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Posted on 03/13/2005 6:00:05 PM PST by 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…
(Excerpt) Read more at infoworld.com ...
hey...! didnt Bill Gates PERSONALLY write "Turtle Graphics" ?
Good one.
In the unlikely event that you weren't kidding, the answer is 'No'. Seymour Papert wrote LOGO, the language of turtle graphics. Search on this page or on this page for 'turtle graphics'.
WTF? Years ago, perhaps that sort of flame use to be fun, but now it's just plain silly.
Odd, too -- over the last few years you seem to have acted so much more adult on several occasions. I haven't seen you launch into an all out flame attack like this in quite some time. You and I had even had friendly, personable exchanges on a few occasions. I thought you had matured, I had come to have some respect for you. But I can not respect someone with such poor communication skills.
Myself, I'm crazy busy these days, too busy to waste time with someone like that. I'm the boss now, and that leaves me little time. I responded cuz you and I have some history, you can be funny and interesting to read, and I had *thought* you had grown beyond such silly flame wars.
If you care, the discussion on that thread was about using SOAP for banking services. SOAP was first pitched to us at JavaOne back in 98 or so, and 70% of my career has been with web-services based-apps, both with and without SOAP. I have what you might consider an 'educated opinion'. I'm not against SOAP cuz of MS. Nor cuz I'm just an idiot. If that's the angle of your comments, thank you for your opinion and I guess our conversation is at an end.
There are good reasons I -- and many, many other top architects -- are not big fans of SOAP. If you don't want to listen to our opinions, that's fine. Just launch another flame back at me. I'll get the 'subtle' hint.
Of course, since this *thread* was about something else entirely, if you'd like to perhaps try a reasonable convesation on this topic . . .
You seem to believe I'm in some sort of indenture to Microsoft. You simply don't get it. Microsoft is not the company store. If they upset or even infuriate their customer base - THEIR CUSTOMERS WILL LOOK ELSEWHERE. How many times must something so obvious be said? If .NET is unable to provide what businesses want, they will use the older technology, or switch to something other than .NET. Microsoft will have to recover from a bad decision. It won't be the first time.
Microsoft can refer to its customers however they like. If you think Microsoft sees a portion of its customer base as the "dumber ones", then those people might decide they no longer need Microsoft. You'll find a lot of software development is not done on NT-line systems, but rather some UNIX clone. That's a conscious decision by various firms. Microsoft, if .NET proves to be as incapable and unreliable as some suggest, and if they are forcing this as the one and only development platform, could well be on the way to losing a huge market share as their capitalization plummets. But the time line would be anyone's guess. People thought Apple would perish under Sculley. But because of huge cash reserves, Apple held on FOR YEARS, until Jobs returned to rescue the firm.
What then do you make of the common complaints about .NET? Is it a capable platform for development? Can you as easily and reliably perform all the tasks required and mastered in the 'visual programming' languages with .NET? The answer determines whether or not one should even complain, or worry, or expect a stock price plummet. Because it obviously all depends on whether the complaints are justified.
That was generally the opinion. Cash reserves. Sculley did Apple no favors in his management or style. Jobs was right about that. As for Microsoft co-authoring, wasn't that the case for Truetype, along with Adobe? I believe Apple still insists upon its right to 'hint' said fonts. I don't know if they've ever pursued a font-maker on that basis.
I was interested in what he had to say on the matter. I was not interested in your opinion, to be clear.
Obviously not enough, in your case. In the meantime, record profits. If you want to use something else, go ahead, I don't see anyone stopping you, do you? But the best and brightest have moved on to something better, not stuck whining about the past. That's the way this business works, technology improves, continuously. Either hop on board, or get out of the way. How many times can something so obvious be said?
Nick, I am one of the dumber ones and I can learn C#. Or rather small parts of C# and smaller parts of the .NET framework. I bet it is even easier than VB, if you start out with it.
Exactly. Businesses get tired of having to continually change, and frequently to imperfect products.
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Why are you so scared of the free market? Microsoft cannot compel people to use its products. There was a sense, not so long ago, that people preferred Microsoft, for Truetype, for support and a wide range of drivers, etc. If there's a problem, now, and a 'new' Microsoft, then the same market is still operating. Don't be afraid. Or be afraid, I suppose. It's your choice.
If Microsoft, and I say if, if Microsoft is saying it is not concerned with the problems faced by its customers, then their customers will look elsewhere. How many times must something so obvious be said? Why would anyone disagree with that?
??? I just told you if you don't like MS then go change to something else, so I have no idea what you're talking about. What I am definitely opposed to, if this is what you're getting at, is foreign socialists if not communists making clones of our products then flooding the market with them at the expense of US businesses.
if Microsoft is saying it is not concerned with the problems faced by its customers, then their customers will look elsewhere. How many times must something so obvious be said? Why would anyone disagree with that?
I never did, I said quit your whining already and go ahead, if you think you'll actually be better off.
I and many others, if what they say about .NET is true. That's what I said - to you. I think we agree. But I doubt you want to say that.
go ahead, if you think you'll actually be better off
You seem bitter about, nonetheless. It's called the free market. If Microsoft is doing something to offend its customers, its customers may decide to look elsewhere. If they can't do what they need to do with 'new and improved', then old and stable, or something else entirely, might seem preferable. It's nothing to get upset about, unless I suppose if you work for Microsoft.
LOL, I'm LMAO at you, and you think I'm upset??? I could care less if you switched to Java, did you not see my post above where I said that is what I myself use a lot? Apparently not. Get over yourself, and change to something else if you want. Microsoft obviously factored in that possibility, since they made this decision some time ago. As for me, I simply don't give a flip, just tired of hearing your vain threats over and over, as if anyone cared.
You can dish it out, but you sure can't take it. I send the pincer beetles of precision to pinch your extremities, and you get all bent out of shape.
Be nice. Otherwise, I will rain the Splotches of Darkness on your Microsoft talking points.
I would have replied earlier, but I've been crying all morning over your comment ;)
Imperfect product... that was the consultant in me speaking! I don't really have a dog in this race, but I think that businesses owners / management are starting to get quite tired of the bills they pay for IT spending, especially for things that bring no ROI.
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It's supposed to be difficult. If it was easy, girls could do it.