Visual Basic - when to switch?
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Visual Basic - When to Switch? 30 years ago.
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Why? To be one of the "cool kids"? confused: To be part of the "In-Crowd"? confused: To be "just like everybody else?": confused: How many people back into parking spots because the see other people doing it? confused: I guess haters going to hate.
Very Old Guy.
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Support policy for Visual Basic Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 | Microsoft Learn[^] Now as I read that it means that although they are not going to be improving VB they do intend, at least now, to make sure it runs until 2035 (presuming same life cycle for Windows 11 as was for Windows 10). But perhaps not beyond that. So people have those VB apps now so when do they really need to start refactoring the entire code base into something else? Start now and avoid the rush? Wait until 2034? Wait until 2037 and when enough customers move onto a different provider because they don't want to run an older unsupported OS?
never switch. VB Classic was right only now in C# you can write code without
XYZ partial class App public static void main SubscriberMethodController... cough coughStarting in C# 9, you don't have to explicitly include a Main method in a console application project. Instead, you can use the top-level statements feature to minimize the code you have to write. In this case, the compiler generates a class and Main method entry point for the application. guess what, we had that since VB 1.0, any language had that, the compiler behind the scenes generated the _app & _main. i wonder when they are going to get rid ofnewin C#, since the instances of a class are not created on the stack anyway... VB Classic will outlive VB .NET. if not, waiting for the shameful M$ narrative when they bring back the apparent syntax of VB to VB.NET those who put *class* in JavaScript are the same who put *var* in C# -
Support policy for Visual Basic Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 | Microsoft Learn[^] Now as I read that it means that although they are not going to be improving VB they do intend, at least now, to make sure it runs until 2035 (presuming same life cycle for Windows 11 as was for Windows 10). But perhaps not beyond that. So people have those VB apps now so when do they really need to start refactoring the entire code base into something else? Start now and avoid the rush? Wait until 2034? Wait until 2037 and when enough customers move onto a different provider because they don't want to run an older unsupported OS?
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Correct. I should've specified desktop programs.
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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Support policy for Visual Basic Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 | Microsoft Learn[^] Now as I read that it means that although they are not going to be improving VB they do intend, at least now, to make sure it runs until 2035 (presuming same life cycle for Windows 11 as was for Windows 10). But perhaps not beyond that. So people have those VB apps now so when do they really need to start refactoring the entire code base into something else? Start now and avoid the rush? Wait until 2034? Wait until 2037 and when enough customers move onto a different provider because they don't want to run an older unsupported OS?
As I see it VB6 is the same as visual basic for applications. So as long as they are going to support VBA it seems logical Microsoft will have to support VB6. My concern is that the Microsoft people are not merging VB.net nominclature with C#. They share the same code base now, so why not upgrade the editor to handle both syntax in one environment. That way there would never be a need to retire either one. Computers are powerful enough to support that structure now which may not have been the case years ago. I prefer personally "if then ....... end if" for tracing purposes over the c# equivalent which ends everything with a }. Nested loops with everything sharing the same ending are much more difficult to debug. Thank you.
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I counted 16 replies to the question of wich I se only two that tried to seiously anwer. I this the normal level of seriousness in this forum?
I counted 28 words in your comment, and 7 were not correctly written... is this the normal level of working keyboards at your end? :rolleyes: :laugh: Sorry... too tempting To answer you... The answers of "30 years ago" is for me totally serious. You can infer that the author thinks the OP should not "waste" any second more at all using it and move on to other languages. The fact that it got 10 upvotes means, that many other people (me, among them) agree with him. And for me it is a perfect serious answer, although it is written with humor.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I totally agree with the above "30 years ago"... but an orthogonal take is: that is in one and a half decade. Do you think your prog will be relevant at all in 2037? I would say that rather few 15-year-old programs are relevant today (regardless of what language they were written in), unless they have a billion-head-userbase like Word, Excel and those... But let's say i am wrong, and your prog remains attractive? Then I say Q: When should I switch ? A: When it is the least painful, i.e. ASAP
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
I bet some of those programs will be relevant. It really depends on what they're supporting. I have one program that was originally developed in 1997 using FoxPro for DOS, migrated to MS-Access, and is now written in VB.Net using a SQL Server database for the back end. We still have data from 1997 in the database. The core functions of this program haven't changed since the original version in 1997.
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Now. Even VB.NET is a low priority. I would jump to C# and Dot Net 7.0+.
Graeme
"I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks one time, but I fear the man that has practiced one kick ten thousand times!" - Bruce Lee
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Please recommend where to switch to. :laugh:
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Why? To be one of the "cool kids"? confused: To be part of the "In-Crowd"? confused: To be "just like everybody else?": confused: How many people back into parking spots because the see other people doing it? confused: I guess haters going to hate.
