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]

Thank you. If I'm gonna do stuff like this, I have to figure that people are going to find out my name. I was just on another one these, talking about working on the swiftvets site, and the panel moderator was from johnkerry.com. That was a somewhat less hospitable environment than CPAC :)

CPAC 2005

[sevry]

Move on

I think you're at the wrong site. You want Soros.

[sevry]

terrible hacks

If all the complaints you hear about .NET are from "terrible hacks", then that's one thing. But if they come from reasonable men and women who code, and design, and see that is made more difficult in some ways by the babyless bathtub, then not only ought they complain but reasonably they might seek 'solutions', tools, programs to help them write programs, elsewhere. It's just the free market.

[Golden Eagle]

the panel moderator was from johnkerry.com

Did you guys swap Linux stories, LOL.

Speaking of your name, if you want it to be worth anything, you need to drop this sort of crap right away:

you're a gay pedophile

I send the albatross of ignorance to decorate your neck.

I rain dog chow on your ancestors.

I throw potatoes of pestilence at your hat.

I shall send the crab lice of indigence to infest your sheets.

I shower your face with ploplets of puppy poop.

Those are just from one thread lately. I guess you need to be told, it's beyond pathetic. But if you want to keep ruining not only your reputation but that of this site, go right ahead I suppose.

[LloydofDSS]

>>Hmmm. I thought that one of the main reasons for using
an interpreted or run-time-compiled language like BASIC
was that the source WAS the executable ... <<

Only the very earliest versions of Basic worked like that. I am pretty sure all versions of VB have seperate source and executable. If you lose the source, you are in trouble.

[RinaseaofDs]

Yeah. Good engineers love a challenge like that, but you rarely get anything you can use. I love managers with more testosterone/estrogen than brains.

I hope the guy in your example didn't get fired. It's like being out of pitchers and having your third basemen volunteer to pitch the ninth, then firing him for losing the game.

[Nick Danger]

I will take your advice under advisement. In the meantime I hurl spitballs of fire at your flammable nose.

[nmh]

WHY are you so angry at me?

Why not direct your anger and discontent at DOING SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR not wanting to change and learn new technology?

There's no reason you can't join a start up or create one. THese people with noney that you despiste, venture capitalists could help you get going. Then again, it might no be for you since you don't want to upgrade yourself to something other than what you are doing now.

You see, you've determined your own fate. All you want to do is whine about things. This seems to make you the happiest. I really thing you'd find more comfort on the DU. At the DU they have the same tired, bitter outlook, complete with class envy.

[nmh]

WHY are you so angry at me?

Why not direct your anger and discontent at DOING SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR not wanting to change and learn new technology?

There's no reason you can't join a start up or create one. These people with money that you despise, venture capitalists, could help you get going. Then again, it might no be for you since you don't want to upgrade yourself to something other than what you are doing now.

You see, you've determined your own fate. All you want to do is whine about things. It's the disappointed ENTITELMENT mindset. This mindset seems to make you the happiest. I really think you'd find more comfort at the DU. At the DU they have the same tired, bitter outlook, complete with class envy.

While you remain mired with liberaltitus others are passing you by. Ten years from now, if you last that long, you'll still be singing the same bitter lament - that is IF you last that long which I guarantee you will NOT. If it doesn't show in your work yet, it will. No one needs you attitude. There's too many others willing to do your job with some enthusiasm and most likely BETTER.

I've wasted enough time on you. BTW, did you know your anger and bitterness affect your health? It does! It shortens your life and causes other health problems. Need I mention how others will or are starting to avoid you? Let me be the first to let you know that's why I'm moving on from your circular rant.

[Golden Eagle]

Nick Danger, voodoo priest of the gay pedophiles.

[Southack]

"First, Windows. Now, VB. Dude, you're wasting your time. Stop crying and go open source. You'll be happier. Commercial companies don't have an obligation to hand over their intellectual property."

MicroSoft is under no obligation to hand over their IP, I agree. On the other hand, MicroSoft has a history of shelving (long before all of the value has been harvested from) products rather than selling or giving away their source.

MicroSoft also has a bad habbit of listening to its in-house developers instead of to its customers out in the field. DDE, ADO, VB.Net, Windows ME, the Registry, and a host of other "upgrades" were ill-advised, and in general broke things that were working in older versions.

