Fugitive from vb6

[Michel_Bujardet]

@214834:@Eli Ott

Technically the only way for Microsoft would have been a complete redevelopment of VB6 on top of .NET. But it would have never worked really well because VB6 is based on COM (Component Object Model) and .NET is the successor of COM.

It is much too late today to say how this could have been implemented. Fact is the transition has been brutal, and IMHO it could have been much smoother. About COM and .NET, Xojo is not .NET, and yet is as powerful as we know. Incidentally, I have put points on making Xojo Windows use .NET, as I know we won’t have to suffer alienation, and could benefit from that framework.

I do not believe all people who use VB6 and prior are unredeamable. Proof is you did eventually embrace OOP, so much so you enjoy Xojo and other languages. I did experiment with .NET at the time, until I realized RealBasic cross platform was what I really needed. Having been a journalist in computer magazines, I think the main problem was precisely that magazine listings (often mediocre) and most books at the time already did not do much for structured programming, and of course much less to explain the benefits of OOP functions or classes, among others.

Education is key.

[Eli_Ott]

Microsoft and the abandonment of Visual Basic 6.

[Michel_Bujardet]

@214854:@Eli Ott

Microsoft and the abandonment of Visual Basic 6.

Once again, you keep referring to the under the hood things. My point is not that it was not necessary to go .NET. On the contrary, I wish Xojo supported it.

My point is that they did not put much efforts into educating users like you, so the learning curve became overwhelmingly steep for a lot of users (20 years, really ?). So much so some ended up putting off the transition until today.

I personally do not consider VB6 users as somewhat retarded, whining individuals. Proof is it usually takes them very little time using Xojo to embrace OOP.

[Eli_Ott]

@214861:@Michel Bujardet

Once again, you keep referring to the under the hood things

With that link I wasn’t commenting your post.

[Michel_Bujardet]

The most amazing is that the article dates back to July 2005, and the last comment when they closed them after 128 posts is dated July 2014, 9 years later, with the same passion.

[Derek_DiBenedetto]

@214835:@Alexis Colon Lugo

For me i am happy with Xojo i use vb from v1.0 to vb6

Me too…former VB6 refugee here. I used Xojo for my last game project (chronicled in an issue of the Xojo web mag last year) and have pretty much adapted to the language as a whole. Much more modern and streamlined than VB6 was.

[Rob_Valk]

I used VB from of vb2 till end of date vb6 and created a lot of applications/tools in it which were used at work. Even now there are a few running in a VB6 emulator on Win7, because even Win7 supports vb6 written tools, it runs not so smoothly. These are mainly real-time network tools. I already did receive the request to re-write them.
I was looking at alternatives (did not feel to use .Net, because Microsoft is not very consistent with their support in Windows for VS releases), but ended up with Xojo. Because I am still in learning mode I only write applications in the development environment, but as soon as I have finished one of the applications and it works fine I will buy the compiler and release it as independent desktop application.

With “Microsoft is not very consistent with their VS releases” I meant to say, that Microsoft draws their own plans initially without listening to their usergroup (just like they decided suddenly to end the development of Visual Basic).

1. vb6 libraries were not supported in Win7 initially, while a huge number of companies created vb6 applications for their own needs and needed suddenly to rewrite them.
2. .Net was upgraded during that time and Win8 was introduced, not supporting initially the older .Net libraries.

After lots of noise and and arguments they started to support the older libraries too.

My experiences till now with Xojo are very positive. I am busy re-writing the tools and till now I only met little issues which are more caused by my lack of knowledge of Xojo then what is not possible with it. The forum works also great and you can find back more and more solutions created by others on the internet.

For me Xojo is a very good replacement for vb6 without learning a complete different way of coding.

Ofcourse there will be points to make it better, but that I will probably find out when I go deeper into Xojo programming.

A huge advantage of Xojo is of-course the possibility to create code which can be compiled for different OS’s.

[Joost_Rongen]

Reading all this shows that there is should huge market for Xojo on the MS Windows platform. Hope that strategy and development effort go accordingly.