Very Old Guy.
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I switched to backing in. In the old days, when there was some courtesy, you could back out of a parking spot slowly and people would let you out. Parking lots these days are NASCAR test tracks, it would seem. Heavy sigh.
I understand. I still pull in and back out, but I have excellent car insurance, and a great attorney. :-D Yours is a great reason for backing in, and I appreciate you feelings. Be safe, take care.
Ed
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I totally agree with the above "30 years ago"... but an orthogonal take is: that is in one and a half decade. Do you think your prog will be relevant at all in 2037? I would say that rather few 15-year-old programs are relevant today (regardless of what language they were written in), unless they have a billion-head-userbase like Word, Excel and those... But let's say i am wrong, and your prog remains attractive? Then I say Q: When should I switch ? A: When it is the least painful, i.e. ASAP
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
It depends upon the business you're in. I designed/programmed firmware for telecom equipment (hardware on a 911 call takers desk). It had a minimum life time requirement of 10 years. Heck, one of our customers requested (and got) a firmware change to a product that was over 16 years old.
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Support policy for Visual Basic Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 | Microsoft Learn[^] Now as I read that it means that although they are not going to be improving VB they do intend, at least now, to make sure it runs until 2035 (presuming same life cycle for Windows 11 as was for Windows 10). But perhaps not beyond that. So people have those VB apps now so when do they really need to start refactoring the entire code base into something else? Start now and avoid the rush? Wait until 2034? Wait until 2037 and when enough customers move onto a different provider because they don't want to run an older unsupported OS?
Visual Basic stopped working with Windows 7. Microsoft dropped a bunch of required modules in Windows 7. The solution was to add these modules to the VB6 build. Again with Windows 10, Microsoft did the same thing, requiring modules to be included in the build. In addition, Microsoft changed the registry structure/contents on Windows 10. I am still trying to code replacement to find the full path to installed programs. Years ago, I was going to convert my VB6 programs to VB.net, but ran into big problems as the form handling routines did not have the same capabilities of VB6. That was probably 18 years ago, so I can't remember the details now, but I'd guess, and it is only a guess, that things like _LostFocus no longer worked and I didn't want to waste the time on how to get around the problem. As I recall, there were a lot of deficiencies with VB.net. With changes in Windows 10 and Windows 11, I may have to re-write all my applications in a new language. I've been retired for over 10 years, so I don't think that is going to happen. Microsoft sucks! And don't get me started on the 'unknown publisher' message that comes up every time I run an application on Windows 10. Microsoft doesn't want to make things easy for the developer anymore.
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Support policy for Visual Basic Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 | Microsoft Learn[^] Now as I read that it means that although they are not going to be improving VB they do intend, at least now, to make sure it runs until 2035 (presuming same life cycle for Windows 11 as was for Windows 10). But perhaps not beyond that. So people have those VB apps now so when do they really need to start refactoring the entire code base into something else? Start now and avoid the rush? Wait until 2034? Wait until 2037 and when enough customers move onto a different provider because they don't want to run an older unsupported OS?
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Very recently Damian Edwards[^] was asked about bringing VB in line with ASP.Net MVC, and the response was there is no plan to do it. That is just one example.
Graeme
"I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks one time, but I fear the man that has practiced one kick ten thousand times!" - Bruce Lee
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Visual Basic stopped working with Windows 7. Microsoft dropped a bunch of required modules in Windows 7. The solution was to add these modules to the VB6 build. Again with Windows 10, Microsoft did the same thing, requiring modules to be included in the build. In addition, Microsoft changed the registry structure/contents on Windows 10. I am still trying to code replacement to find the full path to installed programs. Years ago, I was going to convert my VB6 programs to VB.net, but ran into big problems as the form handling routines did not have the same capabilities of VB6. That was probably 18 years ago, so I can't remember the details now, but I'd guess, and it is only a guess, that things like _LostFocus no longer worked and I didn't want to waste the time on how to get around the problem. As I recall, there were a lot of deficiencies with VB.net. With changes in Windows 10 and Windows 11, I may have to re-write all my applications in a new language. I've been retired for over 10 years, so I don't think that is going to happen. Microsoft sucks! And don't get me started on the 'unknown publisher' message that comes up every time I run an application on Windows 10. Microsoft doesn't want to make things easy for the developer anymore.
