.NOT My Views

[VB6 User]

Hi all devies!



Many (.NUT, .NOT or whatever), APIs, VB6, Views & Questions



Your can not call APIs directly in .NET, only via P/Invoke. There are some
things that cannot be done in .NET, and that requires APIs. Earlier people
used to say "you can do this in VB" and now. "You can't do this in .NET"



I also have these questions to ask:

Is MS stopping APIs altogether? If yes, what about CPP developer, how would
they program?



APIs are more powerful and faster than foolish class, this is one of the
reason Java is not considered a local application development languages,
because it's not powerful for app dev, only for web. That same applied to
..NET, its great for web, especially ASP.NET. But not for local development.



And anybody can disassemble your source code and claims they wrote it. O!,
yeah, dotfukcator, who has the money to buy a $2500 anti-disassembly too.



In my view, one of the reasons, classic VB is/was great, because of great MS
minds of late 90'.



Now they just hire, cheap people, to "get the job done". Today's VB/.NET
versions are developed on the internal views, offshore R&D, foolish internal
MVPs and offshoring minds. And not by views of 3 Million Developers, 3
million is not "3 Million", its 3000000 people. just go to channel nine, and
see, how the vb team member shows us the futures vb version videos, like
they have invented something great. more messy lang with more less code, lol



lol

vb6: 10 lines of code

vb.net 2002 : 6 lines of code

vb.net 2003: 3 lines of code

vb.net 2005: 1 line of code

vb.net 2007: throw some water on your pc or spray a deodorant can in the
cpu, because MS will invent AI that will write code automatically, and also
upload to your website. all u have to do is implant a chip, and the chip
will convert vb6 codes in your mind, via satellite.



Wtf, a company with an annual, budget of 8 Billion dollars, can't keep its
biggest no of developers happy?



the only things vb6 is lacking is Unicode support, except that it has
everything.



sorry for bad, English.

T K

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

Your can not call APIs directly in .NET, only via P/Invoke. There are some
things that cannot be done in .NET, and that requires APIs. Earlier people
used to say "you can do this in VB" and now. "You can't do this in .NET"

That's wrong. You can still use "API calls", either by using VB.NET's
'Declare' statement or the 'DllImport' attribute. .NET provides even more
interoperability mechanisms than VB6 does.

Is MS stopping APIs altogether? If yes, what about CPP developer, how
would they program?

API = Application Programming Interface. The .NET Framework's class library
is an API too. I assume you are referring to the function-based APIs of
Win16/Win32 (GDI, etc.). These APIs still exist and will work on Longhorn.
In addition to that, I assume that many new APIs are still implemented in
and exposed to unmanaged code, but there are wrappers for use in managed
code available. It simply doesn't make sense to implement certain things in
managed code because of .NET's runtime characteristics.

An interesting article about Microsoft and APIs can be found here:

How Microsoft Lost the API War

APIs are more powerful and faster than foolish class, this is one of the
reason Java is not considered a local application development languages,
because it's not powerful for app dev, only for web. That same applied to
.NET, its great for web, especially ASP.NET. But not for local
development.

I tend to agree with you. .NET is great for Web development, but it's not
very suitable for "desktop" development. The main advantage of Windows has
always been the huge number of applications which were developed for this
operating system. With .NET, I see a decline in "desktop" applications and
an increasing number of Web applications, which are not necessarily bound to
the Windows operating system.

In my view, one of the reasons, classic VB is/was great, because of great
MS minds of late 90'.

If you have not already done so and if you want to make Microsoft aware that
Classic VB should have a future, I encourage you to sign the petition at
<URL:http://classicvb.org/petition/>.

