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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."
Does VB6 not work, all of a sudden?
I am so used to Free Software that such problems seem almost unbelievable. It must be really frustrating to be so dependent on one company who can render your skill set irrelevant by one decision. You might say: isn't it possible for FSF to stop supporting GCC? Of course it is. But the point is that they cannot make it illegal for others to support. Just imagine how much more productive the time spent by those revolting developers would be if they were allowed to support that project themselves. But they are not. They have to beg or threaten Microsoft to support it for them. And that is just not a good business strategy in the long run, when eventually all of the products meet the end of line time. Sad.
Yeah and Open Source languages have really taken off. Granted there is Pyton and PHP, but lets not forget programming languages like D, and C+++.
I'm sorry, but if you're a programmer and you're worried about your ability to program outside of VB6, you deserve to lose your job.
Sheesh, pleading with MS to prop up your job via the only thing you've ever bothered to learn.
There is no thing as a programmer who can only work in one language. People who can only use VB6 exclusively, I hate to break the news to you but, you're not programmers.
Besides, there are way better options now for new development, and any legacy support can still be done with existing tools. MS is not coming to your door to remove all VB6 tools from your machines for christ sakes.
Damned, if any of my programmers came to me bitching about this I'd likely fire them immediately.
No Comment.
I remember sweaty, frightened, forty-year old guys in suits (really bad polyester suits) who were trying to get into microcomputer jobs when I was just starting out as a professional.
The were mainframe people, and mainframes were drying up, at the time, and they knew nothing about microcomputers. They had been doing the same thing for years, and they didn't know what to do. They looked like a deer in headlights.
Interviewing them, they kept trying to use mainframe concepts to answer questions about microcomputers. They were... not a good fit. I don't know what happened to those people -- we stopped seeing them after a few years.
The VB folks seem like the same sort of problem. It's an object lesson on not getting tightly bounc to just one thing.
That's an amazing feat. Microsoft's MVP directory lists only 111 in the VB section. http://www.microsoft.com/communities/MVP/MVP.mspx
Maybe some are hanging out in the ASP (vbscript) or Office (vba) sections.
"Seriously, how much different is the new VB.Net?" It's pretty much the same as C# but no braces for code blocks, and you declare variables with the "As" keyword.
So basically it kind of looks like VB, but you can actually do something with it. It's different enough a lot of VB programmers fail to grasp it simply because they've had their hand held for so long with no desire to actually learn any other languages or do anything past the most simple of applications. Note that I said a lot, not all.
It's not just knowledge of theory. While the they made their bed and now must lay on it by trusting a Microsoft as the provider of their development platform, it's important to point out that it's not just a knowledge issue.
One of the major issues is not that they don't know how to port their application, but that the compiler won't be around in a supported form. Without an available compiler the apps need to be ported. Now for anybody that has ever been in the hellish position of having to code a VB app, you will know that you are facing a full rewrite if you want to move to VB.NET
MW
This is correct. I have managed to pry my company's flag ship product out of the cold dead fingers of VB6 and move it to VB.Net.
It constitutued a complete rewrite and rearchitecting (made up word?), as VB.Net is really an entirely new language with a similar syntax to VB6.
The best thing about VB.Net is that it has the words "Visual Basic" in it's name which causes managers to think that it is the same thing, allowing people like myself to rewrite dying applications in a somewhat better language. (It is *MUCH* more difficult to push for a port from vb6 to java or c++ or something similar)
However, this is typical Microsoft behavior in the whole "ummm ya... it's time for you to upgrade. no, we don't care if you are still doing fine with your old technology, we need some more money" tradition.
The really sad thing is that there are many MANY people who earn their living writing VB6 code that either do not have the ability or just don't care to learn a new development paradigm. These are the people that will be left out in the cold. On a personal level I'd love to see VB6 die a quick and merciless death, but on a professional level i think it is stupid to throw away years of investment in a reasonably mature platform because it isn't fashionable anymore.
They do have a valid point despite your vitriolic rantings.
Consider this: How long has VB6 been around? Given the they will no longer be promoting VB6 as a viable language, how would you feel if $SOMEONE were to declare your favorite language (perl, python, java, bash, C, C++) was no longer a viable language and that you would have to learn a completely new one.
In ten years, how many people do you think will still be writing code in Perl 5 instead of Perl 6?
I think they are entirely justified in their revolt. It's not about them and their lack of willingness to learn a new language. I am willing to give them some credit. Rather this is indicative of the common historical practice of turning everything over every 5 years.
When I worked in MS Access I started on Access 2.0. When everthing migrated to Access 95/98 it was a complete rewrite of everything that we had done. With the Access 2000 it's another complete rewrite of the applications involved and we are finding some bugs that simply cannot be circumvented.
The point I'm hoping to make is that even Fortran code can still be run under Unix if you have no need to change it. But to simply drop a programming language and move on is an unnecessary cost to the company and society.
Look at the mousetrap. How long has that thing been around without a design change from Victor? Sure, there are other newer methods and mousetraps that have come along, but the old tried and true model is still around and doing well. Similarly, VB6 applications, if they work well and do the job, should not be forced into obsolescence in this manner.
Any programmer who complains of being stranded because his old language has died or fallen out of favor and he's unwilling to learn the new language needs to get the hell out of my industry.
Geez. Some of us actually want jobs, and now we have a bunch of VB programmers or their managers or whatever suddenly screaming that the sky is falling because their jobs might have to involve actual work in the near future.
I bet these are the same people who were pulling their hair out over the replacement of MS-DOS with Windows.
How is it possible that someone who earns a living writing VB6 code wouldn't have the ability to learn another language? Do you think VB6 is somehow fundamentally easier than all other languages? What about things like Python, which have a reputation for being very easy to learn?
> Kids coming into mainframe at entry level are making 40K,
That's pathetic. I made $45K at entry level for hacking perl. Probably because I worked at another job (support) where I made just slightly more, and I wouldn't take less. I was best qualified, they hired me. Sometimes it is what you know.
I guarantee that mainframe job has no advancement. 'course neither does hacking perl, but I've switched again to a job that's only technical in a secondary sense (business analyst). I have lots of choices. Mainframe guys see more of their hardware carted away every year.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
I would suck it up and learn a new language. That, or get a job with someone who still thought that $MY_FAVORITE_LANGUAGE was still viable (if the language was *that* good, which I haven't tried one yet that is).
It's part of being a professional. How many carpenters are still around who scoff at electric drills because they like the hand crank ones better? Granted, one of my favorite quotes is "a bad carpenter blames his tools, but even a master carpenter cannot make a house out of rotten wood"; however, I think that the rotting wood in this case *is* VB.
If these people can't even hack being a real software engineer, perhaps it is time for them to consider a new vocation. Those of us who are computer scientists will appreciate the breathing room and the fact that there will be one less brain dead language to have to dissuade the PHB's from using.
True, but I think that the company and whoever else use that language accepted that cost when they chose a closed, proprietary programming language. If Larry Wall suddenly decides to stop working on Perl, that won't stop it being used.
If this sounds rambling, it's only because your original post was (and maybe because of the benadryl; I hate allergies). You're arguing two points: that the programmers shouldn't have to learn a new language (false, IMHO), and that old but working programs shouldn't be dropped (true, IMHO). Compounding that, both of these are over generalized opinions, which could easily change whether they are right or wrong based on the circumstances.
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