Microsoft MVPs Say They Want Old VB Back

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

The key to what you are saying, I think, is "designed". As I'm sure you
know, Delphi was designed from the ground up to be an OO language. It
conformed to the Pascal standards, but this was far and away less of a
burden than having to accommodate the "language stability" of previous
versions. I'm guessing you would agree, but I would theorize that Delphi
hasn't required a major overhaul like VB had between VB6 and VB.NET
because Delphi's birth itself was a major overhaul on the current
programming methods of the day.

Don't forget that Microsoft was already building a compatible VB7 that would
have included implementation inheritance. And yes, Microsoft could even
have implemented a VB7 that based on the .NET Framework but would have
preserved language stability.

 

[Doug Taylor]

The key to what you are saying, I think, is "designed". As I'm sure you
know, Delphi was designed from the ground up to be an OO language. It
conformed to the Pascal standards, but this was far and away less of a
burden than having to accommodate the "language stability" of previous
versions. I'm guessing you would agree, but I would theorize that Delphi
hasn't required a major overhaul like VB had between VB6 and VB.NET because
Delphi's birth itself was a major overhaul on the current programming
methods of the day.

Anders and Neil also made some very simplistic but in hindsight ground
breaking decisions, when OO was added to BP5.5 they decided to treat
OO as just an extention to the Pascal Record type, thus objects gained
the With construct and the record dereferencing operator ".", this I
found much easier to get to grips with than the C++ operators, which
to me seemed unatural.

It also meant that you could just conceive an object as a super
record, i.e. a record with methods.

I also agree that conforming to Wirth's minimilistic standards was
trivial, but then key to his languages has always been the concept of
building complexity from the available simple types. In many ways the
only plus factor for VB was having optional parameters in procedure
declarations.

 

[Paul Clement]

¤ > >Delphi is a good example though of how a designed language can develop
¤ >>without the catostrophic break that occured with VB6 to vb.net.
¤ >
¤ > The key to what you are saying, I think, is "designed". As I'm sure you
¤ > know, Delphi was designed from the ground up to be an OO language. It
¤ > conformed to the Pascal standards, but this was far and away less of a
¤ > burden than having to accommodate the "language stability" of previous
¤ > versions. I'm guessing you would agree, but I would theorize that Delphi
¤ > hasn't required a major overhaul like VB had between VB6 and VB.NET
¤ > because Delphi's birth itself was a major overhaul on the current
¤ > programming methods of the day.
¤
¤ Don't forget that Microsoft was already building a compatible VB7 that would
¤ have included implementation inheritance. And yes, Microsoft could even
¤ have implemented a VB7 that based on the .NET Framework but would have
¤ preserved language stability.

The Visual Basic 6.0 OO implementation was half-baked to begin with. It wasn't going to be fixed
without making some changes.

Repeatedly adding functionality without reworking the underlying architecture is what exposed
Classic Visual Basic to these changes in the first place. Language inconsistencies just made it that
much worse.