 

[m.posseth]

As a programmer who uses both VS6 and VS.Net on daily bases for web
development , application development and distributed application
development ( COM and .Net Remoting ) these are my answers to your
questions / remarks


Q

Your can not call APIs directly in .NET, only via P/Invoke. There are some
things that cannot be done in .NET, and that requires APIs. Earlier people
used to say "you can do this in VB" and now. "You can't do this in .NET"

A:

You can use API`s in .Net , however lots of people use API`s for
functionality that is now built in the framework so it is often dissaproved
by people here in the comunity , however for those functionality you need
that is not yet in the framework or whenever it makes sense to do so API`s
are still valid .


Q:

Is MS stopping APIs altogether? If yes, what about CPP developer, how
would they program?

A: I did here this rumour to , that "they" would only allow managed code to
be executed on future operating systems , however i believe we have several
years to go before it will be so far as Vista still has a full API interface
onboard

Q

APIs are more powerful and faster than foolish class, this is one of the
reason Java is not considered a local application development languages,
because it's not powerful for app dev, only for web. That same applied to
.NET, its great for web, especially ASP.NET. But not for local development

A:
i agreee and dissagree i have found that VB6 is in some operations a
much better tool as VB.Net however i also found that the same counts for
VB.Net
it depends totally on the project situation , i still start new development
projects in VB6 but web projects ( ASP) are now always written in .Net as it
is superior to its non .Net version .

some of the questions i ask myself before starting a desktop project and
make this dicission are :
A : How modern are the target computers ( < 256 mb and < P III means
automaticly VB6 )
B : what are the target operating systems ( support for win 9.x means
automaticly VB6 for me )
C : must this app be web connected ?
D : distributed architecture necessary ( n tier ) or possibly needed in the
future ?

Q

And anybody can disassemble your source code and claims they wrote it. O!,
yeah, dotfukcator, who has the money to buy a $2500 anti-disassembly too.

A:
There are also free dotfuscators / obfuscators
and as we noticed a few months ago if someone wants to hack your proggy they
can do this also with VB6
we have recently received a copy of our own program , that was hacked in
Poland it had the same functionality as our original , but did not need a
licernse from us to work , the hacker implemented its own registration
forms , also a litle embarising was that the assembly was much smaller as
our original :-(
the program was compiled in native code with optimizations on , we thought
it was impossible to decompile VB6 well we just woke up out of that dream
( this fact was on of our main reassons to stay with VB6 with our deployable
apps )


Q :

In my view, one of the reasons, classic VB is/was great, because of great
MS minds of late 90'.

A:
There are still great minds at MS corporation i visit the Technet MSDN
briefings twice a year here in the Netherlands and i am amazed of all the
new exciting technology`s that are coming towards us , however i see these
as additions to technology`s currently availlable


Q:

Now they just hire, cheap people, to "get the job done". Today's VB/.NET
versions are developed on the internal views, offshore R&D, foolish
internal MVPs and offshoring minds. And not by views of 3 Million
Developers, 3 million is not "3 Million", its 3000000 people. just go to
channel nine, and see, how the vb team member shows us the futures vb
version videos, like they have invented something great. more messy lang
with more less code, lol

A:
I do not have a view in MS`s kitchen so i can not say anything about your
claims however
"foolish internal MVPs " ??? MVP`s are not employed by Microsoft they are
people who have most of the time a fulltime Job and use there spare free
hours to contribute in the comunity , so you and i can do a better job . i
believe these people should earn a litle more respect from your side

lol

vb6: 10 lines of code

vb.net 2002 : 6 lines of code

vb.net 2003: 3 lines of code

vb.net 2005: 1 line of code

counter example ??
take VB6 and a access 2000 database with a table with 4 million records
take VB.Net and a access 2000 database with a table with 4 million records

if you want to loop through a recordset make a decission on the content of
some fields and then update a column you will find that VB6 is superior in
speed and the lines of code you have to write , this all because of the
connected versus disconnected aproach

Hint to microsoft i would like to have the possibility back as i had
in VB6 to do stuff like that in connected mode


Q:

Wtf, a company with an annual, budget of 8 Billion dollars, can't keep its
biggest no of developers happy?

