4,000,000+"? Is it people who use VB6? Use VB6
exclusively? In any case, you apparently presume that all of the those
programmers 4,000,000 actually *like* programming in VB6. I put it to you
that a significant portion of those programmers, if not the majority, would
give their eye teeth to be able to never see VB6 code again in their life.
There were a hell of a lot of COBOL programmers leading up to Y2K; it didn't
mean they *liked* COBOL, just that the money was good.

According to whom?

Me. I've used special care in this thread not to speak for anyone else but
me. All opinions in my posts are mine.

Sure there were some issues, but never was there a call by the classic
Visual Basic community for a completely new language. This hallucination
is uniquely Microsoft's.

In another post, I mention how the runaway popularity of Delphi signaled to
MS the inherent demand for a better RAD tool than VB6.

I said we'd all be happy to move on. Moving on is (if made possible by an
upgrade too that actually worked for larger projects) preferable to
rewriting our existing codebase.


Not all of them. As you will notice, I am only a supporter of the
petition.....not an author.

OK. Point taken. I do still happen to believe that a solution of a better
upgrade tool is far more in line with the problems stated in the petition.

I don't draw that conclusion at all. I haven't seen anyhting in the
petition that says that Microsoft should not have produced a new
programming language. It deals mainly with backwards compatibility and
continued use of the HUGE VB6 codebase in use.

The fact that there is no mention of this in the petition is exactly my
point. In this thread, I've noticed that the strongest supporters of the
petition are the very same people that believe that MS should have developed
VB7 instead of VB.NET. So, the reason (IMHO) that the petitioners want
VB.COM is not to address the problems listed in the petition, but to get
what they wanted all along, VB7.

To your statement....."that the proposed solution is overkill." It is no
less than the C/C++ programmers recieved.

I don't know the financial situation, costs or revenues gained from Visual
Basic or C++. Niether do you. This is pure speculation on your part. I
could just as easily argue that Visual Basic 6 was more financially
feasable because of the enormous 3rd party component market that supports
it. But, without hard data, that would be just as speculative as your
argument.

Agreed. We're both speculating. But in speculating, we uncover each
other's attitudes and presumptions about the issues. And I rather enjoy the
conversation. Else I wouldn't be keeping a thread going that is already 15
levels deep.

(In all fairness, a great deal of this thread has been reduced to pure
speculation - including my speculation on the reasons for Microsoft's
abandonment of the largest programming group on history. Perhaps we
should stick to what can be tested and proven?)


Finally we agree on something.


If the development was continued (as requested in the petition, and has
been Microsoft's track record with Visual Basic since it's inception) it
wouldn't be a one-way ticket. In fact, those programmers would have a
greater number of companies desiring their services - just as they did
with the most popular programming language in the world - VB 6.

The old, tired argument that you are insinuating that these professional
developers at Microsoft buy into (that classic Visual Basic is a "toy
language") is only put forth by those ignorant of the business needs of
the businesses that have adopted Visual Basic 6 as their premier RAD tool.

I think you are confusing *my* attitude with the attitude that I speculate
is prominant in MS. I consider myself to be a big supporter of Visual Basic
as a whole, railing against the stereotype that VB isn't for "real
programmers". Besides, I believe that MS employees would consider being
assigned to VB.COM a dead-end job not because it's *Visual Basic*, but
because it's a dead *version* (from MS's standpoint) of Visual Basic. So,
while MS employees may have a false and unjustified stereotype of the person
who programs in Visual Basic, the reason (IMHO) that they wouldn't want to
work on the project is they'd rather work for a project that was enhancing a
product for the future rather than extending the life-time of an aged
product.

- Mitchell S. Honnert

 

[Sheldon Rosenfeld]

I have tried to stay clear of this flame war - but feel the need to finally
get in.
And not argue on merits or facts. Simply to inquire.

