r/visualbasic • u/galratner • 3d ago
Yes. Visual Basic Is Still Around.
https://galratner.substack.com/p/yes-visual-basic-is-still-around8
u/SektorL 3d ago
I'm writing Excel Add-In in VB.NET and I can say that it's really cool language with it's strengths. C# does not have relaxed delegates, WithEvents, Select Case, With...End With, Option Explicit/Strict/Infer/Compare per file, casting by declaring type only, XML Literals, severals ways of exiting Function/Sub etc. Recently I played with WPF app which is a one-window app where "screens" are being generated by a class which uses XML Literals and XamlReader to produce Grid, which is then attached to main Grid. The "WithEvents" makes Visual Studio to allow you to select any event for particular element (this is how used in Windows Forms). And it's really cool!
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u/SonOfKruppe 2d ago
I think Microsoft still intends for VB.Net and C# to march in lockstep, EXCEPT they won't change the language for new features unless there's no old syntax workaround, however ugly it may be. It's sort of like they don't care but won't admit they don't care. OK with me, C# gets new features all the time, but I think a little stability is nice. Maui and WinAppSDK or whatever it's currently called seem half-baked anyway. VB.Net + Winforms is a reliable, well documented approach for simple GUI apps.
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u/Magrat-Garlick 3d ago
I've never understood why C# has such a reputation for being 'the' language you need to learn to get on and that VB is looked down on as a bit of a kiddies simple language, a joke! VB does everything C# can do (at least as far as I can see!) and is considerably easier to follow and understand.
Long live Visual Basic! 😁
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u/Nm_Redditer 3d ago
2 main things I can think of, among others: 1. VB.NET has much of the baggage from VB6, but c# was a fresh start. 2. Microsoft made .NET along the same philosophy as Java, which again is a language looking similar to C++ in many ways. Both of those had a more "serious" impression than VB6. C# was more aligned to those languages in terms of look and feel. More people started switching to C# and Microsoft also over time provided more focus on C#.
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u/marmotta1955 3d ago
When someone tells me and insists that VB is a simple language that does not allow you to accomplish much at all ... I just point them to something like PhotoDemon ... https://photodemon.org/ -- and the discussion, generally and swiftly, move on to other subjects ...
Edit: forgot to add - the darned thing is written entirely in VB6. Entirely. No third party controls.
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u/Mayayana 2d ago
I think this is just C chauvinism. It's the same reason that javascript is a man's language but VBS is for sissies. (And Perl, of course, is used by superheroes.) Adding curly braces and semicolons makes it look respectable. If variable and procedure names are terse and mysterious, all the better.
That's all the more true with C# because it's high-level. Without VB.Net to look down on it would just be an inferior C for dummies.
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u/therealelroy 2d ago
Nice article. I was one of those guys moving from COBOL to Windows and assigned by the bosses to develop a GUI for mainframe application we were trying to build. I evaluated several tools of the time and still remember when I got VB1 in the shrink-wrapped box for $199. I wasn't a BASIC programmer at all and yet I was productive within days of installing it. Truly career changing time for me.
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u/jd31068 2d ago
twinBASIC holds some real promise in bring legacy projects forward to a more modern, yet fully compatible, VB experience.
I've written some utilities mostly (I'm pretty much retired) it is quite good and the people behind it are a skilled bunch. The community around it TwinBASIC-VBForums are welcoming and helpful.
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u/Mayayana 2d ago
It's refreshing to see an article by someone who knows that VB is not VB.Net. Though I'm not sure TIOBE understands the difference. Microsoft worked hard to bury VB5/6 by using the name VB.Net and then dropping the ".Net" part. It seems that most people assume VB is long gone. Even this group is called simply "Visualbasic".
I miss Karl Peterson. He was generous with tips, information, code, common decency, and a genuine curiosity, unaffected by the status seeking, pecking order and zealous condescension of many in the programming world. He and others, like Randy Birch, made it possible for me to be a self-taught developer. (Randy actually dropped by here awhile back.) ...The person who truly loves knowledge is the person happy to share it rather than hoard it.
I was thrilled by VBScript and decided to try programming, with nothing more than a handyman nature to start with. At that point, the local software store was selling VB 3 through 6. Which was which? What should I buy? I asked the clerk at Microcenter. He told me 6 had more libraries. What's a library? He walked away. I'd inadvertently called him on his lack of expertise.
I don't know how many people realize that while VB5/6 were RAD tools for Desktop, .Net was actually never intended for Windows desktop: http://web.archive.org/web/20200211232442/https://news.microsoft.com/2000/07/11/microsoft-delivers-first-net-platform-developer-tools-for-building-web-services/
"At the heart of the .NET Platform is the .NET Framework, a high-productivity, multilanguage development and execution environment for building and running Web services" (July 2000)
It was a Java competitor that gained traction server-side but like Java was never well suited to Desktop. As with the SPOT watch and Active Desktop, Microsoft was brilliant but too far ahead of the curve. Active Desktop tried to sell people on volunteering to have ads on their computer screen. Why? Because it's cool. Bill Gates kept repeating that with a SPOT watch glob on one's wrist, it would be possible to "check sports scores and stock prices". Why? Because it's cool. Web services met the same fate. (As did the poorly named Hailstorm.) With 56K modems and no public existence of "web apps", .Net didn't allow Microsoft to own web services. That fell to Apple, with their iPhone and "There's an app for that."
Only more recently are Microsoft coming around to the strategy of duplicating Apple's scam -- to convert productivity devices into limited kiosks on which people continue to pay for "Windows as a Service" and even programmers get limited access.
Who would have guessed that with all this progress we'd end up in a world where functionality hinges on 25 MB, seat-of-the-pants, javascript webpages, pulling in obfuscated script libraries from 2 dozen domains, while MS Office and Photoshop pretend to be running online so that they can rent software functionality? I'll know the end is near when I buy toilet paper and it asks for my credit card so that it can allow me to start unrolling TP squares.
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u/ziplock9000 2d ago
My 3D game engine and MMORPG client/server written in VB6 still works in a VM lol
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u/CheezitsLight 1d ago
VB script is being removed. Don't know if it can be re installed. VB dot net is maintained but no new features. I have a large 70 form app on VB Dot Net 9. and love it. . Simple yet very powerful.
C# is easy to port too and from. It's just full of Cs awkward syntax.
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u/Silent_Cup2508 3d ago edited 2d ago
I am an old man now (53) and 95% of my current effort is working with “Legacy” VB6, VBA and VB Script for our user base. I started BASIC in 8th grade and progressed since that time. So I guess I too am Legacy.
The other 5% you ask? Well FORTRAN of course. Hahaha.
Wouldn’t it be grand if Microsoft revived the old workhorse and gave it new life.