A:
most of the times i am happy , however with 3 million of developers there
will alway be people dissaproving some new roads Microsoft leads us to
if you do not like it stay with VB6 , maybe you are not ( yet ) ready for
the .Net step


Q:

the only things vb6 is lacking is Unicode support, except that it has
everything.

A: not completely true , VB6 is internally totally unicode compatible
however the vissible controls are not , so you have 2 options
1. buy third party unicode controls ,
2. write your program with a HTML gui http://www.toolbase.nl/ press
screenshots for an example of how this looks ( a dutch version however you
might get the idea ) i wrote programs like this for the Russian market with
the Russian fonts without a problem ( access 2000 with unicode option on in
text fileds , and writing the HTML pages as unicode output from VB6 , browse
on them with the webbrowser control and there you are )



Regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]

 

[Ralph]

Responses inline (Hey, its Sunday. <g>)

Hi all devies!



Many (.NUT, .NOT or whatever), APIs, VB6, Views & Questions



Your can not call APIs directly in .NET, only via P/Invoke. There are some
things that cannot be done in .NET, and that requires APIs. Earlier people
used to say "you can do this in VB" and now. "You can't do this in .NET"

The WinAPI and COM exist in unmanaged code. It has to be 'blocked' or
'bracketed' from managed code. This is little different than how any
'outside' code is managed today.

I also have these questions to ask:

Is MS stopping APIs altogether? If yes, what about CPP developer, how would
they program?

The Win32 API exposes the 'windows engine' for programming. At some level
all frameworks, class libraries, runtimes, etc, use the published services
of the O/S and its components. The framework (just as all 'higher-level'
languages/libraries) is design to minimize the need to use 'lower-level'
services directly. The Framework is merely a wrapper to expose these
services as 'objects'. However, some such lower access will always be there.

APIs are more powerful and faster than foolish class, this is one of the
reason Java is not considered a local application development languages,
because it's not powerful for app dev, only for web. That same applied to
.NET, its great for web, especially ASP.NET. But not for local development.

If by APIs you mean the Win32 API, then there is no way they are more
'powerful', as the Framework is using the same services. Performance does
suffer as there is currently another layer of indirection. When the
Framework is moved into the kernel speed will improve.

You will find many people will disagree about the suitability of "Java" for
application development. "Java" in the larger sense is a development
platform analogous to "Visual Basic". True that Java doesn't do well in a
Windows environment for application development - but that is due more to

And anybody can disassemble your source code and claims they wrote it. O!,
yeah, dotfukcator, who has the money to buy a $2500 anti-disassembly too.

All binary code (compiled or tokenized) has a level of 'security' weakness.
In order to protect executables you need to use 'outside' system services,
an area where most programmers have been rather lazy, lulled into a false
sense of secruity of the 'compiled' application.

However, system security services are harder to manage with 'shrinkwrapped'
applications that are essentially released into the 'wild'. At this time you
are correct, you have to buy or build some rather complex 'obfuscators' to
protect your intellectual property. I believe this is a bigger weakness of
the Framework that MS will admit publicly.

It will be interesting to see how they address this in the future.

Ironically, the Framework is designed with security in mind. It does make it
easer to build security for in-house or corporate distributed applications
and suites. It also presents the opportunity for controled access to
lower-level services. Of little notice as been the extension of this model
into the realm of device drivers (the low of the low, <g>). The new Windows
Driver Foundation now presents kernel services as objects.

..>

In my view, one of the reasons, classic VB is/was great, because of great MS
minds of late 90'.

