One of the good things about the lack of compatibility between VB6 and dotNet is that if you have to rewrite you can choose the best language for the job. You are no longer tied to an upgrade path. It is difficult to think of any scenario where VB. Net is the best solution. Who today as opposed to 10 years ago would recommend developers start to use VB.
Yet Microsoft have put themselves into an illogical position. So the best answer to upgrading to the newer version is start over? Scrap 14 years worth of development? Then the time it will take testing each module, dry running the data, test proving, years not weeks.
The system creates invoices, reports, stock movement, stock into vans, stock control, data capture, digital signature captures, self generating pdfs, controls for display VFD poles, opening cash drawers, different receipt printers, touch screen devices, barcode scanners. Self generating bar code labels, ticket editors, ticket designer applications, ebay plugs ins, amazon plug ins, ecommerce plugs in. I accept the methods, working applications, input devices, all of these change.
I remember writing our own coding to produce images for receipt printers, now you simply upload a header to the receipt printers internal memory, send a simply command and the image is automatically printed without sending the image over and over. At a hospital site we even have our own bio-metric fingerprint system in place, simply using a plug in stream.
But, and certainly for me, I always put my customers first — why would I want them to change all their hardware, update their operating systems, spend thousands of pounds out, sell them a new version, new training, new user guides, new everything.
We have data centre capabilities, off site back up solutions, web servers, ftp servers, mail servers, a whole host of government compliance crap, we know a little bit. We only ever have so much time, when vb7 hit and it was such a poor effort, no one including myself had faith in the next come along and start again. Now just to prove Im not stuck in my ways, were gonna set up a new 7 machine, install the latest offering from Microsoft in the vb range and try to convert it, just for giggle, lets see how many things just stop.
They have refused to do either. And why do you say the language is obsolete? How do you support applications that will be usable until 20?? I know there are ways around this, but it would make more sense to me to be able to support the applications until 20?? NET COM components so that over time you are in fact ready for 64 bit platforms and by the last date MS has said so far that VB will be fully supported and bit platforms your code will be ready to enter a new era.
But hey that is just me looking for solutions to potential problems rather than whining about them, cheese anyone? This gives you lots of time to learn how to run VirtualBox. My company migrated or rewrote about a million lines of VB6 code into VB. The UI improvements and real multi-threading make it possible to use VB. NET Native will be along soon, so at least developers will have choices on speed vs. As for developing with VB. Many people still actively use VB6 one of the reasons why I continue to assist on this list , but lots of people have moved on, too.
If VB. Getting up to speed in VB. NET is pretty easy. A VB6 expert with some knowledge of real OOP should be up to speed in somewhere from an afternoon to a few days. Converting just under 1. None of them had previously programmed professionally in C or VB. That whole time we were still quoting, writing custom software, and servicing our existing product the whole time. When we finished, our codebase dropped to about , lines of code, despite adding lots of functionality, and improving the user interface dramatically.
It sucked every time, primarily because you have to spend time, effort, and money just getting your programs to cope with the technology, while not necessarily adding any tangible benefit for the customer.
Microsoft has agreed that if you buy additional subscriptions from them of a min of 10, units then you can request support. Microsoft even extends the XP life cycle to the UK for 5.
Users do notice that kind of thing. Net, and integrate that with your existing classic VB code. Net code. There are tools that work in both directions. You can continue to use your classic VB code as you incrementally replace modules with code using a programming environment that will continue to evolve and be supported for quite some time to come.
Once again: VB6 is waaay behind the times. It does not support a lot of new hardware. It does not support new User Interfaces. It does not support programming techniques that have become standard, such as threading, exception handling, hooking, or sub-classing. Microsoft has developed far better tools that enable programmers to create far better applications.
Would you ask an automobile manufacturer to continue manufacturing their model in ? How about in ? Would you expect an automobile manufacture to continue making, and selling, parts for their model in ? Does it support store returns of on-line purchases? Does it support NFC? The exact same binary executable will continue to run perfectly well in the exact same operating environment. They will want to upgrade to support industry-mandated protocols.
