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Microsoft Remains Firm On Ending VB6 Support
An anonymous reader submits "CNet reports that
Microsoft is remaining firm an ending support for VB6, despite a petition
and many requests from its developer community.
If only VB were a F/OSS project instead of a proprietary customers could be assured of continued support as long as there was demand.
Are there any good F/OSS implementations of VB out there for customers to migrate to? One can only hope that enlightened groups like
the Agility Alliance would warn about the risks of using such software that can be end-of-lifed even while they're in heavy use."
Can anyone explain to me how a F/OSS project implies assurances of continued support while there is demand for said support?
My business still develops with the Visual Studio 6 tools and we refuse to switch to the .NET framework because of its large and expensive infrastructure. This is the same company that encourages high school students to become software engineers?? Microsoft..... what total assholes.
If you support Microsoft feel free to mod me down.
Delphi offers these same benefits. Let's face it. The reason VB is so popular is because Microsoft is its mother.
How do I know that VBRUN.DLL is safe? I do not want to depend on something that is closed like that for my software to work properly.
How do I know that BIOS is safe? I do not want to depend on something that is closed like that for my software to work properly.
Even if I have a LinuxBIOS, how do I know that my processor's microcode is safe? I do not want to depend on something that is closed like that for my software to work properly.
Bottom line: No matter how Free your computer's execution environment is, it probably went through at least one not-so-trustable Proprietary code path to get there.
I applaud you for supporting the language you love. I am not a Visual Basic programmer myself, but I know that it has a place in the world, a place that is not filled by a more complex and more formal language. There are things you wouldn't want to write in VB, true, but that doesn't make a language useless. Just like a more conventional scripting language VB allows the creation of tools at minimal programmer expense. Why code up an app from scratch in days when you can do it for a few hours in VB. Especially when the app is light weight or in-house VB can easily outshine other languages. While VB may be coming to an end of it's lifespan it will leave a hole in a programmer's tool box that will eventually need to be filled by something else, something not currently available.
Philosophy.
Exaggerate much?
Weren't the financial markets in super-dire-grave danger because of the effects of the supposed Y2K bug? And now, you're saying that the end of support for VB is going to bring financial markets to a grinding halt? Financial markets survived COBOL and Y2K. It'll probably survive this.
Sometimes that's just snow, not the actual sky, falling.
Lets play smack the VB FUD down:) For the record: I've used Visual Basic professionally (complete end to end application work) along with Java, Perl, Python, and C++. Having in depth experience with all of those languages gives me good perspective on this particular debate (I think anyways:) ).
It is faster to develop an application in VB than any other language
Is it REALLY? This really needs to be backed up with research. I would argue that building MEANINGFUL applications would be accomplished much more efficiently in a language such as Ruby or Python (my prototyping language of choice) or even Java. You did not build a web-browser in 4 hours, you merely wrapped an existing one in a new interface. You did not build an e-mail client, you patched together some API's. This same magic is perfectly accomplishable in a number of other languages.
Visual Basic is more secure as a language
How is it more secure then Java or any other similiarly sandboxed language? As has been pointed out, your simply moving the security onus to code completely out of your control produced by a company with a spotty security record.
You earn more money using VB
That's rather situation dependent. I am a technical architect for a Symbian applications company (C++). There are relatively few people in the whole of the United States qualified to do my job and as such I'm compensated quite well. I make far more doing this than I would as a senior VB developer.
Saying that 'they almost always go with Visual Basic for the client and Java for the servers' is absolutely unbeleivable FUD. I've run across more CLI mainframe programs running against COBOL servers than possibly anything. New development seems to be more about web apps (some combination of Java/JSP generally). Visual basic seems to have a rather limited prescence in my experience. YMMV.
VB is a fine tool for what it is designed to do. As a language it leaves quite a bit to be desired. I find the syntax to be rather clumsy and I find that for significantly complex jobs it's simply not the right tool. It's definitely not a be-all-end-all that so many VB zealots like to make it out to be.
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For points 1,2 and (possibly) 3 see C#
The only reason anyone should be using VB is to maintain existing products. Any new products where VB was considered, should be using C# instead.