How can anyone question success? Later historians will rank Visual Basic's
as one of the premier products of all time. It is a large part of what made
MS the juggernaut it has been over the last 15 years. It is fascinating that

Now they just hire, cheap people, to "get the job done". Today's VB/.NET
versions are developed on the internal views, offshore R&D, foolish internal
MVPs and offshoring minds. And not by views of 3 Million Developers, 3
million is not "3 Million", its 3000000 people. just go to channel nine, and
see, how the vb team member shows us the futures vb version videos, like
they have invented something great. more messy lang with more less code, lol

Part of the Framework's design requrement is exactly that - simplify
development. Allow the mass production of powerful applications by
essentially 'un-skilled' labor. The ultimate goal of any corporation.

Ironically, that is exactly what propelled Visual Basic to the top of the
heap. NET is merely an extension of the VB model. I have no complaint
against .NET. I am only annoyed at how they stabbed so many companies in the
back, by dropping VB the way they did. It has to have cost them - yet it
doesn't seem to have shown-up on the profit sheet.

It seems amazingly unfair, calloused, and capricious. It doesn't seem right
that they are getting away with it. But apparently their market researchers
had a handle on something mere mortals can't understand.

[Appreciate that it is estimated that 70% of all development over the next 5
years will be done off-shore, by programmers who have never even heard of
Visual Basic. India alone can supply 3 million 'developers' at $12/hr with
six-month notice. <g>]

The whole thing reminds me of what happens when a major sports team leaves
town. It is horrible for the fans. The fans lose, but when all the agony
ends, the team makes bigger bucks, and life goes on.

lol

vb6: 10 lines of code

vb.net 2002 : 6 lines of code

vb.net 2003: 3 lines of code

vb.net 2005: 1 line of code

vb.net 2007: throw some water on your pc or spray a deodorant can in the
cpu, because MS will invent AI that will write code automatically, and also
upload to your website. all u have to do is implant a chip, and the chip
will convert vb6 codes in your mind, via satellite.

Watch a couple of StarTrek episodes. That is essential the goal.

Wtf, a company with an annual, budget of 8 Billion dollars, can't keep its
biggest no of developers happy?

Note above. They are obviously of no importance in this new economy.

the only things vb6 is lacking is Unicode support, except that it has
everything.

It is supported. You just have to pay attention.

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Hi,

Is it not a little bit late for this Dos interface versus Windows interface
battle.

I thought that that was won already by the Windows interface.

For me it is silly that you come back with this.

I hope that I don't understand you wrong?

Cor

 

[Ralph]

Hi,

Is it not a little bit late for this Dos interface versus Windows interface
battle.

I thought that that was won already by the Windows interface.

For me it is silly that you come back with this.

I hope that I don't understand you wrong?

Cor

Or the C++ vs C wars,
OO vs Procedural,
Relational vs Networked Data,
Micro-kernel vs 'Mach',
Null vs Zero,
....

Still it is kind of fun. <g>
(Except for the companies and people who found the trust and investment go
up in smoke.)

-ralph

 

[Ken Dopierala Jr.]

Below is how to code an API function call in both VB6 and VB.Net. Note that
the only difference is that VB6 requires you to use a Long because the data
types don't match up with the API in VB6. However they do in VB.Net, very
convenient.

Using the Windows API is much easier in .Net especially when dealing with
Callbacks and APIs that fill arguments sent ByRef with things like Byte &
Integer arrays. I make very heavy use of the Windows API in many of my
programs (mainly for sound, memory manipulation, and port communications).
I also use many unmanaged third party libraries and dealing with them has
been made a ton easier in .Net. As .Net grows up I'm sure it will allow us
to do many more things in a "managed" way (play sounds/music) but until then
it has made it a lot easier on developers who still need to use the Windows
API and other 3rd party tools like FMod. Good luck! Ken.

VB6 Code To Call API
----------------------------
Public Declare Function PlaySound Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "PlaySoundA" _
(ByVal lpszName As String, ByVal hModule As Long, ByVal dwFlags As Long) As
Long
PlaySound "chime.wav", 0, SND_NODEFAULT Or SND_ASYNC

VB.Net Code To Call Same API

 

[Brian Henry]

you really need to do research before talking... all programs can be
decompiled... its not something new with .NET VB6 apps could be too VB4 was
the easiest thing in the world to decompile it was all Pcode... java is
decompilable C++ is decompilable...