In the days of the Neanderthal (pre-OO):

1) Did man fly to the moon?
2) Was money placed in banks running - Eewwww - COBOL systems?
3) Were the aviation systems in place trustworthy (COBOL again!)?
4) Were/are these systems being abruptly discontinued or are they
being phased out/sunset? (Hint:Y2K remediation cost billions just so
companies could "stand still")
5) Company "X" pays to have an automated billing system
Software is delivered on time and in perfect working order
MS pulls VB6; rewrite
. Why? Current system works as advertised. Uh, Mitch Honnert
doesn't feel a system should work forever - payment was not
for perpetuity (?)
. Are MS' technology "visions" to be factored into the business
plan?
Will *they* dictate the usefulness of OUR system?
6) With all due respect for your skills, I have yet to meet a client
motivated by the technology to be used
Does the developer volunteer his own time to bring the product
forward with a rewrite as the customer has already paid?
(Re-write is an obscene misnomer. *ANYTHING* written
requires thorough, regressive testing)
7) Is the significance in the millions of developers or in the
*BILLIONS*
lines of code?
8) As everyone I know admits that VB6 is dated - is our only
difference related to the absence of a proper migration?
(Again, my clients do not care one iota that the language needed
an overhaul...)

 

[Jim Hubbard]

"Religious zeal"? I mention in the post that I don't know C++, so why
would I be a C++ zealot? Notice the word "maybe" there. I really did
mean maybe.

I'm not doubting the veracity of your data, but I do have an honest
question here: what is the "4,000,000+"? Is it people who use VB6? Use
VB6 exclusively?

People that use VB in their jobs. (Ranges from 3,000,000 to 6,000,000
depending on where you get your numbers.) I don't know of any programmers
that use any language exclusively.

In any case, you apparently presume that all of the those programmers
4,000,000 actually *like* programming in VB6. I put it to you that a
significant portion of those programmers, if not the majority, would give
their eye teeth to be able to never see VB6 code again in their life.

Here you go again with suppositions instead of facts. I will only discuss
facts about this thread as all other arguments are futile.

There were a hell of a lot of COBOL programmers leading up to Y2K; it
didn't mean they *liked* COBOL, just that the money was good.
And?

Me. I've used special care in this thread not to speak for anyone else
but me. All opinions in my posts are mine.

Good enough.

In another post, I mention how the runaway popularity of Delphi signaled
to MS the inherent demand for a better RAD tool than VB6.

Do you have hard facts as to the rise or sale of Delphi? I admit that I am
ignorant concerning the popularity of Delphi.

OK. Point taken. I do still happen to believe that a solution of a
better upgrade tool is far more in line with the problems stated in the
petition.

Since we have neither solution, either would be an improvement.

The fact that there is no mention of this in the petition is exactly my
point. In this thread, I've noticed that the strongest supporters of the
petition are the very same people that believe that MS should have
developed VB7 instead of VB.NET. So, the reason (IMHO) that the
petitioners want VB.COM is not to address the problems listed in the
petition, but to get what they wanted all along, VB7.

Agreed. We're both speculating. But in speculating, we uncover each
other's attitudes and presumptions about the issues. And I rather enjoy
the conversation. Else I wouldn't be keeping a thread going that is
already 15 levels deep.

I rarely start threads.....but when I do.......

I think you are confusing *my* attitude with the attitude that I speculate
is prominant in MS.

No. I understand that you are projecting your suppositions on the Microsoft
team. And, I agree with you. That very well may have been an issue for
them, but it shouldn't have been.

I consider myself to be a big supporter of Visual Basic as a whole, railing
against the stereotype that VB isn't for "real programmers". Besides, I
believe that MS employees would consider being assigned to VB.COM a
dead-end job not because it's *Visual Basic*, but because it's a dead
*version* (from MS's standpoint) of Visual Basic. So, while MS employees
may have a false and unjustified stereotype of the person who programs in
Visual Basic, the reason (IMHO) that they wouldn't want to work on the
project is they'd rather work for a project that was enhancing a product
for the future rather than extending the life-time of an aged product.

You're right. It is s dead version. But it is only so because Microsoft
decided to abandon it. There are no technical issues that would preclude
Microsoft's implementation of a serious upgrade tool, the inclusion of
classic Visual Basic in the current Visual Studio .Net IDE or that would
preclude the enhancement of the language.

This is simply a company that knows that they can do anything they damn well
please and are not shy about cramming what THEY want down the throats of
their customers.

