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MSDN Mag: The Silent Majority: Why Visual Basic 6 Still Thrives

Tony Toews

6/1/2012 11:05:00 PM

I disagree with his characterization of VB6 programmers as being bus
drivers. The regulars in this newsgroup sure don't fit that
category!

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj1...
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/ac...
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blo...
For a convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeup...
36 Answers

MikeB

6/1/2012 11:10:00 PM

0


"Tony Toews" <ttoews@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:qfiis7dtcfd20odereb1pc3h1nm8j9ndua@4ax.com...
>I disagree with his characterization of VB6 programmers as being bus
> drivers. The regulars in this newsgroup sure don't fit that
> category!

I think Mike drove a fork truck though... ;-)
Come to think of it, I have a bus, so I guess I'm a bus driver too.

>
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj1...
> --
> Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
> Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/ac...
> Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blo...
> For a convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
> updated see http://www.autofeup...


Tony Toews

6/1/2012 11:18:00 PM

0

On Fri, 1 Jun 2012 19:09:34 -0400, "MikeB" <m.byerley@frontier.com>
wrote:

>>I disagree with his characterization of VB6 programmers as being bus
>> drivers. The regulars in this newsgroup sure don't fit that
>> category!
>
> I think Mike drove a fork truck though... ;-)
> Come to think of it, I have a bus, so I guess I'm a bus driver too.

Well, in my late teens I drove a forklift for my dad and a lumber yard
for a year. Before that for two summers I cleaned out my uncle's then
60 year old hog barn using a wheel barrow and snow shovel. You can
insert obligatory manure handling comments. <smile>

Mayayana

6/2/2012 12:13:00 AM

0

Interesting, even if it's just spicy, glib page filler.
Thanks. (I didn't realize that MSDN mag. was available
online. But I guess I haven't missed much. It looks
like it's pretty much all .Net.)

I have David Platt's book "The Essence of COM". I
can't say that I got much out of it, but he did have
one hilarious page where he documents how "ActiveX"
actually has no meaning whatsoever. Smug, condescending,
geek-style stand-up routines seem to be his stock in trade.


(Mike Mitchell)

6/2/2012 7:26:00 AM

0

On Fri, 01 Jun 2012 17:04:30 -0600, Tony Toews
<ttoews@telusplanet.net> wrote:

>I disagree with his characterization of VB6 programmers as being bus
>drivers. The regulars in this newsgroup sure don't fit that
>category!
>
>http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj1...

On the sentence: "The people at Microsoft did that because that?s what
they thought they heard the Visual Basic 6 community demanding."

Where did they get that idea from? As I recall, from the instant the
first rumours of Visual Basic .Net started appearing, the classic VB
community was up in arms about it, and the cacophony of opposition
still hasn't died down, even today.

It's early on a Saturday morning. I'm about to go downstairs to eat my
breakfast, having spent an hour in bed reading Stephen King's Full
Dark, No Stars for a bit.

After breakfast and a 2-mile walk I'll fire up the dev PC and start
a-codin' -- In VB6,of course! There are always new apps to be
written, plenty to keep me occupied in my dotage until the coffin is
delivered. It'll be backwards compatible with previous graves, in case
they want to shove me in with someone else.

(BTW what's all this about LightSwitch? I've just watched a video of a
Mr Zander extolling its virtues, but I got bored with all the typical
Microsoft hype after a few minutes.)

MM

Mike Williams

6/2/2012 11:13:00 AM

0

"MikeB" <m.byerley@frontier.com> wrote in message
news:jqbi3j$if4$1@dont-email.me...
>
> "Tony Toews" <ttoews@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
> news:qfiis7dtcfd20odereb1pc3h1nm8j9ndua@4ax.com...
>> I disagree with his characterization of VB6 programmers
>> as being bus drivers. The regulars in this newsgroup sure
>> don't fit that category!
>
> I think Mike drove a fork truck though... ;-)
> Come to think of it, I have a bus, so I guess
> I'm a bus driver too.

I didn't actually drive fork trucks, I fixed them, specifically their
electronic traction and hydraulic control panels. I did drive for a living
at one time though, as a self employed taxi driver. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Plenty of money to be made when I worked hard and enough money to get by on
when I did not :-)

Mike

Mike Williams

6/2/2012 11:44:00 AM

0

"Tony Toews" <ttoews@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:qfiis7dtcfd20odereb1pc3h1nm8j9ndua@4ax.com...

> I disagree with his characterization of VB6 programmers
> as being bus drivers. The regulars in this newsgroup sure
> don't fit that category!