[Rob_Valk]

I think indeed that there is a big market for Xojo as RAD software, but also for bigger projects it can be a great development tool.

[Tomas_J]

Welcome to the club As Ex-VB6 Developer I’ve made the switch bit earlier. Another argument for me was the rapid change of .NET Framework between 2002 and 2007. It felt like there’s each year a new .NET version causing more confusion than giving clear direction. And with the first Betas of Longhorn (aka WIndows Vista) and Office 2007 and with iPhone Announcement I’ve made a complete switch from VB6/.NET/Windows and Windows PocketPC on my so called Smartphone to Realbasic/ Apple Mac OS X and iPhone. Now 8 years later it was the right decision!

[Joost_Rongen]

Within a few hours (7 PM CET) @Paul Lefebvre will give a webinar called ""Rapid Application Development ". Think this is going to be an interesting one to join.

[Rob_Valk]

That’s indeed an interresting one to join

[Horacio_Vilches]

I was also a refugee from VB6.
I can assure you Xojo is the best for people who have a VB6 brackground.

[Zoltan_Dinya]

“Alan Ford”: Very disillusioned by M$oft’s pulling the plug on that. Visual dot.net is nothing like vb6. (and the vb6 IDE does not work on Windows 10). Probably moving to Linux. I would like a language as near as possible to vb6. It must have the following."

We are in the absolute same situation. I have already 17 years with the VB6, I have a big medical project written in VB6 with many clients, so I have to go on with it. If I want to have 1-2 years to rewrite them now, starting from “white screen”, then I will loose all of my clients, so this is a trap. With frequent updates my softwares have a fresh look, they does a good and user friendly job, so from the aspect of the clients (doctors, nurses in outpatient departments) is not a matter what is under the hood. It works good? Yes. Will it works? Yes, Microsoft promise support (= VB6 can run) till ca 2025 under the Windows10 life-cycle. So VB6 lives and can live with us in the future.

But, the world is changing. VB6 can do the job on the Windows, but the clients want to see new, online, web based solutions, they want to use phones, and this is the real shortage if we stay with the Vb6. In the “good old days” (1999-2002), internet was not a real factor, but now it is.

I have checked .NET, but I leave that fast. No Vb6 migration tool?? Shit. Huge company, I admire them, but this case with the VB6 was so primitive and amateur… I can’t trust in them anymore. My first new hope was JABACO (http://www.jabaco.org) which was a very intresting project, a very smooth possible transition from VB6, with the same IDE, same languange parts, BUT it stucked in beta phase, the young developer disappeared, wrote sometimes in the forum that he comes back, but not. Perhaps got a new job in the Microsoft.

Nowadays I have tried the B4j language, but this is also a typical “one man” company, with a very dedicated and helpful guy. In his advertisements wrote he that this is real Vb6 alternative. It is not! This is a very complicated language, primitive IDE with very much shortages, and its “Visual Designer” is a totally failed concept. I had a half year with it, but it didn´t work for me.

And now came Xojo, and I am very positive with it. When I open the Xojo, I feel myself “home”. As Horacio Vilches also comments here, “I can assure you Xojo is the best for people who have a VB6 brackground.” Yes. The languages is partly very similar with the Vb6, so I could get much positiv feedbacks after only a few hours with the Xojo. I develop now new Xojo webapps to my main Vb6 project, for example an online patient booking calendar system.

But I see also that Xojo is not Vb6, and I hope that Xojo can be better. For example in the Vb6 it is much better to see the whole source code, here in the Xojo I must jump too much and I can see always only a little part of the code on the screen. Or for example in the VB6 is more easier to change the background color, fontsize, etc of an object, without theese (and for me little crazy) “styles”. But Xojo is the best alternative, and it works.