They will want to upgrade to support new hardware such as NFC. They will want to be able to migrate to new hardware, with new drivers for the new disk drives, graphics cards, touch screens, etc. I have seen all too many software developers who have gone out of business due to their failure to deal with software rot. What I am recommending is that you identify modules that can be replaced one at a time, and recode them in a current development system — and yes, I do mean VB.
As your replace individual modules, your programming staff will become proficient in. Net, and will find it easier and more efficient to expand the replacement efforts to additional modules. Will this take years? Of course. If you start now, and allocate a fraction of your programming resources to the migration, you should be able to complete it before that happens. Just buy a new car. They stopped making the car in But if they stopped providing parts at the same time, they would be sued by everybody from the car owners to the government.
In addition, after years and years of working in big massive corporates with 60 or so staff at my disposal, I now work for myself and have done quite happily for ten years or more. I cant justify spending six months re-writing one main app, even when I have the client base I do, my only realistic option is to employ a new member of staff already working in the latest vb.
They then spend 12 months working on a new version, maintaining the old data structures, even then I once had a young lad working on a new accounts module for six months, at that point he just left.
I do realize that regardless of the moaning and griping there is in realty nothing and I mean NOTHING I or anyone else can do as Microsoft will simply ignore us and go their own sweet way. To this end, I have asked one of my lads to setup a new machine, installed windows 7 on it I know windows 7 is dead already and then install vb Its always a learning curve without a doubt, and that is what makes programming a joy in my case — its never the same twice.
It will be very interesting to see the end results of this test, I know its going to take the best part of the week to do. Bet you can get a deal on the license fee when you buy as many as Dell does. Try it, the higher the volume the better the deal. This BTW works with a lot of products. The Microsoft tool was dropped after VB though there are a couple of other decent tools if you wish to try them.
One exception to this though, I assume from what you have said you are using a database — if this does the job for you now and assuming it is SQL not Access I would keep this as it is — so that your old and new software can function alongside each other. You are certainly right to attempt this with a simple project first. The effort required tends to increase geometrically with the size and complexity of the project.
Back in the day Microsoft estimated that once you were experienced you could convert VB6 code to VBdotNet at a rate of 7, to 10, lines per week.
Though this will depend a lot on your existing code. You could also consider using C rather than VBdotNet — they are pretty much the same language so it is just personal preference really — but Microsoft tends to give coding examples in C and therefore maybe C may have a longer lifespan.
Best of luck with your endeavors and please keep us informed of your progress. That may blunt the sting of conversion a bit. There are a number of guides that give coders a heads-up on the biggest differences between VB6 and VB.
Where did you find the date ? That is ridiculuous. Even recommending rewriting part of a VB6 program to use dotNet do do a minor amendment is ridiculous. This application simply connects to a mysql server, checks to see if any text messages need sending, if so send them..
To port from VB6 to visual studio — do I first have to port to visual studio and then port again to visual studio If you want to upgrade your project from Visual Basic 6. Application works on XP, Vista, 7, 8 and all the other flavours without an issue. But because its such as small application I thought lets give it a go. The replacement is, which has to be typed in manually not changed by the system itself during update;.
OnLoadCompleted Int32 fReload. And you think I can do what with this? I actually do want to take advantage of the newer controls, newer looks and slicker applications but at what cost I ask! The VB6 importer was dropped from the last two version of VS. There are better converters available online, but several of them have a cost associated with them.
The fact is that someone on this forum gave you a possible method of transitioning off of a dead development platform. Nobody said that you have to use his suggestion. You have had plenty of time to go through your stages of grief, and move on. VB6 was an odd collection of some entities that behaved like objects, and some entities that did not.
The system. You can also use the Imports command to bring in any other namespaces that you are frequently using. The importer was dropped after VB Virtualize, get a grip here. If you have to continue to live in the distant past then you need to learn VMWare or some other virtualization tools. BTW if you look around you can still get buggy whips for your car. I love vb6 because it helps you think wider. In vb6, you do not just create an application. You will need to think of how the system is going to communicate within itself and other systems outside it.
VB6 apps will behave whichever way you want them to behave. You can manipulate data as you want easily. I am good in. Net but I still like VB6. While it is good to move on, lets not bury vb6 just because we want to move on.