I really don't know how anyone even remotely connected with Micro$oft can
characterise VB6 programmers as bus drivers, especially when even the very
latest 2010 version of their flagship Windows word processor which they have
been working on for at least 22 years when running on even the latest Win7
version of their Windows operating system which they have been working on
for at least 25 years crashes to the ground so ignominiously when faced with
an unspooled printer that happens to be turned off at the time you attempt
to print a document! Even a simple hobbyist such as myself could write a VB6
program which stays afloat quite graciously when faced with such a
condition, whilst Micro$oft have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over
25 years only to produce something that crashes to the ground! Sheesh!

Mike

Mayayana

6/2/2012 2:50:00 PM

0

| On the sentence: "The people at Microsoft did that because that's what
| they thought they heard the Visual Basic 6 community demanding."
|
| Where did they get that idea from? As I recall, from the instant the
| first rumours of Visual Basic .Net started appearing, the classic VB
| community was up in arms about it, and the cacophony of opposition
| still hasn't died down, even today.

I think what he was meaning to say was that MS thought
most VBers wanted more power, so when they were designing
VB.Net they [allegedly] provided more power. (It's hard to
see that logic when MS was switching the model from
compiled software to Java-clone web service software. I'm
guessing that Mr. Platt subscribes to the Tom Shelton School
of Surreal Beliefs. :)

As I understood it, Mr. Platt was saying that 97% of VBers
are halfwits and 3% are halfwits who dream of achieving
fullscale humanity... and that MS overestimated the size
of the latter group, thus giving them an overly functional
toolset, beyond their level of comprehension, with VB.Net.

My impression has always been nearly the opposite: MS
added increasing functionality with each version. (Wasn't
AddressOf added in VB6?) The leading developers were
in accord. Matthew Curland was on the "VB Team", wasn't
he? His book is full of API trivia, optimization tips, and
inline assembly. He's got nothing about building a database-
frontend ActiveX control out of a frame and textboxes.

But by the time VB6 was ready for an update,
MS was thinking they had plenty of Desktop developers;
they wanted to push people into web services because they
thought that was the future; and they wanted to start pushing
3rd-party developers out of Windows itself because they were
eyeing the potential of being a middleman for music and video
sales, through a future Windows version that would be something
like interactive TV. So... They created .Net as a sandboxed web
services tool to compete with Java. Then .Net was handy as
a way to start pushing people off of Windows. ("Did we say that
..Net was a web services tool? We meant to say .Net is the best
thing going for Desktop software. Mangia! Mangia!")

And now, finally, MS may be close to achieving restricted,
interactive TV with Win RT/Metro, and even .Net is too
"low-level" to be allowed to live on as anything more than a
a clunky way to write web service trinkets on top of WinRT.

Tony Toews

6/2/2012 8:14:00 PM

0

On Sat, 02 Jun 2012 08:25:39 +0100, MM <kylix_is@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>(BTW what's all this about LightSwitch?

I just attended a presentation on this. Looks quite interesting
although limited in some respects. You link to data source(s) such as
SQL Server. Define what data you want to appear on the web form and
the basics of how the data looks. That is a standard form, list form
or form with subform (Access terminology there.) You can also
change some details such as font or the label.

Then it goes ahead and builds the web forms. Note that you don't have
a lot of control on the details of the layout of the web form.

Now, if desired, you can add some .Net code behind the forms.
Publish to an IIS web server and and you're done. You have a basic
data capture and presentation website.

Very similar to Access in many ways although Access lets you do many
more things with forms. In the sense that Access allows you controls
around.

Tony

unknown

6/3/2012 3:38:00 AM

0

"Tony Toews" <ttoews@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:qfiis7dtcfd20odereb1pc3h1nm8j9ndua@4ax.com...
>I disagree with his characterization of VB6 programmers as being bus
> drivers. The regulars in this newsgroup sure don't fit that
> category!
>
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj1...

I am not surprised. Teachers usually look for the syntax and language
features with exclusion of almost everything else. It doesn't matter if you
have code assets(unless you are a smart teacher who cares about
portability), nor if the runtime is 1 MB or 1 GB. "All" it maters is what
you can do with the language as if you are approaching the language from the
point of writing applications from scratch.

Karl E. Peterson

6/4/2012 9:42:00 PM

0

After serious thinking Tony Toews wrote :
> I disagree with his characterization of VB6 programmers as being bus
> drivers. The regulars in this newsgroup sure don't fit that
> category!
>
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj1...

He's missing some crucial points, nailing a few others, but gives away
in the end that he's not really a fully-informed observer.

Gotta love the irony of ClassicVB outliving its supposed successor,
though! :-)

--
..NET: It's About Trust!
http://vfre...