As one opinion column I read some time back said, the effort to convert from
VB6 to .NET is going to be worthwhile, but just barely--initially. But in
the long run, it will pay off big time. This has been backed up by my own
experience. There are a lot of important differences between VB6 and VB.NET
and the conversion will be hard work. But the possibilities it will open up
to you for the future are fantastic. So that would be my answer to your
first question. For your second question: my worst experience was in
converting painting code, not because it was hard, but because it was so
disappointingly slow. GDI+ does not benefit from the hardware acceleration
that has grown up around GDI. That may (hopefully) change as time goes by,
but we'll see. There are also some weirdnesses with font/text rendering with
GDI+. Other than painting (and some API manipulations you're unlikely to be
using), I found feature after feature that was better and easier in .NET.
Overall my conversion experience was a very positive one--not to say it
wasn't hard work, because it's so very different--but it was exciting. As
for the specifics of how you'll benefit, it's going to depend on exactly
what your software does, and what it might need to do in the future.
I believe Microsoft is planning to stop official support of VB6 next year
(not certain of that), although I'd be surprised if you can't still get
unofficial help in the visual basic classic newsgroups
(microsoft.public.vb.*) for a long time after that, as there is still a
strongly devoted group of people sticking with it.
Incidentally--though it depends on your group and your management--I'd
recommend jumping straight to C# if possible. Maybe that's just a personal
preference. There are lots of similarities between the two, both being based
on .NET, but I find C# easier to read and write--it's more concise and
elegant, and it's a better foundation from which to branch off into other
languages should your team ever need to do so. Again, it depends on your
team's readiness for that extra bit of learning curve, and what you can get
by your management. But the differences between VB6 and VB.NET are greater
than the differences between VB.NET and C#.NET.
--
Brian Schwartz
FishNet Components
http://www.fishnetcomponents.com
Fish Grid .NET Light: Powerful Layouts for Small Datasets
Hi there
My compay has a number of Visual Basic 6 applications which are front endeed
onto
either SQL Server or Microsoft Access databases.
Now we are in process of planning to re-write these applications into Visual
Basic.Net.
My managers main thought is that Visual Basic 6 is (or has!) stopped being
supported
by Microsoft.
He needs to present a case to the managers for it
I have 2 questions for you
1) What are the main perceived benefits of Visual Basic.net over Visual
Basic 6?
when you have re-written legacy applications?
2) What were the good and bad experiences you had in this process?
We need to present as case to the board of how the company will benefit from
a migration from vb6 to vb.net
Many thanks
Chris