Paul
~~~~
Microsoft MVP (Visual Basic)

 

[jeff fisher]

Because regardless of popular opinion, VFP is still in development, VB6 isn't.
VFP 9 just came out last month.

 

[jeff fisher]

On 3/25/2005 4:38:55 AM, "Jonathan West" wrote:
So what
There are still a lot of people who prefer the command line. That doesn't mean
that they are going to bring back DOS any time soon. Those people have Linux to
play with

 

[jeff fisher]

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:18:28 -0500, "Mitchell S. Honnert"
Delphi is a good example though of how a designed language can develop
without the catostrophic break that occured with VB6 to vb.net.
Delphi 7 is internally numbered as version 15 and though I haven't
tried it I bet a program written for version 1 would run on it with
little or no modification.

Ug, I still remember all of the Delphi vs. VB arguments.
But when was the last time you saw an ad in the paper for a Delphi programmer?
Borland is a good example of what happens to a product when you overprice it to
the point where anyone without a large IT Budget couldn't afford it. They
started out with TurboPascal and made a killing by making sure that it was
cheaper than the compitition, built on solid platform/language but now if you
want to take a look at Delphi, be prepared to shell out some serious bucks.
Delphi 2005 Enterprise for one user will set you back about $2500. For that, you
could buy an Universal MSDN subscription. And since Borlands departure and from
a string of subpar products [hint Delphi 4] and poor marketing plans [you had to
purchase the service packs for Delphi 3 while at the same time, Microsoft sent
me free disks containing all of the SP for at that time was VB 5] from their
game plan, the popularity of Delphi took a big step backwards. Now you are about
as lucky to start on a Delphi project as you are start a 'new' COBOL software.
Oh, BTW, I programmed in COBOL for a year and kind of enjoyed it [don't tell
anyone!!]

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

Because regardless of popular opinion, VFP is still in development, VB6
isn't.
VFP 9 just came out last month.

That's true, but /why/ does Microsoft still develop an unmanaged programming
tool when .NET is the only future? And /why/ doesn't Microsoft continue to
develop Classic VB?

 

[Jim Hubbard]

I don't think Microsoft are disposing of their customers assets any

A more proper analogy would be making the roads thinner (i.e. OS) so that
your old car would not fit on the new streamlined (thinner) streets, and
adding a cargo bay that only accepts packages wrapped in a new space-aged
polymer.

Neither of these things are a real problem.......unless you do deliveries
for a living.

Jim Hubbard

Speaking of which......Microsoft now expects us to adopt WinFX and Avalon
(which will only run on Longhorn) while the VAST majority of businesses
haven't even installed SP2 for XP yet.

http://news.com.com/Businesses+slow+to+move+to+SP2/2100-1012_3-5650923.html?tag=nefd.top

Am I the only one that sees a problem with this?

Maybe breaking Microsoft up was the solution to this crap after all. If
they muck with too many businesses (and the government) we may just see that
solution rear its head again.

Jim Hubbard

 

[Mitchell S. Honnert]

But when was the last time you saw an ad in the paper for a Delphi

programmer?

True enough. Then, Delphi was ahead of its time and was even starting to
give VB a run for its money. But now Delphi is little more than a
historical footnote. (No offense to you current Delphi programmers out
there. I loved Delphi! Honest!) I was using Delphi as an example of the
grassroots, *programmer* demand for a true OO language. In the experience
of many people in this thread, Microsoft foisted VB.NET onto a VB
development community who didn't ask for it nor wanted it. In *my*
experience, the mass exodus of VB6 developers to Delphi was evidence that
there was a huge demand for MS to radically update its flagship VB tool to
support OOP. Once VB.NET came out, there was no longer a need for Delphi.
I wouldn't go so far as to say my experience is typical, but there were
probably many other programmers like me that "came back to the fold" of VB
from Delphi after VB.NET came out.

- Mitch Honnert

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:18:28 -0500, "Mitchell S. Honnert"
Delphi is a good example though of how a designed language can develop
without the catostrophic break that occured with VB6 to vb.net.
Delphi 7 is internally numbered as version 15 and though I haven't
tried it I bet a program written for version 1 would run on it with
little or no modification.

Ug, I still remember all of the Delphi vs. VB arguments.
But when was the last time you saw an ad in the paper for a Delphi
programmer?
Borland is a good example of what happens to a product when you overprice
it to
the point where anyone without a large IT Budget couldn't afford it. They
started out with TurboPascal and made a killing by making sure that it was
cheaper than the compitition, built on solid platform/language but now if
you
want to take a look at Delphi, be prepared to shell out some serious
bucks.
Delphi 2005 Enterprise for one user will set you back about $2500. For
that, you
could buy an Universal MSDN subscription. And since Borlands departure and
from
a string of subpar products [hint Delphi 4] and poor marketing plans [you
had to
purchase the service packs for Delphi 3 while at the same time, Microsoft
sent
me free disks containing all of the SP for at that time was VB 5] from
their
game plan, the popularity of Delphi took a big step backwards. Now you are
about
as lucky to start on a Delphi project as you are start a 'new' COBOL
software.
Oh, BTW, I programmed in COBOL for a year and kind of enjoyed it [don't
tell
anyone!!]

 

[Paul Clement]

¤ Speaking of which......Microsoft now expects us to adopt WinFX and Avalon
¤ (which will only run on Longhorn) while the VAST majority of businesses
¤ haven't even installed SP2 for XP yet.
¤
¤ http://news.com.com/Businesses+slow+to+move+to+SP2/2100-1012_3-5650923.html?tag=nefd.top
¤
¤ Am I the only one that sees a problem with this?
¤

Probably. You're talking about an OS that hasn't even been released yet. In addition WinFX will not
even be ready for the initial release of Longhorn so I'm not sure what you're getting your undies in
a bundle over.


Paul
~~~~
Microsoft MVP (Visual Basic)

 

[Ray Cassick]

Speaking of which......Microsoft now expects us to adopt WinFX and Avalon
(which will only run on Longhorn) while the VAST majority of businesses
haven't even installed SP2 for XP yet.

This is how innovation works:

1) MS releases a new feature/model that allows developers to do NEW things.
2) Developers (that's you) use these new features to implement new and
amazing applications that take advantage of them.
3) Customers see your cool apps and want to use them so they have to migrate
tot he newer stuff to get the newer features.
4) Repeat

What is wrong with this?

http://news.com.com/Businesses+slow+to+move+to+SP2/2100-1012_3-5650923.html?tag=nefd.top

Am I the only one that sees a problem with this?

