Why Visual Basic 6 Still Thrives

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.'"

Comments

Re:Use it today

[V for Vendetta]

I'm one of them. I still actively use it today.

Same here. And everything that VB6 can't do or "needs a 'lil help with", I'm adding with PowerBASIC (PB). My programs are typical inhouse programs: Retrieve data from A, convert/calculate/transform it, store it back to A or pass it over to B.

If my time would permit (programming is only part of my job's duty), I'd replace every VB application with a complete PB counterpart. Unfortunately that's still not the case, but I'm working on it. I just wish PB would hire someone to write a decent IDE. The compiler is a masterpiece (and doesn't need to fear the comparison with any other language), the IDE ... not so.

Compatibility is Windows best feature

[Quick Reply]

There are many projects, usually internal or niche market applications, which have decades of legacy code to keep the product running. This is not a choice of the developers or done out of laziness, this is what their employers have given them to work with.

If you have to rewrite vast amounts of code because the programming language is out dated, you will find that depending on the size of the project, the company who owns the project will be on the hook for millions of dollars to rewrite it so that it will work with modern environment.

If you are a company in placed in this position of having to rewrite everything, what is there to say that you are going to stay on the Microsoft ecosystem. You have emerging technologies in the enterprise (iOS/iPad/Objective-C), you have Web Applications and "Cloud Computing" (Which are platform independent and would most likely run on a non-Microsoft backend) and if you are a developer who just wants to get it working on the cheap (Where the market is vertical enough that the customer will use any platform you tell them to because they need to run your app) you could probably save a tonne of development cash by just making it run on WINE on GNU/Linux

Better for Microsoft to keep supporting developers who have their ecosystem running on Windows, as these applications directly translate into sales of Windows licenses. If Windows did not have compatibility, then Windows will be just like the rest.

Incidentally, this is why Windows on ARM Tablets will ultimately fail, as there is no compatibility with x86 apps unless it is 100% written in .NET or HTML5 (not that many out there in the whole Windows ecosystem).

Insult all you want

[mumblestheclown]

This "bus driver" has a PhD in computer science and in my weaker days wrote code that still exists in various linux distros. i started a company 15 years ago with some vb apps and, guess what.. the vb6 apps still sell. over $4 million per year with my staff of 5. So, you know, call me a "bus driver", call it a "scripting language", and any other insults you want - I can take it. Or rather, I just wont care.

Re:Might as well...

[Lisias]

The objective is to spread FUD, taking advantage of a mass of lost, blind followers that had given up their theological believes to embrace a new, technological religion.

Java is not bloated, neither slow or sluggish or whatever. But your applications can be bloated, slow and sluggish if you hire bloated, slow and sluggish minded programmers to do the job. .NET is not better than anything, but it's not worst neither. The Object Model shines sometimes (Microsoft hired the guy behing Borlands's Object Pascal Windows Library). I would even consider a .NET career if it was not backed up by Microsoft - I'm already burned by Microsoft technologies twice, I can pass the third. =]

Ruby? Marvelous language. I loved every day I spent learning it. But I took Python to day to day business - I ended up more productive (and my services, less machine demanding) using Python. Nice API, by the way - but the lack of threading sucks.

I also made some good projects in VB6 and Perl also. I prefer not doing it again, however.

VB6 is, really, very limited on modern programming technics (but something can be done, nevertheless - I just think I can do it easier on another language).

Perl is too much different from anything else to make me fell comfortable on it.

On the long run, no matter how many languages I deal with - the unique one that is omnipresent is C. It saved my sorry ass countless times.