VB 6 OR VB.Net?

[Raj]

As a lead developer at one of my clients I have a reccommendation to make
for them - choose between VB 6 and VB.Net. The client is a small shop having
Access 2000/ Sql Server 2000 databases and a few applications developed
using Access Basic, VBA, etc.
Personally I have considerable experience developing systems using VB 6, but
then I am reluctant to decide based solely upon that. Also I realise at some
point of time I as most VB developers, will need to delve deeper into the
..Net archtecture. On the other hand I am not sure if they benefit at all
from .Net, for the kind of client-server applications they need. Down the
road they may need an application talking to some kind of wireless device
tying into the MS Project server.
I appreciate all ideas to help me decide. Thanks in advance.

Roger

 

[Bob Clegg]

Hi,
My personal opinion is make the jump to .net. Like you I am (was) a vb6
developer dealing mostly with the back end.
The main benefit I found in making the switch is the wealth of base classes
and documented techniques that are available to give you a start into
handling a wide variety of data. eg XML. Serialisation of objects and
deserialisation is all done.
Use of existing Com objects is straight forward so you can leverage the vb6
objects you have canned.
I continue to be impressed by the scope of the documentation.
I guess though the real point is that VB6 has reached the end of its life.
It will be around for a while but .Net is the platform for the foreseeable
future.
regards
Bob

 

[Robert Jacobson]

I agree 100% with Bob. If you're considering long-term development, make
the jump to .Net. I switched from VB6 to .Net six months ago, and couldn't
imagine going back now -- the Visual Studio .Net IDE has many improvements,
VB.Net is significantly faster than VB6, and you have a rich framework class
library. Just make sure that you invest enough time at the front-end to
become comfortable with .Net -- there's a considerable learning curve, but
it will pay off in the end.

--Robert Jacobson

 

[Carlos J. Quintero]

On the other hand I am not sure if they benefit at all
from .Net, for the kind of client-server applications they need.

With .Net you can do "classic" client-server applications using ADO.NET in
an always-connected scenario (not all is about Internet and disconnected
scenarios). However, while there is a native .NET Data Provider for SQL
Server, AFAIK there is no native .NET Data Provider for Jet, so you have to
use the bridges .NET Data Provider for OLEDB (+ OLEDB Provider for Jet) or
..NET Data Provider for ODBC (+ ODBC Access driver). Although each .NET Data
Provider has its own classes, you can achieve Access/SQL Server portability
using the undelying IDBXXX interfaces.

As for development, .Net has a lot of strong points: faster coding
(autoformatting, etc.), huge set of classes to avoid reinventing the wheel,
better IDE and some gems like Option Strict On that will save you a lot of
run-time errors, to name a few. All applications will benefit from all this.

On the other hand, the debugger capabilities are worse (lack of Intellisense
in Debug window in VS.Net 2002, but not in VS.Net 2003, lack of Edit and
Continue until v2 2004?), the .Net framework takes 20 MB (not an issue for
most companies but it can be a problem for Internet-downloaded apps) and the
learning curve will take some months. Read a good book about .Net before
opening the IDE or writing the first line of code. Then, spend some time
coding small things to familiarize with it. And finally, you can jump into
your new project.

Just my opinion,

Carlos Quintero