..NET has everything all the other languages have too you just have to know
how to access them... not everything is PInvoke... there is a reason we have
DLLImport commands... I suggest actually learning the framework before
ranting on it... because your precious VB6 has major flaws in it also...
everything on a computer does...

 

[Roger Rabbit]

VB6 is as good as dead. Get over it.
VB6 was a 20th Century programming language. .NET is 21st Century
development platform.

vb.net 2007 all u have to do is implant a chip, and the chip
will convert vb6 codes in your mind, via satellite.

Great. If this were true then our kids will have to learn something other
than/more than computer programming. Why is that such a bad thing? Theres
nothing holy about being a software developer. Nothing sacred. Nothing worth
protecting. If AI can one day replace software developers then that's a very
good thing ( but it wont be 2007). In fact i'd suggest its the whole point
of software.

Andy Warhole might well have said "Software will eat itself".

If the intermediate step is too offshore to India then again.. "tough luck
find a new job". Hammering out lines of code doesn't create value.
Programmers are just a manufacturing "cost".

Value is created by architecture. If the Indians can do that as well then
good for them. Its their "competitive adavantage". Software development is
undergoing precisely the same evolution as every other industry which
essentially boils down to a transfer of wealth from labour to the owners of
capital. We are fast becoming 21st Century cotton pickers.

If you want security then own what you code. If you expect to have a future
sitting in someone elses cubicle, writing someone elses code, for someone
elses customers you've never met then im afraid you'll soon be in for a
short sharp shock. Complaining that programming is just too easy nowadays
wont change that.

There is no future in programming. None. Besides who would want to spend
their day doing something so simple a computer can do it?

RR

 

[VB6 User]

hi,

i am not saying that u can't decomplie vb6, every app can be decomplieds but
it can not decomplie to a extent where a 10 year old can download a
software, open a exe/dll and then say export to projects file. there is a
hugh diffence between what 100 people can do easily than 10 people can do
working very hard.

VB.NET = Visual Bill .NET, Visual Fred .NET

bye! .NUTTER

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

VB6 User,

VB.NET = Visual Bill .NET, Visual Fred .NET

bye! .NUTTER

A lot of people gave you serious answers (not me). You show for me now that
you were not worth the time they spent to do that.

I hope this helps,

Cor

 

[Phill. W]

Your can not call APIs directly in .NET, only via P/Invoke.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.
O/S level API's are stil there, you just have to work a little harder
to get at them.

Is MS stopping APIs altogether?

If you mean the ones that let you "hook" into the operating system
- yes, they probably are, and that's a Good Thing too. The O/S
is going to change and it's a lot easier to change things if you don't
have Developers diving into the innards of your code.

what about CPP developer, how would they program?

Program? I've always seen it more like Conjuring ...

APIs are more powerful and faster than foolish class

If you want to flash the title bar of a window a couple of million
times then yes; the API is faster. For very specific, atomic purposes.
Unit for unit, Procedural Code /will/ always be faster than Object
Oriented code. But, these days, that's just not the point any more ...

We're not paid to reinvent how a given control works by calling this
API method, then that one, then this other one. We're paid to get
information in front of Users so that they can take "decisions" on it.
That's a far more Abstract way of working than what you're describing.

this is one of the reason Java is not considered a local application
development languages, because it's not powerful for app dev,
only for web. That same applied to .NET, its great for web,
especially ASP.NET. But not for local development.

Java-ignorant (or is that "ignoring"?) nonsense.

If anything, the Java Community has seen itself as far superior to
the Microsoft camp for many years because of the sheer power of
the language that .Net now emulates (although, having used both,
..Net /still/ doesn't do Exception Handling "properly").

