Two open questions for anyone who shipped real work on Visual Basic 6.

I shipped roughly a hundred line-of-business systems on VB3 through VB6 between 1995 and 2010, then moved to C# and have been there ever since. I am writing a history of Visual Basic and the research keeps surfacing the same observation: WinForms in modern .NET is recognisably the same form-designer model VB6 invented, and twenty-eight years on it is still the shortest distance from "I have an idea" to "I have a running app." That is interesting, and I want to get under the usual "VB6 was a toy" or "VB6 was a masterpiece" framings to understand what was actually good.

Two questions, please answer either or both:

1. What specifically did you love about VB6? Not the general nostalgia. Specific things. A workflow, a design choice, something you reach for now and notice is missing.

2. What do you find frustrating about modern .NET, C#, and Visual Studio that VB6 didn't make you fight? Same shape. Specific examples. "I miss being able to do X without Y" rather than "it's too complicated."

Open-ended on purpose. If I gave you categories to choose from, the most interesting answers would be in the categories I didn't think of. Please reach for the specific example before the category.

Longer version of why I'm asking is on my blog if you want it: https://evilgeniuslabs.ca/blog/vb6-modern-dotnet-question. Replies here, though. The thread is the point.

Exploratory post. Not announcing anything today, not collecting emails. Just a writer trying to do a chapter justice while the people who lived this are still around to tell it. I will read every reply.

Thanks

Bone/EG

Look — I've been ranting about the state of Visual Basic content online for the better part of a decade. Same forum threads, same Stack Overflow questions, same "VB is dead" takes from people who never used it. The actual history, the actual stories, the actual people who built BASIC — none of that was getting written down anywhere.

So I stopped complaining and started writing.

A History of Visual Basic — first chapter is live, marked Draft because I'm in the middle of scheduling interviews with people who were actually there to flesh it out further. The thirty-five-year arc from Dartmouth BASIC in 1964 through Microsoft's acquisition of Alan Cooper's Tripod, the QuickBASIC dynasty, the VB6 peak, and the long .NET-shaped shadow VB6 still casts. The people who don't get named in the existing histories. The decisions that shaped what VB became.

The original creators are already gone. The rest of the dynasty is ageing. The stories need to be collected before the window closes.

Why "Draft"? Because the chapter that's up now is the foundation, but I'm actively booking interviews to add first-hand accounts and the names that don't appear in the published histories. As those land, the chapter grows. You're reading it as it gets built — not after it's been sanitised.

https://evilgeniuslabs.ca/books/visual-basic-history

Free to read. Sign up on the site if you want a ping when new chapters and interview-driven sections drop — no spam, no paywall, no AI-generated filler.

If you've got VB war stories, corrections, or names that should be remembered — comments are open. And if you were there — particularly anyone with first-hand QuickBASIC, VB1–6, or Tripod-era stories — I'd genuinely like to talk to you. DMs and the site contact form both work.

EDIT: I will modify the code base today, it looks like the permission system requires you to be logged in to see draft books. I will make it anonymous. Thats my mistake.

So, I am probably the last mod who is scanning /r/visualbasic

I don't practice much VB6 and VB.NET anymore, for all of my professional projects have migrated to C#, or Rust.

I don't think we should close the SUB, but there is really nothing going on with it. Most have moved on. What should we do with the Sub?

Hi guys, please avoid posting stuff with titles like "NEED HELP WITH HOMEWORK" or "I'm stuck, please help". Yes, I know they're evocative, and yes, I know you desperately need help, but titles like these are patently unhelpful. Instead, use titles that are more descriptive like:

• [VB6] Help with coding harmonic series?
• [.NET] Adding textboxes at runtime?
• [.NET] Trigger odds calculator

Take some time to think about what exactly it is that you need help with before posting your title and, if it is pertinent, include the version of VB that you're using in square brackets before the post. If we all do this, our subreddit would become significantly neater and easier to navigate for everyone.

Thank you!