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Visual Basic Developers Revolt Against Microsoft
daria42 writes "More than 100 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) developers have signed a petition demanding the software company reconsider plans to end support for Visual Basic in its "classic" form. Developers claim the move could kill development on millions of Visual Basic 6 (VB6) applications and "strand" programmers that have not trained in newer languages."
Actually, that's not the point at all. The language itself has changed drastically from 6 to .NET. The problem with applications created in VB6 is that they will not compile using the VB.NET compiler. These developers speaking out are talking about how Microsoft is dropping support for these people. Helping port code from legacy VB to VB.NET probably fits under the category of said support.
In this case they are right to object. VB.Net is not the successor of VB6. VB.Net is simply C# with a different syntax. There is no smooth transition from VB6 to VB.Net. It is not a matter of learning a new syntax, it is a matter of having to a total new semantic. Companies that have invested 50 man year in the development of VB6 applications are now faced with the fact that they will require to trow in another 10 man year just to make the transition to VB.Net. It is simply the arrogancy of Microsoft here, I guess, that they think what is better for their customers than their customers do. It seems that only MS thinks that the .Net framework is a great success.
You mean a migration path like RealBasic provides?
Seriously, that solution is already out there, and it does MacOS X as well as Windows and Linux. RealBasic just has a really crappy marketting effort behind it so nobody knows about it...
Comment of the year
So Microsoft is saying they are not going to support it... So what? I've used VB for years (As well as other languages like any programmer worth their salt does), and I've never had to call in a support case to Microsoft concerning bugs in the language... Not once.
...Sounds like it's more of a political move on the part of MVP's who don't want their certification to become obsolete in the eyes of Micro$oft.
Any problems you would run into with VB are well documented on Newsgroups. Plus, the VB MVPs are complaining about not wanting to port existing code. So don't! If your application has been around for years, it's not going to stop working tomorrow because Microsoft says VB6 is a dead language.
What about switching to Real Basic? I have not used it myself, but some say it's pretty good compared to VB6. I don't know about full compatibility with VB either. But, it may be something to consider at least for new projects.
Table-ized A.I.