And anybody can disassemble your source code

/Any/ code can be "disassembled", but who can be bothered to
work in Assembler any more? "Decompiling" is a different can of
worms and IMHO, one of the very /worst/ things introduced by
..Net, sounding the Death Knell for the independent VB developer.

Wtf, a company with an annual, budget of 8 Billion dollars, can't
keep its biggest no of developers happy?

Know /that/ makes you wonder ...

Regards,
Phill W.

 

[Phill. W]

Is it not possible in vb.net to write desktop applications like vb6? What I
think througth the petition, people want is that microsoft remove the
weeknesses of vb6, like object-orientation, threading, etc and maintain the
appliction development that is Win32 focused.

What we /wanted/ was a compiler that took existing, VB6 syntax
and generated CLR-compliant code that would run atop the
Framework. OK, it would be less efficient than the pure "VB7"
syntax, which could take advantage of /all/ the functionality of the
CLR, but at least it would NOT mean having to rewrite millions
upon millions of lines of existing, production code, just to "keep up"
with technological platform that seems to be jumping about in an
ever-increasingly random fashion.

Real companies simply /don't/ have an endless, throw-away budget
ear-marked for

"Rewrite/retest and redeploy everything because the language has
changed (again)"

When every one knows that everything in Vista os will be available
in managed form

Haven't you heard? Much of the Managed Code hype has been
"decoupled" from Vista (as has the Windows File System) just so
that Our Friends in Redmond can get something to work and actually
sell some units of "Vista".

I think the vb.net is a pretty natural evolution of vb 6 and earlier
versions.

IMHO, Rubbish!

VB*7* (and, yes, it did get written and /very/ nearly released) was
the natural evolution of VB6 - almost identical syntax, simple (or,
at least, extant) upgrade path. "VB.Net" grew out of a desire not
to waste all the effort Our Friends in Redmond made in their
attempted (and failed) theft of Java.

We must accept it. Its beautiful.

Whatever you're taking must be Good Stuff ... ;-)

Regards,
Phill W.

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Phill,

If Hitler had won the war, than we would not have had *this* kind of
problems to discuss.

Just my thought,

Cor

 

[Guest]

Hi Phill,
first of all thanks for the reply.


oh ok, now its clear. I thought everyone from vb6 wanted to stick to win32.

what do u mean again? When did this last heppen other than the .net change?

When VB changed from 16 bit to 32 bit around VB4. I spent 3 months rewriting
a single VB project. It was worth it in the end though!!

If there was a decent convertsion from VB6 to .NET I might use it, but with
my main project exceeding 1 million lines of code, I not prepared to stop
development for 6 months+ to do a complete rewrite!.
That is ignoring the problem of getting the NET Framework (33Mb inc updates)
onto our customer machines. Most of which don't have Internet Access for
Security reasons!.

John..

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Hi,

You cannot use a gearbox from a Ford T as well on a Ferrari.

Ford thought that he could keep his Ford T production line forever. He had
to invest more to correct that failure than when he had brought his
production-line time by time to newer standards

There is a lot of documentation, how to convert your vb6 program to Net.

Even with already for a very long time documentation for a first step, to
recreate your old VB6 program first to a better to upgrade VB6 program while
you still can use it as VB6.

Often the problem in this kind of situations is however that people did not
make their old programs in a good documented way and don't even understand
it themselves anymore.

In my opinion is it not a challenge to make a program with 1000000 lines of
code, the challenge is to make it in parts (which uses as less lines as
possible) that can easily be recreated.

Just my thought,

Cor

 

[Phill. W]

Hi Phill,
first of all thanks for the reply.


oh ok, now its clear. I thought everyone from vb6 wanted to stick
to win32.

No, we're not /that/ bad ... ;-)

what do u mean again? When did this last heppen other than the
.net change?

It *hasn't* - that's my point - but now that it's happened /once/,
who's to say it /won't/ happen again ... ?