Lets not discourage those who still use vb6 because I still do myself. And it works fine on Windows 7 and Windows 8. There is no need to migrate or find any other solution until either VB6 stops working or until you see a business case for doing so.
Only then should you migrate, and only at that point should you decide what language to migrate to. Time is money. For me , i would not waste my time and money converting the applications i wrote in the past to VBDotNet if this does not justify the cost.
More or less the customer would not give a damn about that. He just wants his application to work. Simple as that. And no amount of postings about OOP, multi-threading, buggy whips or joining the 21st century will ever change that. I like the fact that the code between the 2 is mostly identical. We have to wait for the final release to be sure, but the future for VB6 programming is looking good. We all need to just move on. Base compatibility may be there but most thirdpart sfuff wont.
Get your feet wet and jump in. VB6 programming is fine on the Windows 10 technical preview, but we need to wait for the final release of Windows 10 to be certain. But seriously it is well past time to start moving that code base off the 20 year old Win32 API. There is no need to use a VM or XP. Download VB.
Net express and start working the various online tutorials. I would say that your best bet would be to get Visual Studio Express Visual Studio Community Edition may be a better bet. And of course Visual Studio is out later this month. They are all free downloads. Net and VB6 are completely different languages. It is a matter of personal preference, but some developers find it easier to move from VB6 to C because they are completely different rather than from VB6 to VB. Net which are completely different with some, possibly confusing, superficial similarities.
I work for a software house developing mainly for multi-national corporates, government and defense. So the principle product of the company is software? Just as a reference there are other industries that will not be moving off the Windows platform for decades to come. OPC is almost totally dependent on Windows in its current form for example.
But for anything other than pure Windows desktop applications JavaScript seems to be the current favorite. And JS is even straying into the desktop. In the past we found some users wanted to migrate from VB6 to VB. Certainly many users will be pleased to hear that VB6 programming will run on Windows Net the end-result was rarely never?
A CRUD app is pretty much the same in any language. Sten it is pointless arguing this, if you like VB6, fine, continue to do new development in it. No skin off my back. Come back in a couple of years and it will be something else. But again by all means continue doing new development in a platform that was last updated and actually supported 7 years ago.
I have just done a search on Jobserve for VB6 and there are 3 references out of 14, jobs. What I mean is that it is largely in the support of legacy systems and that will remain so until all of those legacy systems have been replaced with new technology. It emerged in ? Net in so it had a very short lifespan. Even the most ardent member of the VB6 Hezbollah could not deny that it is a technology from a bygone age.
Even its father, Microsoft, cast it out a decade ago, as far as I know. If you are intending to invest any time or money in training I would suggest you invest it in anything other than VB6. Not in the UK at least. NET group has 16, members with no single message. NET — 1 year, VB. NET — 2 years, VB. NET — 3 years and so on. I think a logical conclusion to draw from the lifespan, is that the CLR in the.
NET Framework is regularly updated. Nothing has been done with the VB6 runtime since the release of SP6. The wealth of online resources for VB. NET-related questions on here less necessary. Well, you are asking about the future of VB6. The conclusion of Chris O. Then there are many tools which are not included in the. Net environment like the setup and deployment wizard, the Data Form Wizard, etc. Like there is no match for C Language such is the case of this awesome Tool.
And it reminds me of the Mark-I Grand Rifle which is still favorite of most of the people even after 70 Years…….. MNQ: VB6 is certainly not the complete tool for any solution. You realise that when you have been using VS and. Net for developing applications for a decade and then go back to VB6 for some reason to do something.
Its very primitive and limited by comparison. Also, VS does have set up and deployment tools. Its just called Publishing not Setup and Deployment. But you can publish to setup disc, with or without auto update, or deploy direct to server for web applications so there is nothing lacking in terms of deployment capability.
The other thing about VB. Net was the main contender in the. Net arena until C came along in and its been C since. You are looking at something like a ratio between C and VB. Net generally. VS already contained VB. NET and C. It seems some of us did not really use VS. NET before and VB6 at all. C was announced in and first shipped in early Net was launched.
Microsoft claims there are a similar number of VB. Net and C developers. Though VB. Net does seem to be the junior partner. Net, the rest either remaining with VB6 or moving to non-Microsoft languages. Actually, dotnet 2 is still supported, visit a full say pro version of VS and you will see that it still supports compiling to version 2.