Of course, these things happen; no firm is perfect and I expect little better from a firm as large and successful as MicroSoft.

However, it would be *nice* if MicroSoft made a few tiny, very minor changes in how they played.

For instance, instead of shelving Windows 95 to let it gather dust, Windows shops would dig it if MicroSoft killed Linux by releasing Windows 95 into the Public Domain as open source. Instead of killing support for VB 6, Windows shops would be overjoyed if MicroSoft would sell the source and rights to the VB 6 engine to a motivated 3rd party who would come out with enhancements and updates.

Of course, these things are mere *wishes* on my part, I don't really expect them to come true. But I hope that the "MicroSoft can do no wrong" crowd doesn't feel so threatened by the mere wishes of a Windows shop that they have to bash the voicing of such wishful thinking.

[Southack]

"What they're upset about is that Microsoft won't let them write VB spaghetti-code and put it on the Internet in the .NET framework. There are some really terrible hacks out there practicing the "craft" of VB Programmer®. Microsoft is doing the world a favor by keeping them away."

I'd actually take the other side of that argument. Vb.Net for the most part forces old hierarchical and event-driven programmers into a purely object-oriented paradigm that actually encourages the writing of poor object methods. Your old VB 6 teams probably aren't trained in writing class drivers, for instance.

So those teams are going to be writing classes that get introduced into production code without first being fully exercised in your pre-production environment...simply because they don't know (how) to test all of their class properties and methods.

"Object Oriented" doesn't magically obliterate spaghetti code, after all. If you don't exercise your pre-production classes with professional class drivers, then your new object oriented software project is going to be more kludgy than whatever it was that your team was writing prior to their jump into OO.

[econjack]

I didn't say all the code went over without change. However, as far as setting try-catch blocks, how tough is it to look for an on-error goto and change it to a try-catch if you wrote it right to begin with? More importantly, VB6 and VB.NET are different animals. NET is fully OOP-compliant while VB6 isn't, so why would you not expect some editing? I agree, if you don't intend to take advantages of the enhancements to the language, especially the web stuff, just stay where you are.

[Bush2000]

We've had this conversation before, South.

If Microsoft releases Win9x sources into the public domain, it won't "kill off Linux." Linux developers are very happy working on their operating system -- and no amount of code from Microsoft will deter them from trying to knock off the king of desktop operating systems in Redmond. Instead, what would happen is that they would take whatever informatiion that they glean from the Win9x sources, and they would put it into making Wine more compatible with Windows. So, what would that accomplish? It would make it easier for Linux users to run Windows programs. Which, in effect, would actually strengthen Linux, not kill it off. And, even if you discount that issue, I don't think people are going to want to take a step backward and use Win9x, compared to Linux, even if it's free. Win9x did not implement true preemptive multitasking, its memory management was poor, drivers sucked, and the experience just doesn't compare to the stability and performance of modern operating systems of the past few years.

Now, I have no doubt that hobbyists would take an interest in tinkering around with Win9x source code, but hobbyists are not the sweetspot of the desktop market. They're fringe-dwellers. They like to run all sorts of weird code, sometimes just on a lark. And, while tinkering isn't a bad thing, in itself, it would accomplish very little for Microsoft. I simply don't see any upside there. I think that software piracy, lack of decent apps, poor usability, and a dearth of drivers are probably the biggest reasons why Linux isn't gaining ground on the desktop. Those factors wouldn't be impacted at all if MS, even if MS released Win9x source code into the public domain.

[Southack]

"More importantly, VB6 and VB.NET are different animals. NET is fully OOP-compliant while VB6 isn't, so why would you not expect some editing?"

That's been my point all along. VB.Net is *not* an enhanced VB 6; VB.Net is a different beast altogether, trading off of VB's name and reputation.

...And it isn't just "some editing," the software *architectures* between those two languages are different. So you aren't just talking about "some editing" of code, but of fundamental *design* changes...something that should be dealt with prior to coding for OO systems, not put together after the fact as migrating exisitng VB 6 projects over to VB.Net demands.

...Unless you want a lousy Object-Oriented system, of course. In which case, who cares about design or class exercising?!

