I have been writing Fortran since 1989 and have never used a punched card (or tape)

I remember having to modify someone's C who wrote mainly in Fortran. It was basically Fortran with C syntax. You can write Fortran in any language.

I have done this - taken a large VB project (which I wrote) and converted it to a shipping product written in C#. A few things I learned 1. Don't convert the VB, write a new application. Take the lessons leaner from VB app and apply them using C# and .NET. Use it as an opportunity to improve the code and algorithms used, even if it is supposed to be functionally similar or the same. 2. Write something else in C# first. C# and VB6 are more similar than you would think but the differences are key. Write something using VS2017. Make your mistakes there. It doesn't have to be something big, just something to get you up-to-speed with it. 3. Whatever you think it will take, it will take longer. 4. Whatever you think it will take, it will take longer. 5. Consider the external parts of your VB project: OCXs References etc. If you don't have control of them it could make life tricky in C# land. 6. You asked about tools: VS2017 is the best tool you can use. Concentrate on that first!

I can see they might not put 100% at the top. If everything goes to the cloud Windows becomes irrelevant... so why not keep people interested in developing for it.

I like Winforms. It seems a good match with the Windows UI. It seems odd that MS have left it fallow - what else would they like us to use? We could use WPF but that isn't updated before. Given that Windows' success is on the top of desktop apps - why wouldn't Microsoft want to give us a first class, up-to-date framework for it? What would be the downside?

Well said. I have had many years of happy VB6 programming - and still use it. It has 'issues' - name me a language that doesn't (on second thoughts don't). VB6 is good at some things - bad at lots of others. If you are in its sweet spot it can be very productive.

I still use batch files. I used one yesterday to rename a large group of files. I processed file filenames with a Notepad++ macro and 'massaged' them into a set of copy commands (copied to a safe location). We still use them quite a lot for controlling the build process of our compiler...

The download don't work. If you go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cmqdc/Panorama\_Britains\_Hidden\_Alcoholics/ Click 'download options' and then 'for windows media player' then it just spins. They have commented on it here: http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/announcements/wmv_portable_feb2012[^] They have been 'testing' for a week...

Apologies for the people that don't use BBC iPlayer - but I reckon its a pretty big site site. It has been broken for two weeks. Yea two weeks! How many web sites do you know that have millions of users and are broken for two weeks - and allegedly have talented developers? The downloads have been broken (go to any program, click download options and try). All it does is provide a download link and they cannot fix it... Anyone know why - has their development department left?

Me too. Delphi 6 (would you believe).