And the other behemoth Google seem to be a huge supporter. You are right — VB6 is too big to just be easily — and cost-effectively — discarded or replaced. You are in a Visual Basic forum and you are flabbergasted that the discussion is Microsoft centric, really? So you think when the list is about a Microsoft product we should be discussing say Linux and Java?
Visual Basic 2. Visual Basic 3. Visual Basic 5. Net Framework 1. Net Framework 2. NET Framework 3. NET Framework 4. VB 1 through 6 lasted from to — a span of sixteen years.
Net has already lasted thirteen years, and it looks to have several generations ahead before we reach the point where the last generation will reach retirement the equivalent of the termination of support for VB6 in In other words, a fair comparison shows that VB. Net will be a much more successful, and long lasting, language than VB 1 through 6. Initially it was hampered by extremely poor performance. NET Core is open source, with more of the Framework to come.
Mono has been around for years. Xamarin is integrated pretty well into Visual Studio. You can already write. Some versions of Visual Studio provided a Java development environment, but more recent versions of Visual Studio support JavaScript instead see above. Personally, I think in five years time people will still be using VB6 applications, more over, we will still be having this argument. I can remember typing a letter in word 97, today I type a letter in word , has the letter changed? The basic problem no is that the computer has to think for us, we no longer use the computers as an assistance, we have to follow what it tells us.
Sad fact when the dictionary people have to add words to the English language just because the word processor defaults to us spelling, really? But after 25 years of programming, and still producing applications sold to thousands of sites each year in VB6, its here for a while.
Anyway, yes Visual Studio may be fab, may do everything for us programmers, may allow us a simply click onto the screen and it will self build everything to work on all input devices known to man, but those who spent their lives working, developing, finding solutions to the short cummings of the programming language will ALWAYS tell you — VB6 was and is the best programming language Microsoft have ever done.
I have developed and own six software packages in VB, and I love it — and have no intention of being told by MS which direction I must go. I have tried to switch to.
NET, but found it simply not worth the effort. Of course as Dave says , except when it generates pots of cash! Finally, and this is especially for the pedants, my point was meant to be that Microsoft are doing their usual King Canute stunt.
And I remind you of another giant corporation that for years said the only computer platform the world would be using in the future was theirs — IBM. Remember them? You can almost divide the development community into two categories these days: Developers and MS Developers. Well, assuming you ignore people who have no idea what structured programming is of course.
Can you believe that? You probably need a third category, or even a fourth, for those people although what you would call it is another matter. Developers vs MS Developers. The thing about the MS platform is that a lot of the work is done for you. If the var is going to be used the whole life of the sub, it gets declared at the top It's not conducive to the general learning of others.
Save a few bits and don't bother. I'll just end up rejecting anyways. Of course you can do it that way as well. No problem with it at all. Personally If a var is only used within a loop or some other small part of the code I have no problem defining it there and having it go out of scope afterwards.
The biggest upside there is that you can see the definition where the variable is actually used and do not have to scroll up to the top to locate it.
But again there is no reason at all that you can not dim the vars at the top if that is your preference, I normally do it that way myself also, as with many other things it is just an option that is available. NET was a total rewrite of VB6. Even the core lowest level of code instantiation was replace from the COM model which truly evolved out of old DOS linkers and their ability to do overlays to the new.
However, in the total rewrite from VB6 to. NET , they also changed the syntax of the language in many fundamental ways.
For instance and I'm not sure if it's still this way , the LBound of any array in. NET was forced to be zero, whereas in VB6 it could be anything you liked even negative. It's those kinds of "tweaks" I really mean, assaults on a magnificent language that made a HUGE amount of code untenable for a VB6-to-.
NET port. Microsoft: Criminal, just criminal. Hmmm, it does appear that an MSDN i. I scanned the agreement , and here are a few passages I gleaned although none explicitly mention VB6 : Visual Studio subscriptions purchased through certain channels provide perpetual use rights that allow subscribers to continue using certain software products obtained through an active subscription after the subscription has expired.
