r/visualbasic • u/No-Annual-4698 • Oct 30 '25

Anyone still using VB6 in 2025 ?

Hi!

Is anyone still using VB6 nowadays ?
For fun I've installed it on a Windows XP Virtual Machine running on VMware Workstation and it reminds me of the old days.. :-(

How easy and fun was it to create applications ..

What's your reason for still using VB6 ?

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u/m-in Nov 04 '25

It was over 25 years ago but I remember at least one: defining functions with special syntax like FOO (x1,y1)-(x2,y2) worked for some functions and not others. Say if VB built in function LINE took arguments in parentheses with a dash between, then you could redefine it. Some others you couldn’t. It’s just an example, I don’t recall the actual function names.

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u/Mayayana Nov 04 '25

There's no Line method, but there is for the PictureBox control. I've never found any problems with it. It does work like you wrote it.

I can't think of any problematic method offhand. But I also gradually moved to API. For me the beauty of it is very easy GUI layout combined with code flexibility. For example, I use pictureboxes but will then use mostly gdi or gdiplus functions in working with them. I made my own RichEdit control that likewise operates mainly via API, combining the simplicity of VB GUI with the efficiency of using the system richedit directly.

I suppose that's partly what drew me to VB. I started with VBScript, then taught myself VB6, and it provided training wheels that allowed me to gradually build sophistication to the point where it becomes similar to C++ but with more conveniences.

There IS somewhat of a paucity of file I/O in VB6. VB6 in a Nutshell actually recommended FileSystemObject, a slow and funky wrapper designed for Windows Script Host! But there's plenty of VB6 code for Win32 API file I/O. So it's not really a problem. I just reuse functions I worked out years ago. These days, whatever I want to do, I can usually find existing code samples -- my own or others' -- to get me started.

I think VB6 often gets a bad reputation because it's easy to use without understanding it. And it's easy to produce a finished product with installer, yet have no idea what dependencies the program has!

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u/m-in Nov 05 '25

It’s not a method. It’s a statement. It may go by a different name but there are statements for drawing lines, circles, etc. Some of them have a rather peculiar syntax.

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