[Michel_Bujardet]

@247494:@Zoltan Dinya

But I see also that Xojo is not Vb6, and I hope that Xojo can be better. For example in the Vb6 it is much better to see the whole source code, here in the Xojo I must jump too much and I can see always only a little part of the code on the screen. Or for example in the VB6 is more easier to change the background color, fontsize, etc of an object, without theese (and for me little crazy) “styles”. But Xojo is the best alternative, and it works.

As you say, Xojo is not VB6. Actually, only VB6 is VB6.

You can print all of the code by making sure not to select anything, then go File/Print. Also, if you have a current license (project needs to be saved as Verion Control), see http://www.rdS.com/xjprint/ to print in color.

However, Xojo is fundamentally event programming and Object Oriented programming, which explains why you see only the event or method in which things are to happen. VB6 is very much a QuickBasic that does Windows. It remains very much procedural programming. While Windows itself is based on events.

In event programming languages, each event or method is a black box, and you no longer depend on all the source for it to work. It is a bit difficult at first, but very soon, you realize the advantages of having a program composed of very short modules that each is relatively simple, self-contained, and reacts to a click for instance, or other event.

In Xojo Desktop, everything works pretty much like VB6 for controls attributes. The fontsize, background color and stuff in WebStyles you refer to are specific to Xojo Web. Do not get fooled by the apparent simplicity and likeness of the Xojo Web IDE as compared to Desktop. In the end what you do without realizing it, is a complex mix of HTML, CSS and JavaScript which would require a thorough knowledge of all three, and is transparently replaced by Xojo. The Web is inherently a bit less flexible than Desktop as styling is concerned.

Believe me, if webstyles are an annoyance, if you were to develop web apps without Xojo, you would get more than crazy fast

Welcome !

[Louis_D]

Xojo is not VB6. Many of us here came from VB6, and after learning the differences and adapting to object-oriented paradigms, would not go back. Is Xojo perfect? No. Is it powerful? Definitely. Does it do the job? For the vast majority of us, it does it very well. Give it a good try and keep an open mind relative to the differences with VB6. Different is not necessarily bad!

You will be able to rewrite your software with support for Windows, mac and Linux in mind. You could even think of an IOS module for mobile users, and of a web based solution in order to provide an install-free solution to your users. All that with (relatively) very little code changes.

I would think you will like Xojo.

You will also find numerous people on this forum who are ready to help. Welcome to the community.

[Eli_Ott]

@247513:@Louis Desjardins

Xojo is not VB6. Many of us here came from VB6, and after learning the differences and adapting to object-oriented paradigms, would not go back.

Correct. You would not go back to VB6 – but you could go to VB .NET. Xojo and VB .NET are much closer than Xojo and VB6.

It is interesting that more than a decade after VB6 was discontinued, someone would still try to avoid dive into VB .NET – and then switch to Xojo and thereby do the same programming paradigm shift…

[Zoltan_Dinya]

Michel, Louis, thank you for your answers!

“I would think you will like Xojo.”

I am a beginner here, but I am ALREADY like it, and I have purchased a license, because I want to move on and learn this. And after only a few “workdays” I have managed to create my first webapp, an online “user license activator” for our VB6 medical software: http://104.130.219.185/Activator-Dev/

Thank you, guys!

[Michel_Bujardet]

@247519:@Eli Ott

It is interesting that more than a decade after VB6 was discontinued, someone would still try to avoid dive into VB .NET – and then switch to Xojo and thereby do the same programming paradigm shift…

Indeed VB. NET is much closer to Xojo as far as programming paradigm, but the intensive prefixing required is way less friendly. Even the Xojo.Core and Xojo.Net prefixing required by the new framework remains simple, as compared.

I still use VB. NET for UWP apps, but find it kind of convoluted in many aspects. When it came, back in 2002, it was probably too much of a cultural shock for many users.

[Louis_D]

It is interesting that more than a decade after VB6 was discontinued, someone would still try to avoid dive into VB .NET

I had a much bigger cultural shock with VB.Net than with Xojo. I occasionnaly use VB.Net, but I am much more comfortable with Xojo.

My editorial comment is that it is wise to avoid inferring on someone else’s intentions and behavior based on too little information.