However, subscribers are not entitled to updates for that software after the subscription has expired, nor do they continue to have access to software or product keys through Subscriber Downloads or to other subscription services that are a benefit of having an active subscription. Product keys that were acquired while the subscription was active can continue being used until all activations for those keys have been exhausted.
They also state that these licenses can't be transferred or sold. It specifically states, "Earlier versions for PC , , etc.
I'm assuming that VB6 would be picked up in that, but not certain. I clicked part of the way in on this option and found this statement Start and stop projects whenever you need, with the flexibility of paying month-to-month and the convenience of having your development tools consolidated on the same bill with other Microsoft Azure cloud services like virtual machines and storage.
I didn't follow through with it, but it'd be nice if someone else could verify this. True the Option Base statement is no longer there but I have always used a base 0 in all of my coding dating back to well before VB.
To me it just makes sense to use a base 0 for these. I always had an issue with the fact that some things in VB had a base of 1 instead of 0. Changing that to where everything had a base of 0 made a lot more sense and removed confusion. I just opened my little recycle bin enumerator from yesterday in. Have to go through and initialize loads of variables And that's just from that tiny project. And really, that renders VB. NET pointless really. If you're going to learn a new language, why pick VB.
Just as easy to go to C or Java. Picking up Java after VB6 was a breeze for me in college; not any harder than. Well like I said before it depends on the project but it also depends on coding style. For example if you are using default properties that is an issue. If you use a lot of API that is an issue as well.
If you use VB code and use the actual properties rather than having it use the defaults then a lot of those issue are not present. NET forum. It's because there was a clear and easy upgrade path from all those prior languages, and that's just not true between VB6 and.
Also, through the years, I've made my own lists of all the differences betwen VB6 and. NET, but it's not worth enumerating them here. The mere fact that VB6 still has the strong following it does says it all. Ohhhh, and let's not forget the petition to Microsoft to bring back VB6 with over 11, signatures, the most of any petition allowed by Microsoft. Where's the petition to bring back VB5 or VB4, or any prior version.
Oh yeah NET is a different language, and, as Fafalone outlines, if we're going to go to a different language, there are far better alternatives than. The changes are really just good extras, that you can adopt or not whenever you choose. I upgraded individual Forms DAO to ADO , over a period of months, and the two types of data accessing co-existed happily in that period.
I have the Oct DVD. After there was too much VB. I don't remember the year off hand, but I got a T-Shirt somewhere of an Anvil crushing a bug for being a beta team member. I continued the subscription for the first couple of years but the first year it jumped to over six hundred dollars I opted out since I only used VB primarily as a hobby and some personal tool type applications.
Elroy I support DAO!! After all, not all databases are hierarchical or relational. Please help us improve Stack Overflow. Take our short survey. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Asked 10 years ago. Active 10 years ago. Viewed 35k times. Improve this question. Community Bot 1 1 1 silver badge.
Kevin Coulombe Kevin Coulombe 1, 1 1 gold badge 15 15 silver badges 35 35 bronze badges. Search Place an order. Yes, no box. Never seen this before Visual Basic for Windows 1. No, Beta edition of VB 1. Looseleaf pages for 3-ring binder. Marked "Microsoft Confidential". Yes, in license agreement envelope.
Disk Assy , Visual Basic for Windows 2. Yes, in retail box coming unglued with Professional Features manual only license agreement card and unused reg.
Yes, complete retail boxed package with license and reg. Sealed manuals. Partial shrinkwrap still on box. Only missing diskettes. Yes, unused, with three of the four manuals still in shrinkwrap. Two copies. Visual Basic 3. Yes, sealed. No box, manuals, license card or any other materials. Written permission from MS required. Yes, in jewel case with key. No manuals or other materials. License transfer unknown. Yes, sealed jewel case.
No license transfers. Yes, broken shrinkwrap on jewel case. Yes, shrinkwrap jewel case. Yes, in shrinkwrap jewel case. Five copies. Visual Basic for Windows 5. Visual Basic 5. Crippled VB 5 Pro.
Yes, complete in retail box. Missing the heavy cardboard inner box that keeps the retail box shape. Visual Basic, 5. Yes, with manual and proof of licnese card. Condition Shipping weight Inventory number Visual Basic 1. Disks still sealed.
0コメント