Regards,
Phill W.

 

[Jonathan West]

There is a lot of documentation, how to convert your vb6 program to Net.

There shouldn't need to be! It should just work!

Even with already for a very long time documentation for a first step, to
recreate your old VB6 program first to a better to upgrade VB6 program
while you still can use it as VB6.

Often the problem in this kind of situations is however that people did
not make their old programs in a good documented way and don't even
understand it themselves anymore.

So, in changing the language, Microsoft makes in necessary for such code to
be rewritten in order that new platform features can be accessed. Hmmm. I
wonder how that would have affected some of the more obscure corners of the
source code for Microsoft Word, some of which dates back to 16-bit days!

In my opinion is it not a challenge to make a program with 1000000 lines
of code, the challenge is to make it in parts (which uses as less lines as
possible) that can easily be recreated.

Why? If it works as is, why should it have to be changed?

Also, why are you making assumptions that his million line application is
not already well-structured?


--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk
Please reply to the newsgroup
Keep your VBA code safe, sign the ClassicVB petition www.classicvb.org

 

[jameshamilton777]

Lot of typical FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) on this thread.

Fact is, there are 3 types of development, Web based, enterprise and
"consumer desktop".

For web-based and enterprise development, .NET is great.

For desktop apps, .NET has crashed and burned. Carnage. Nearly 5 years
now and no-one is using it. Why? Slow, huge resources, need to install
25Mb runtime etc etc. Some shareware authors have moved to it. Their
children are now hungry.

The Win32 API will be there for the next 10 years. So will VB6 apps.

 

[Jonathan West]

Hi Phill,
first of all thanks for the reply.


oh ok, now its clear. I thought everyone from vb6 wanted to stick to
win32.

No. The key point is that while there was a good reason for creating the
..NET platform, there was no necessity for most of the changes to the
*language*. The VB MVPs at the time had an extensive discussion with the
VB.NET product group, and the fact is that a small number of the changes
were justified (e.g. the change in handling object destruction, and the loss
of parameterless default properties). The great majority of language changes
were not necessary for compatibility with the platform and were made because
the product group thought that they would improve the language and gave
entirely inadequate consideration to how VB6 projects would migrate.

The whole idea of a high-level language is that its syntax can be made
relatively independent of its platform. To address different platforms you
modify the compiler, not the language!

Note that criticism of the changes has nothing to to with the addition of
new features - almost everyone approves of new features. It is changes that
break the operation of existing code that cause the trouble.

what do u mean again? When did this last heppen other than the .net
change?

In the change from VB3 to VB4/32, a fundamental datatype - the String - was
changed from being 8-bit ASCII to 16-bit unicode characters. This messed up
code that used strings as byte arrays and broke the only available and
documented way of handling binary file I/O. A great howl went up among the
beta testers at the time. Afterwards, a pre-alpha meeting for VB5 was held
by Microsoft to which various VB developers were invited, and the issue was
thoroughly discussed. Microsoft appeared to understand it and realise that
changes of that sort ought not to happen again. Unfortunately, by the time
VB.NET came out, the Microsoft participants in the meeting had moved on to
other positions and their successors were not aware of the issue.

The concern is that even if the Microsoft people responsible for VB.NET
realise that they made a mistake and shouldn't make such changes again in
future, who is to say whether their successors will have the same view. The
evidence is that there is currently something of a lack of institutional
memory at Microsoft. That is why some people are concerned that VB.NET might
change all over again at the next major platform change.

That said, part of Microsoft does seem to have taken the lessons on board.
VBA is essentially the same language as VB6, but with a different Forms
library and integrated access to the Office object models. The Office group
has already kept VBA in Office for 2 releases since VB.NET was launched, and
has publicly announced that it will be in at least the next two versions as
well. Maybe they looked at the VB.NET experience and didn't like what they
saw?


--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk
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