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Why Visual Basic 6 Still Thrives

Posted by timothy on from the nuke-nuke-who's-there? dept.

theodp writes "Microsoft recently extended 'It Just Works' compatibility for Visual Basic 6 applications through the full lifetime of Windows 8, so VB6 apps will have at least 24 years of supported lifetime (VB6 shipped in '98). So why has VB6, 'the un-killable cockroach' in the Windows ecosystem, managed to thrive? 'Cockroaches are successful because they're simple,' explains David S. Platt. 'They do what they need to do for their ecological niche and no more. Visual Basic 6 did what its creators intended for its market niche: enable very rapid development of limited programs by programmers of lesser experience.' But when Microsoft proudly trotted out VB.NET, the 'full-fledged language' designed to turn VB6 'bus drivers' into 'fighter pilots,' they got a surprise. 'Almost all Visual Basic 6 programmers were content with what Visual Basic 6 did,' explains Platt. 'They were happy to be bus drivers: to leave the office at 5 p.m. (or 4:30 p.m. on a really nice day) instead of working until midnight; to play with their families on weekends instead of trudging back to the office; to sleep with their spouses instead of pulling another coding all-nighter and eating cold pizza for breakfast. They didn't lament the lack of operator overloading or polymorphism in Visual Basic 6, so they didn't say much.'"

5 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Might as well... by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 2, Funny

    So much troll, so few words.

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  2. Visual Basic 6 still thrives by Waldeinburg · · Score: 4, Funny

    Because you can make a GUI using Visual Basic and see if you can track an IP address.

  3. Re:Might as well... by idbeholda · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is why when I develop applications with VB6, if I'm not satisfied with the speed, I typically use ASM as a back engine, and have the main interface and said engine communicate back and forth via commandlines and/or files. It might not be the most elegant solution, but it works in terms of stability and usability.

  4. Re:Might as well... by icebraining · · Score: 4, Funny

    How I envy the guy who will have to port your software to another OS or architecture /s

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  5. so by codepunk · · Score: 2, Funny

    So you feel that typing curly braces to let the compiler know what you want somehow makes for better code?

    Perhaps it is just that you don't know any non C syntax languages. I do and after writing something like python then jumping into a c or c++ app it takes me days to get over having to type a bunch of cruft.

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