Campaign to save Visual Basic 6 gathers support (Rapid obsolescence...of workforce?)

InfoWorld ^ | March 10, 2005 | Paul Krill

[baseball_fan]

An online petition gathering signatures to save Microsoft’s Visual Basic 6 programming language will not change the company’s intention to cut free support on March 31, a Microsoft representative said on Thursday afternoon.

Microsoft’s plan to stop support has been discussed for almost three years and the deadline already has been extended once, said the press representative, who requested anonymity. Visual Basic 6 has been supported longer than any other Microsoft product, according to the representative. “Extended” support, which is fee-based, will continue through 2008.

The vendor has spent the past few years encouraging Visual Basic 6 programmers to migrate to the new Visual Basic .Net platform, which has had its share of complications. The Microsoft representative acknowledged that the company “dramatically altered the Visual Basic language-syntax in Visual Basic .Net.”

As of Thursday afternoon, 1,009 signatures had been added to the petition, at http://classicvb.org/Petition/. One signatory interviewed stressed the difficulties in moving to Visual Basic .Net.

“It’s a different language,” said Visual Basic programmer Don Bradner, who has been part of Microsoft’s Most Valuable Programmer community. “It’s like me telling you that you have to write InfoWorld in French.” …

The petition asks that Microsoft further develop Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic for Applications, continue supporting the language, and allow customers to decide when to migrate code to Visual Basic .Net. An updated version of Visual Basic 6 is requested by the petitioners…

“Microsoft should demonstrate a commitment to the core Visual Basic language. This core should be enhanced and extended, and changes should follow a documented deprecation process,” the petition states.

But all future versions of Visual Basic will be based on Visual Basic .Net…The company has provided “a wide range of resources to help Visual Basic developers make the transition…

[Nick Danger]

I'm unconvinced. No one in the C++ world would tolerate a new C++ release that couldn't run old C++ code

They would, and they did, at least for Windows programming. Both Microsoft (MFC) and Borland (OWL) totally re-wrote their class libraries, leaving all kinds of stuff in the dust. 'Twas a major pain in the butt. Especially after they told us that the class libraries would isolate us from changes in the Windows API.

[general_re]

Hey, I'm a "whatever you're comfortable with" kind of guy. There are lots of cases where only one package does the one critical thing you can't possibly live without, and so that's the one you go with ;)

[Southack]

I'm unconvinced. No one in the C++ world would tolerate a new C++ release that couldn't run old C++ code

"They would, and they did, at least for Windows programming. Both Microsoft (MFC) and Borland (OWL) totally re-wrote their class libraries, leaving all kinds of stuff in the dust."

So MicroSoft has now broken backwards compatibility twice?! For VB 6 to VB.Net and for C++ when they rewrote their Foundation Classes...

Now you're talking about a corporate *pattern* of breaking backwards compatibility. Certainly MicroSoft is also going to do this again soon with either their VB.Net or with their VBA developers, too.

Ugly. It's just pretty ugly to see this sort of behavior.

How can I recommend MicroSoft solutions to my clients when I can't in good faith depend upon our current work being supported in the future? How many times can I go to my clients and explain that *they* have to pay us for re-writing existing projects...simply because MicroSoft changed the rules in mid-stream?

[econjack]

Aww, c'on, guys...I'm two years younger than dirt and programmed with Visual Basic since it came out back in the early '90's, yet I've been adapting to language changes since the late '60's. I've written books on Visual Basic, including .NET and just finished my 14th book on C#, another .NET language and it really is time to let VB6.0 die a graceful death. Further, programmer age has little to do with this issue...it's interest and desire that makes me stay up with the power curve. If anything, I think "the language race" helps keep me young!

[DarkSavant]

I hate VB. We actually use it for one of our programs because we were basically forced to. Our manager is always embarrased when he has to mention it. C++ is still where it's at, to hell with Java, VB.net, etc.... okay ADA's pretty cool too.

[econjack]

I don't think you're right. Your issues with C++ are improperly directed. Your problems are with the MFC, not C++. That langauge has not changed since it was standardized by the ANSI committee over a decade ago. As to backward compatibility with VB 6.0, Microsoft did the right thing when it broke it, because VB 6.0 was not a full Object Oriented Programming (OOP) language at the time. To make it a robust OOP language required creating issues of backward compatibility. Had your programmers used OOP techniques (minus inheritance) from the start, the transition costs would have been minimal. The fact you're using C++ suggests you know OOP, so why VB 6.0 in the first place? Sounds like a design problem.

[Southack]

"As to backward compatibility with VB 6.0, Microsoft did the right thing when it broke it..."

Would C++ programmers embrace a new C++ engine that couldn't compile old C++ code??

Because that's what MicroSoft did with VB.Net, it won't run code from any of the earlier versions of VB.

How would Java programmers react to a new Java engine that couldn't run old Java code?

...And you think that's the right thing?! You must be young and in no position of corporate or financial responsibility.

[Ignatz]

Crap - and I was just thinking of learning VB6. I guess I'll stick with my GWBASIC and hope they come out with GWBASIC.NET some day. ;-)

Me, I'm holding out for QBASIC.NET!

[Wurlitzer]

I have developed many programs with VB6 that use 3rd party drivers to connect the PC with various proprietary hardware devices that control industrial equipment. The VB/PC simply provides SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) functions and nothing mission critical. Anything mission critical is done in the proprietary hardware systems.