C# was thought to be MS's answer to Java. But what it actually did was remove any reason for VB to continue to exist. It wasn't the Java killer. It was the VB killer.
Any coder who can only code in a single lanaguge is a weak coder of no value to a company. At my job I've used at least 5 languages since I started. Times change, languages change. You need to adapt or you'll become obsolete.
I've used VB in the past. I used C# for a project having no knowledge of C# previously and instantly picked it up. I even managed to convert Quadpack from C to C# with little effort while putting up a nice GUI with the amount of ease that I was used to with VB.
VB is dead, switch to C#.
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Of course, you could say all the same things about Python with the added bonus of being Free.
So what does it mean if they no longer support it. Does it mean that you can't develop in VB6 anymore? Of course not. Does it mean you can't call them up and ask them questions about VB6? I don't know of any developer that would call up Microsoft to ask them a question about VB6. If they have questions, they check out newgroups and mailing lists just like F/OSS developers do.
Really the only thing that will change is that Microsoft will no longer release bug fixes. When was the last time you downloaded a bug fix for VB6 anyway? If you have functioning legacy software that uses VB6 then bug fixes probably aren't needed. If you're going to develop something new, you still have the option of using VB6 or you can use the latest and greatest development tools/language.
I fail to see the difference between this and an F/OSS project that's abandoned by its maintainer, especially those that are waning in their usefulness.
www.joshferguson.org
Personally, I would rather look for a replacement software than having to install some sort of 'Classic VB Runtime Environment' just to run some legacy products.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're NOT the CTO of a large and technologically mature corportation.
Searching for replacement software costs time and money. Migrating from an existing product to a new product costs time and money. Rewriting a product from scratch, which will likely be necessary if there's nothing new on the market that meets your requirements at least as well as the old product, costs a LOT of time and money.
I've been programming in BASIC for around 15 years. I don't know why, but during that whole 15 years BASIC has copped flak.
The reasons have changed over the years. Originally, the complaints were that it didn't have variable declarations and encouraged "spaghetti code" through the GOTO command. Variable declarations were added, and SUBs/Functions and even classes/objects were added to the language.
Then there was a complaint that you couldn't make "true executables", so M$ added that option.
Then the complaints were about its lack of providing object inheritance. Now we have that. But the flames continue.
Why?
It's clear that the flames are not due to any particular aspect of the language, since the arguments have changed over time. And so has the language. I can tell you that modern BASIC has almost nothing in common with the original ANSI BASIC except for a few legacy keywords (FOR..NEXT, GOTO, DIM etc). Modern object-oriented computer languages are so similar that I have more than once been reading a bit of code in a magazine article and only realised half way through that it was a different language from VB.
I wonder if other languages get as persistently flamed. I believe the real reason is due to the language's very name: BASIC. I suspect that if the language was instead called "Visual Complex.NET", all of this flaming of the language would cease.
does it support the opengl shading language like vertex and pixel shaders
Yes, the latest Java OpenGL libraries do.
i see it supports extensions for opengl 1.5 but to what extent?
Complete support. Including the extensions for NVidia, ATI, GLX, Windows, and Macs.
what about CG for Nvidia or Render Monkey code for ATI?
Yes on CG and OpenGL Shading Language, no on the RenderMonkey. At least, that is, I haven't heard that anyone has added support for it. Does anyone actually USE RenderMonkey? NVidia's having a hard enough time promoting CG with the OpenGL Shading Language out, without ATI pushing its cheap knockoff.
You can always ask the JOGL and LWJGL projects for RenderMonkey support if you simply can't live without it.
what about pointers that you need for A* pathfinding and artificial intelligence?
This makes no sense. AI and A* have both been successfully implemented in Java. I just wrote an A* implementation a month or two ago. Not sure what that has to do with OpenGL.
you cant be serious in considering that Java is a reputable alternative to writing robust recent good quality 3D openGL apps can you?
It's still a pretty immature market, but Wurm Online, Chrome, Xpand Rally, MegaCorps Online, Hockey Challenge and others would take issue with your statement.
But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.
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