[Nick Danger]

"Object Oriented" doesn't magically obliterate spaghetti code, after all... your new object oriented software project is going to be more kludgy than whatever it was that your team was writing prior to their jump into OO.

There's truth in that... people who are used to writing spaghetti code will write more of it after they learn how to define a class. But I think one of the issues on the table here is whether Microsoft made a conscious decision to leave some of the dumber ones behind when moving to .NET. If you've ever put an ad in the paper for a VB programmer, you know what kind of crap is out there. There are former shoe salesmen with IQ's of 55 writing VB. The scientists probably have a chimp that can do it.

[Southack]

"software piracy, lack of decent apps, poor usability, and a dearth of drivers are probably the biggest reasons why Linux isn't gaining ground on the desktop. Those factors wouldn't be impacted at all if MS, even if MS released Win9x source code into the public domain."

Linux suffers from the Chicken and Egg syndrome, aka Catch 22. You've got to have marketshare in order to convince big game and application developers to write for your OS, and you don't get big marketshare without first having lots of good games and applications.

So where Linux makes sense is where the big games and applications don't factor in (e.g. servers, driving proprietary stand alone devices, etc.).

Linux also suffers from the perception that its existing customer base won't pay for games and applications, but will gladly steal them. A pirate OS is only going to go so far...unless something big happens such as a change in the equation for stand alone devices and/or available games/applications.

Such a change could be that MicroSoft releases Win95 into the public domain with the properly tailored license agreement. Developers who needed a "free" OS would go that route in order to be in the larger marketshare with more applications and available games, which would also allow MicroSoft to eat up the current Linux marketshare and sell MS apps to that group without the expense of porting MS apps and games over to Linux itself.

Another potential change would be if a Sony or an Apple started making its Playstation or OSX games available for Linux.

Sony, Apple, or MicroSoft could also revolutionize the Market by buying TiVo, installing their own OS onto TiVo boxes in place of Linux, and then offereing their big games and applications to the TiVo/DVR community...effectively capturing large swaths of the current home-TV-Computer market that is emerging. Frankly, it's only a brief matter of time before the major DVR players introduce games and office applications on a broad scale into the market. Apple alone could *double* its current U.S. marketshare by paying a few hundred million for TiVo. Sony could knock off Dell by doing the same thing.

The computer, TV, telephone, and Internet are converging more and more with each passing day. This brings up market opportunities that didn't exist a few years ago. Someone will eventually take advantage of this changing landscape.

[Southack]

"what would happen is that they would take whatever informatiion that they glean from the Win9x sources, and they would put it into making Wine more compatible with Windows. So, what would that accomplish?"

A simple license agreement would stop Wine from having Win9x, if MicroSoft wanted to bar Linux rather than coopt it like the Borg.

What would releasing Win95 into open source accomplish for MicroSoft? It would give MicroSoft more desktops to sell MS Office and Age of Empires.

Right now, sole source proprietary hardward vendors like TiVo are limited to Linux or some flavors of Unix (ha, redundant statement) to ship a "free" OS with their DVR's.

Give them Win95 and then they can ship something that MicroSoft can charge for downloading games to.

So the plus side of releasing Win95, for MicroSoft, is that it will enlarge MicroSoft's market penetration.

The downside for MS not releasing Win95 is that MS constantly runs the risk that someone big such as Sony or Apple will figure out how to coopt the existing Linux marketspace, e.g. by either buying TiVo or by porting their games and applications to Linux...either of which would give Apple or Sony millions of new desktops to sell new software.

Does MicroSoft want to be the dominant home-tv-computer/business server vendor, or will MS delay long enough for another player to grab those markets?

[Mr. K]

hey...! didnt Bill Gates PERSONALLY write "Turtle Graphics" ?

[Southack]

"Microsoft made a conscious decision to leave some of the dumber ones behind when moving to .NET."

What's this?! A stealth argument for making development environments *more* difficult?!

Honestly, throwing together an app in VB.Net is not more difficult than VB 6...packaging the "executable" to be shipped is actually easier in VB.Net.

What MicroSoft did was roll out an original Object-Oriented system in VB.Net that pretended to be an incremental upgrade from VB 6; when the reality was that VB 6 was the last of the line and VB.Net was an entirely different language that shared little more than the old name (a crappy way to trade on past marketshare).