I wrote a Software Defined Radio in VB6 + Delphi + Assembler back in 2003, and it's still in use today - I still see downloads - https://www.g8jcf.uk/. The Delphi & Assembler were used to write the low level DSP and vector arithmetic - it was developed on a Celeron 333 with 192 MBytes of RAM a SONY VAIO laptop !!! The G8JCFSDR is a hobby program for free for a relatively small base, so it's not worthwhile me porting it to C#, although it might be an interesting excercise. Back in 2003, so much stuff had to be added around VB6 to hook message events, handle callbacks, etc, so it might be much easier/quicker today Ah those were the days :-) 73 Peter - GM8JCF
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Support policy for Visual Basic Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 | Microsoft Learn[^] Now as I read that it means that although they are not going to be improving VB they do intend, at least now, to make sure it runs until 2035 (presuming same life cycle for Windows 11 as was for Windows 10). But perhaps not beyond that. So people have those VB apps now so when do they really need to start refactoring the entire code base into something else? Start now and avoid the rush? Wait until 2034? Wait until 2037 and when enough customers move onto a different provider because they don't want to run an older unsupported OS?
From my viewpoint it depends on what the code is for. I converted my VB6 programs to VB.NET over 20 years ago. Some things took very little effort as I was able to copy large chunks of code. I redid all of my forms from scratch, but I was able to reuse a lot of code. Most of the code I have written involves controlling test equipment and taking measurements. I like VB.NET because it is easier for someone with very little programming experience to follow what the test code is doing.
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I bet some of those programs will be relevant. It really depends on what they're supporting. I have one program that was originally developed in 1997 using FoxPro for DOS, migrated to MS-Access, and is now written in VB.Net using a SQL Server database for the back end. We still have data from 1997 in the database. The core functions of this program haven't changed since the original version in 1997.
I have a very similar situation with software written in 1995 in a mix of QBasic and MS Access, migrated to a SQL server back-end, updated to VB for the QBasic stuff, back-end moved to MySQL, and numerous iterations since. What's interesting to me is the derision shown for powerful, capable and effective systems written in so-called "toy" languages. Many still run today because they just work and do what they were designed to do. I develop mostly in C# now but I would never look down on people still using VB, VB.Net, or any other language. If it works for them, then it must be doing something right. Program-language snobs are something I cannot understand. I will admit that I would never start developing a new project on any of the older languages, no matter how well I know them.
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Why? To be one of the "cool kids"? confused: To be part of the "In-Crowd"? confused: To be "just like everybody else?": confused: How many people back into parking spots because the see other people doing it? confused: I guess haters going to hate.
Very Old Guy.
I back in to parking slots for the same reason I use C# rather than VB6 - it's easier and safer.
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Support policy for Visual Basic Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 | Microsoft Learn[^] Now as I read that it means that although they are not going to be improving VB they do intend, at least now, to make sure it runs until 2035 (presuming same life cycle for Windows 11 as was for Windows 10). But perhaps not beyond that. So people have those VB apps now so when do they really need to start refactoring the entire code base into something else? Start now and avoid the rush? Wait until 2034? Wait until 2037 and when enough customers move onto a different provider because they don't want to run an older unsupported OS?
[disclaimer: I supervise a varied codebase that includes a few large VB apps, with many thousands of lines of code.] Interesting responses to this, ranging from funny to pragmatic to completely off-base. You need to look at these as IT projects and define your timelines based on need. You didn't provide any details about what the apps are or how they are used, so it's hard to do a decent analysis. Short answer: I'd look at 5-6 year target zone. No sense on pushing it to the limits. Depending on the apps involved, the write could take a few years so starting sooner is better than later. There is no "re-factoring"; this is a ground up, blank canvas rewrite for desktop apps. C# is the way to go but VB.net isn't terrible. But there's a lot of unknowns:* Are these just small apps serving limited functionality?
- Data connections and underlying database? Personally, I'm not a fan of migrating databases and codebase at the same time if it can be avoided. It interjects a ton of potential errors. Whether it's data first or code first depends on circumstance
- Printing. Many old VB apps do a lot of document printing (not reports). They take a lot of code/time in .net
- OOP analysis. Meh. Not knowing the codebase, can't answer that one. It's not trivial, and it can be tough to flesh out because you're looking at the existing app. Like anything else, lots of thinking here.
- Web? Two pronged-question. In our review of some of the VB uses, web-based apps are a more suitable replacement than rewriting desktop apps. We have several going in that direction, though the back end remains in .net in some cases. The second piece is if the apps or data interact with the internet as that plays into the design.
It boils down to the apps; how big they are and what they do. I'd start planning as soon as time allows. If you can transition functionality to a new program, it's not a bad approach. Avoid the light switch approach if you can.