Yup, just you I am afraid.

Maybe breaking Microsoft up was the solution to this crap after all. If
they muck with too many businesses (and the government) we may just see that
solution rear its head again.

Why is 'breaking up Microsoft' always the answer? and what the heck was the
question here?

You don't want WinFS or Avalon?

Settle on your platform, build apps using the tools you want that cam build
apps that run on that platform and stay happy.

If you want to keep developing apps that run on Windows 2000 using VB6 and
have a decent enough of a customer base to make that profitable for you then
fine.

Hell, about 2 years ago I built a new network and office infrastructure for
a guy that had a small company a that was running on a small LAN (coaxial
cable based ethernet) running WFW using a database that had been patched and
modded so many times the screens looked like a ransom note assembled out of
odd magazine clippings.

It worked for him so he kept using it. Some of his machines died and he had
replaced them with PIII systems and 30Gig hard drives and kept running WFW.
I made my money off of him moving him to a newer server based network
(Microsoft Small Business Server) so he had his own email and web server
hosted and he still uses that old DB. I told him that I would get his system
set up and brought into the current decade and get all the new bells and
whistles running but I was not touching that old DB. Why? because HE had
made the business decision to not change it. All I was going to do was give
him the rest of the system and make sure that his old DB was running the day
we cut over. If he wanted to keep running the old DB he was going to have to
get support for it elsewhere, and he was happy with that. Someday it will
die. The company that writes it will no longer exist and he will need to
migrate over to something new, but then he will be under the gun and stuck.

Best to move when you have some latitude I always say. When you wait to the
last minute you end up making your self a buyer in a sellers market and the
sellers smell fear and charge you pretty for it.

Move up or don't move up, the choice is completely yours.

 

[Tom Shelton]

Speaking of which......Microsoft now expects us to adopt WinFX and Avalon
(which will only run on Longhorn) while the VAST majority of businesses
haven't even installed SP2 for XP yet.

http://news.com.com/Businesses+slow+to+move+to+SP2/2100-1012_3-5650923.html?tag=nefd.top

Am I the only one that sees a problem with this?

Maybe breaking Microsoft up was the solution to this crap after all. If
they muck with too many businesses (and the government) we may just see that
solution rear its head again.

Jim Hubbard

Actually, WinFX, Avalon, and Indigo will be available as packages for
Windows XP and 2k3. WinFS may or may not be available - simply because
it has been pulled from longhorn.

 

[Jim Hubbard]

Actually, WinFX, Avalon, and Indigo will be available as packages for
Windows XP and 2k3. WinFS may or may not be available - simply because
it has been pulled from longhorn.

Since when? Got a link for that?

Jim Hubbard

 

[Jim Hubbard]

Since when? Got a link for that?

Jim Hubbard

Nevermind......I found a couple....

Way back in August 2004...... at
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/Aug04/08-27Target2006PR.asp

More recently..... a March 17, 2005 article at
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/ArticleID/45741/Windows_45741.html

And, from Microsoft herself at
http://blogs.msdn.com/johnmont/archive/2004/11/27/271026.aspx ....

-------
Microsoft's roadmap for client UI development has three main phases:



1.. Today, use Windows Forms v1.1 and observe the Microsoft Patterns and
Practices guidance for maintaining clean separation between UI and other
application logic.
2.. When Avalon v1.0 releases (scheduled for mid-2006), we recommend that
applications looking to differentiate their user interface such as Web sites
and graphically intensive applications such as complex data visualization
look closely at Avalon. Other applications should continue using Windows
Forms.
3.. Following the release of Avalon 1.0, the next version of Visual Studio
following Visual Studio 2005 will contain tools and designers to support
Avalon. At this point, customers should start to move their new development
efforts to Avalon and use the Windows Forms/Avalon interoperability
features.
-------

This last one is good in that Microsoft is letting us know the path that
they will be taking far in advance. But, since Avalon tools won't even be
in the next release of Visual Studio, I can't really see most large
companies putting out production systems anytime soon.

I don't envy Microsoft's position in releasing new details about
not-yet-available stuff. If they don't say anything until it's ready, they
get bitched at for not giving developers a "heads up". If they do reveal
their plans, they have early adopters that will bitch about rewriting code
based on an early release. And, they get pressured to deliver the new tools
quickly and to give deadlines that frequently have to be moved back (causing
further uproars) rather than being able to just release it when its stable.

Cheers for the heads up.....and there even appears to be "Windows
Forms/Avalon interoperability features". But, after the VB6 "upgrade" tool
fiasco.....I may just wait for the real tools.

Jim Hubbard

 

[Guest]

1,500 signatures?!? That's maybe 1 for each and every 1,000 (or more) VB 6
installations?!? And, I seem to remember this kind of attitude for every new
- and improved - version of Windows...