Jim Hubbard

 

[Jim Hubbard]

I have tried to stay clear of this flame war - but feel the need to
finally
get in.
And not argue on merits or facts. Simply to inquire.

In the days of the Neanderthal (pre-OO):

1) Did man fly to the moon?

Why, yes he did.

2) Was money placed in banks running - Eewwww - COBOL systems?

Now that I think about it.....it certainly was.

3) Were the aviation systems in place trustworthy (COBOL again!)?

That seems to be the case.

4) Were/are these systems being abruptly discontinued or are they
being phased out/sunset? (Hint:Y2K remediation cost billions just
so
companies could "stand still")

I believe they are being phased out - with support continuing for them.

5) Company "X" pays to have an automated billing system
Software is delivered on time and in perfect working order
MS pulls VB6; rewrite
. Why?

Because they have decided that their vision supercedes their customers'
needs, wishes and concerns. Microsoft knows better than you what your
business needs to run and they will decide your future.

Current system works as advertised. Uh, Mitch Honnert
doesn't feel a system should work forever - payment was not
for perpetuity (?)

Mitch can take this one......

. Are MS' technology "visions" to be factored into the business
plan?

Not in the past......but this recent forced march into the .Net sea
tells us otherwise. And, since we cannot possibly forsee Microsoft's vision
(past performance with Microsoft is no guarantee of future performance - as
Visual Basic has taught us) we should look to more stable (possibly open
source) development environments. A company's goal is NOT to use the latest
programming language out of Redmond, but to make a profit for the company.
They can;t do that as effectively if Microsoft requires a rewrite every 2 to
3 years.

Will *they* dictate the usefulness of OUR system?
Evidentally.

6) With all due respect for your skills, I have yet to meet a client
motivated by the technology to be used
Does the developer volunteer his own time to bring the product
forward with a rewrite as the customer has already paid?

Not on your life.

(Re-write is an obscene misnomer. *ANYTHING* written
requires thorough, regressive testing)

Certainly does.

7) Is the significance in the millions of developers or in the
*BILLIONS*
lines of code?

The code. Developers will develop no matter what. It's the businesses
that have to have their codebase rewritten that are getting screwed.

8) As everyone I know admits that VB6 is dated - is our only
difference related to the absence of a proper migration?

I think this is the biggest problem. If it were as simple to go from
VB6 to VB.Net as it was to go from VB5 to VB6, I doubt code conversion and
devaluation of the old codebase would be nearly as big an issue.

Mind you, all converted code must also be thoroughly tested - and this
will cost money to businesses both small and large all around the globe.
However, it would not be as expensive as the total rewrites that are now
required.

(Again, my clients do not care one iota that the language needed
an overhaul...)

Mine either.

Jim Hubbard

 

[Doug Taylor]

Any samples of things that were screwed up and couldn't be fixed easily
without breaking existing code? I have asked this question several times
and I never got a satisfactory answer, so I must assume that it's a big
myth.

You could not create your own enumerators due to a kludge used to
handle them, fixed in .Net. Because a new type library was created at
a drop of a hat with the slightest modification of the exposed types
of a com library, it caused com versioning nightmares. If you rolled
your own type libraries, you could not handle enumerators easily
because ....

Doug Taylor

 

[Mitchell S. Honnert]

5) Company "X" pays to have an automated billing system

Software is delivered on time and in perfect working order
MS pulls VB6; rewrite
. Why? Current system works as advertised. Uh, Mitch Honnert
doesn't feel a system should work forever - payment was not
for perpetuity (?)

First off, Microsoft is not "pulling" VB6. There is no magic button in
Redmond that will suddenly make all VB6 code disappear or stop working. For
the record, I never said a system shouldn't work forever. I said MS should
not have to update an application forever so that it runs on the current
operating system. So, feel free to run your VB6 app on your Win98 machine
for as long as you want. Have fun.

6) With all due respect for your skills, I have yet to meet a client
motivated by the technology to be used
Does the developer volunteer his own time to bring the product
forward with a rewrite as the customer has already paid?
(Re-write is an obscene misnomer. *ANYTHING* written
requires thorough, regressive testing)

No rewrite is necessary if you leave it in VB6. If it's too expensive to
rewrite the app to get the benefits of the next gen app dev tool, then
don't.

