Bob,
I disagree. VB6 should have been /extended/ to support OO without breaking
existing code. This would have been possible, Microsoft worked on such a
VB7. Over the time there were improvements of OO support in VB, and VB7 was
expected to contain better/full OO support. However, VB7 has never been
released; instead, an incompatible VB.NET was marketed as VB6's successor,
which technically is not true.
I don't think that a platform or technology shift is a bad thing, I believe
it's necessary from time to time. Nevertheless, typically a programming
language should /abstract/ from platforms and technologies and thus a change
in platform or technology should not break existing code. Microsoft chose
to design a programming language from scratch instead of evolutionarily
extending an existing programming language.
Well, VB contains lots of things C++ doesn't provide, decent property
support, for example. Do you think this is a reason for "putting down C++"?
Languages can evolve over time and missing features are added, but this must
not be a revolutionary change.
Did anybody think that COM will be "deprecated" and replaced by .NET some
years ago? It's utopistic to think that .NET won't have a, most likely
incompatible, successor.