Many of these 3rd party drivers do not support VB.Net. These are not throwaway applications. VB6 was and is a very good development tool and for speed of development is light years ahead of "C" as long as you do not need to roll your applications out to different platforms. In 99% of my programs this is not required. VB.NET no thanks. I'll keep going with VB until I get to a point where I can not do what I want. So far I have never hit that point.

[RinaseaofDs]

As an EE, there is a difference between someone who knows a programming language, or even a type of technology, and someone who can really wield it elegantly.

With some languages, it just takes enough time 'in grade' to get that proficient with a language.

Something to be said for the workmanship that can be had by such people with expertise in languages that are 'just behind the curve' a little.

I remember when being a power engineer was the very last thing you wanted to be. Now they are making $150K per year because nobody was interested in it.

[Wurlitzer]

"Sounds like they want to halt progress so they won't be forced to hit the books and learn something new. Sorry, but you don't go into IT and expect things to stay still."Thats all well and good Ex-Dem provided the 3rd party driver developers start suppling drivers for industrial controllers for VB.NET. I'll gladly learn VB.NET if I have the tools to work with it. I am not at level to write my own device drivers for anything except for a few devices.

[Nick Danger]

there is a difference between someone who knows a programming language, or even a type of technology, and someone who can really wield it elegantly.

I know of a C++ programmer who was forced, by management, to write a GUI in VB. You shoulda seen the thing. She built this whole scaffolding to emulate an object-oriented language, and then built the GUI on that. When she left, they hired an honest-to-goodness VB Programmer® to finish it. Heh.

[econjack]

Hmmm...So when the automobile came into being and the buggies were no longer compatible, you're saying everyone should still be driving around in horse-drawn buggies? If you write ANSI C++ code, it should still compile. If you didn't, that's hardly ANSI's problem.

As to slamming me and my credentials, I was the founder and CEO of a software company that produced compilers and other programming tools for 17 years and am teaching in the computer technology department of a Big Ten university. Before you run off at the mouth next time, you might want to click on the person's name first to see if they have any depth to them. I did so with yours and have a pretty good idea of how you spend your time...I'll stack my credentials against yours any day of the week.

[pt17]

Yes. BALR 14,15 was a common way to start a routine, to set up an index register for the rest of the addressing

Thanks, Nick, for letting me know I am not out of it quite yet. :-)

[sevry]

useful to an employer

I'm sure you can still find COBOL work listed somewhere. That means it's useful to employers. Are such employers right to maintain such a base? I don't know. But given their decision, right or wrong, do they then find it more useful to hire Oracle guys, or COBOL? I would think they'd want to upgrade. And to the extent hierarchies are intrinsic to their dataset, Oracle does allow for recursive retrieval if an explicit 'path' approach is not used.

[sevry]

No one owes you a living

It depends. Have you ever heard of legacy public employees; children of parents in the same work, fire fighters, police, administrators, etc? They certainly feel as if they are owed, parent and child alike.

Again, it's ironic that this is phrased in free market terms if indeed it is true that Microsoft rigged the market, itself, in Windows. Isn't it true that they purposely cripple the public documentation of their products in order to provide a marginal advantage to those paying for training programs and seminars, who then further act to their employers as a sales staff for Microsoft products? If so, the further joke might be on them. The actual free market seems to be slowly inching away from Microsoft. When Win 3.1 hit for the use of Truetype and legacy compatibility, with the newest Mosaic browser written for Windows, it seemed a great solution and product for all business and niche users. But now Microsoft is seen as oppressive, incompetent, dangerous in some way for lack of security measures, etc. And that incompetence and seeming lack of concern for customers is, I think, precisely the opposite of the sense in the early 80s when Win 3.1 basically launched, or relaunched, the company. I think their thinking has become ever more twisted. And I do think that Gates constant fear that another company is gaining on him is justified in 2005.

[Dominic Harr]

I've found that you don't latch on to 'languages', you hitch your wagon to 'concepts'. List the concepts that make for a superior programming environment:

• OOA/OOD
• managed code
• tight security framework
• 3-tiered architecture / network-friendly
• platform-independent
• source-code available for my perusal

Learn/use a language with those concepts, and then you can port your skills to the next 'latest, greatest' language-du-jour.

I've been working in Java full time for over 8 years now. Because of my abilities with OO and the 3-tiered world, I've actually been offered .NET architecture jobs several times. And when something better than Java comes along I'll have skills that will still be marketable (from my experience, I do *not* believe that .net fits in this catagory, but YMMV).

[Bush2000]

Most of you on this thread don't understand what's going on here. The termination of support applies solely to the VB6 IDE -- the GUI development environment (editor, compiler, etc) -- not the VB6 runtime! Mainstream Support for the VB6 Runtime will continue for 2 years *after* Longhorn ships -- and Extended Support will continue for 7 years after Longhorn ships.

Few developers have issues with the VB6 IDE. It's baked. More likely, people have issues with the way that the VB6 runtime operates -- and, as I pointed out above -- Microsoft is going to support that for a long time.

[Bush2000]

I've found that you don't latch on to 'languages', you hitch your wagon to 'concepts'.

Harr, I won't soon forget that thread in which you asserted that representing RSA-public-key-encrypted data as text was "insecure". Dude, please ... don't educate yourself. You're hilarious, just the way you are ...

[Bush2000]

Isn't it true that they purposely cripple the public documentation of their products in order to provide a marginal advantage to those paying for training programs and seminars, who then further act to their employers as a sales staff for Microsoft products?

Clue phone: Try going to MSDN and tell me that the documentation is "crippled". Sheez ... some people ...