8) As everyone I know admits that VB6 is dated - is our only
difference related to the absence of a proper migration?

It could be. I do agree that Microsoft should have done a better job at
automating the migration process. As you might have guessed, I applauded
MS's creation of .NET. To me, the break in language stability was a
necessary step in improving the language. Having said this, MS should have
made the transition to .NET easier for clients. My issue is not with the
petitions stated problems (well, mostly), but with the suggested solution.
I still stand by my statement that a be an automated code conversion tool
would be a more appropriate resolution than the costly and enormous project
that VB.COM would be.

- Mitch Honnert

 

[Sheldon Rosenfeld]

First off, Microsoft is not "pulling" VB6. There is no magic button in
Redmond that will suddenly make all VB6 code disappear or stop working.

Nope, just an OS change to provide a different result in the
FORMAT function...

So, feel free to run your VB6 app on your Win98 machine for as long as you
want. Have fun.

Honesty - PLEASE!
You *know* that dll & IE updates (Security!) are being
written for XP exclusively.

As you might have guessed, I applauded MS's creation of .NET.

Nobody around to deny the superiority of .Net.
But then, we're off topic again...

 

[Mitchell S. Honnert]

People that use VB in their jobs. (Ranges from 3,000,000 to 6,000,000

depending on where you get your numbers.)

From this wording, someone would be included in this number if they did the
majority of their day-to-day work in VB.NET and, when a bug cropped up or
some minor change was necessary, did some work in the VB6 IDE. Your point
about hard data is well taken. It could be applied to this stat as well. A
much better hard number would not be people who just "use" VB6, but do the
majority of their work in VB6.

And?

The Y2K COBOL programmers are an example of the danger is measuring a
languages "popularity" by how many people are using it. So, just because
there are 3,000,000 to 6,000,000 people who spend more than zero hours a
year working with VB6, it doesn't necessarily follow that those people are
in lockstep agreement that MS should have created VB7 instead of VB.NET.
Yes, it is conjecture, but it is based on my experience. One can make a
very good argument that, from a company's standpoint, it makes sense to keep
using VB6 or even that a VB.COM would increase a VB6 programmers
productivity, but in my experience people don't like using VB6 any more.
The programmers themselves want to move to VB.NET, even if their bosses
don't want them to. This type of programmer isn't exactly the best "poster
child" for your argument.

Do you have hard facts as to the rise or sale of Delphi? I admit that I
am ignorant concerning the popularity of Delphi.

Sorry, Jim. I know you won't like this, but all of my evidence is
anecdotal. I can only tell you what I've experienced.

This is simply a company that knows that they can do anything they damn
well please and are not shy about cramming what THEY want down the throats
of their customers.

Again, I apologize for not having the time to research any hard data for
you, but I can relate my experience. I made this same point with Herfried,
but everyone I knew viewed the coming of VS.NET as a long overdue answer to
the prayer of a major overhaul to the Visual Basic language. So, in effect,
we had the exact opposite viewpoint as you, namely that MS was finally
giving us something we'd been asking for for a long time instead of
something that was being forced on us without any kind of prompt. And when
it comes down to it, I guess this difference in viewpoint is at the heard of
all of the other details we've been "discussing".

- Mitchell S. Honnert

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

From this wording, someone would be included in this number if they did
the majority of their day-to-day work in VB.NET and, when a bug cropped up
or some minor change was necessary, did some work in the VB6 IDE. Your
point about hard data is well taken.

The numbers of 3,000,000 to 6,000,000 professional users were AFAIK
published before the release of VB.NET. More current numbers can be found
in the articles referenced in the "Adoption / Migration" section on
<URL:http://classicvb.org/>.

 

[Mitchell S. Honnert]

Nope, just an OS change to provide a different result in the
FORMAT function...

OK. My point all along is that the proposed solution to the problems listed
in the petition (VB.COM) is overkill, that MS could solve the problems
listed by other means, say a better automated migration tool. I never said
that I agreed that MS shouldn't take care in ensuring that VB6 runs properly
on the supported OS. Is MS on record anywhere as saying on what OS'es VB6
is supported? I honestly don't know. You and I may agree that it makes
sense that it should work on Windows XP, the version which is current as of
the discontinuation of mainstream support. But if MS officially only
officially supports VB6 on Win98, there's hardly any point to showcasing
inconsistancies between VB6 and WinXP.

Honesty - PLEASE!
You *know* that dll & IE updates (Security!) are being
written for XP exclusively.

You bring up a very good point and one that I imagine is quite a big dilemma
for MS. I personally agree with the idea that an application version
follows a natural lifecycle i.e. that as time goes by the developer of that
application has a diminishing responsibility to support that application.
But how does this jibe with the reality that people are using applications
much longer than their "expected" lifetimes? Should security updates trump
the "diminished support responsibility" rule? I'll leave that to another
discussion.

Nobody around to deny the superiority of .Net.
But then, we're off topic again...

If my statement were left in its proper context, it would be seen as being
on topic. I did not simply state that "VB.NET is better than VB6". I said
that in spite of the fact that I agreed with the decision to create VB.NET
instead of VB7, I don't think that MS was absolved from the responsibility
to make the transition easier.

- Mitchell S. Honnert

PS: "(e-mail address removed)". Clever.

 

[Doug Taylor]

From this wording, someone would be included in this number if they did the
majority of their day-to-day work in VB.NET and, when a bug cropped up or
some minor change was necessary, did some work in the VB6 IDE. Your point
about hard data is well taken. It could be applied to this stat as well. A
much better hard number would not be people who just "use" VB6, but do the
majority of their work in VB6.

The Y2K COBOL programmers are an example of the danger is measuring a
languages "popularity" by how many people are using it. So, just because
there are 3,000,000 to 6,000,000 people who spend more than zero hours a
year working with VB6, it doesn't necessarily follow that those people are
in lockstep agreement that MS should have created VB7 instead of VB.NET.
Yes, it is conjecture, but it is based on my experience. One can make a
very good argument that, from a company's standpoint, it makes sense to keep
using VB6 or even that a VB.COM would increase a VB6 programmers
productivity, but in my experience people don't like using VB6 any more.
The programmers themselves want to move to VB.NET, even if their bosses
don't want them to. This type of programmer isn't exactly the best "poster
child" for your argument.

Sorry, Jim. I know you won't like this, but all of my evidence is
anecdotal. I can only tell you what I've experienced.

Delphi is a good example though of how a designed language can develop
without the catostrophic break that occured with VB6 to vb.net.
Delphi 7 is internally numbered as version 15 and though I haven't
tried it I bet a program written for version 1 would run on it with
little or no modification. But then Pascal, like C, C++ have ISO
standards, so compilers have to be written to cope with at least the
base standard. In addition Kompass and then Borland had a policy of
writing the next compiler using the existing version, this ensured
code compatibilty. Unfortunately, Basic has never been constrained by
any standards, so it grew, yet still had to support ideas that were
good at the time, but later seemed stupid. You could write GOSUB
xxxxx in VB6, but how many VB6 programs actually used that feature.

It was this and many other arcane constructs that led to MS wanting to
have a clean break, I like many others agree that a far better job
could have been made of the upgrade tool, but I for one have had very
few problems running my code through it.

I agree with Mitchell, I feel that a petition focused on providing a
better migration tool would be more likely to succeed, even three
years after the release of .Net

 

[Mitchell S. Honnert]

Delphi is a good example though of how a designed language can develop

without the catostrophic break that occured with VB6 to vb.net.

The key to what you are saying, I think, is "designed". As I'm sure you
know, Delphi was designed from the ground up to be an OO language. It
conformed to the Pascal standards, but this was far and away less of a
burden than having to accommodate the "language stability" of previous
versions. I'm guessing you would agree, but I would theorize that Delphi
hasn't required a major overhaul like VB had between VB6 and VB.NET because
Delphi's birth itself was a major overhaul on the current programming
methods of the day.

Slightly off topic: one of my favorite quips at the time was "The only
problem with Delphi is that it's Borland Delphi and not Microsoft Delphi."
It had most everything a programmer wanted in a language, but (because of
VB's deathgrip on language stability, ironically enough), it was more
difficult to find Delphi work.

- Mitchell S. Honnert