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Microsoft Urged to Open Source Classic Visual Basic (i-programmer.info)
"On the 25th anniversary of classic Visual Basic, return it to its programmers..." reads the plea at UserVoice.com from Sue Gee -- drawing 85 upvotes. "The new Microsoft claims to back open source, why not in this case? There is no need for Microsoft to do any more work on the code base - simply open source it and allow the community to keep it alive."
In an essay at i-programmer.info, Gee shares a video of young Bill Gates building an app with Visual Basic in 1991, and complains that in the 25 years since Microsoft has open sourced .NET Core and the .NET Compiler Platform Roslyn, "but it has explicitly refused to open source VB6." She notes that Friday Visual Basic's program manager announced a "Visual Basic Silver Anniversary Celebratiathon," promising he's reaching out to the VB team members from the last 25 years for a behind-the-scenes retrospective, and adding "this is a party, so feel free to be interactive."
"What the post glosses over is that this history was blighted by the fork in the road that was .NET and that many Visual Basic fans are highly unsatisfied that the programming environment they cherished is lost to them..." writes Gee. "Vote for the proposal not because you want to use VB6 or that you think it is worth having -- Vote for it because a company like Microsoft should not take a language away from its users."
In an essay at i-programmer.info, Gee shares a video of young Bill Gates building an app with Visual Basic in 1991, and complains that in the 25 years since Microsoft has open sourced .NET Core and the .NET Compiler Platform Roslyn, "but it has explicitly refused to open source VB6." She notes that Friday Visual Basic's program manager announced a "Visual Basic Silver Anniversary Celebratiathon," promising he's reaching out to the VB team members from the last 25 years for a behind-the-scenes retrospective, and adding "this is a party, so feel free to be interactive."
"What the post glosses over is that this history was blighted by the fork in the road that was .NET and that many Visual Basic fans are highly unsatisfied that the programming environment they cherished is lost to them..." writes Gee. "Vote for the proposal not because you want to use VB6 or that you think it is worth having -- Vote for it because a company like Microsoft should not take a language away from its users."
Its entirely possible classic VB contains code that Microsoft licensed from 3rd parties and is unable to open source.
"People" aren't passionate about VB6. Businesses who don't want to get their production code out of the 20th century, and they're out there, are passionate about VB6.
I have actually seen well-written VB6 code. Once. But it worked as an existence proof. It's actually quite a bit easier to write good VB6 code than it was in earlier versions of the language. Most of the VB hate comes from the fact that it was so easy to use that it attracted a load of really bad programmers. These days, most of those folks have moved on to Python.
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Yeah, .NET has only been around since 2002. If only you had started slowly converting individual components 10 years ago, you wouldn't have this problem now. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Not going to happen, and it never was. The rules that applied then apply now. Companies do not pay to rewrite all their applications in the latest new technology which does all the same stuff their old one did - and nothing more. In fact, .Net applications generally run slower. Great. It makes *zero* sense. Only a developer living in an idealistic fantasy world thinks that, which is exactly how Microsoft thought with .Net and VB.Net.
I'm afraid you're simply someone with no knowledge or experience of what happens with legacy applications and why they simply don't get rewritten in the latest and coolest technology. There are fundamental reasons why we are still talking about classical VB and why we still talk about COBOL. Hell, we're still talking about bloody JavaScript after all these years. Your idealistic and simplistic notion of how organisations operate will not change that.
Now if someone would just upgrade that ERP (painful as that might be) it would be possible to integrate stuff like the website and all those webservices the suppliers are exposing to re-order and what not quickly. They could probably automate more take on more clients or cut staffing costs considerable. Someone just needs to be willing to sign that 200k check and get some new technology in the door.
I do ERP systems for a living: Microsoft Dynamics AX, and I work for one of the top Microsoft partners in AX space.
$200K is pretty much your consulting fee for what you propose. $2 million is probably the implementation cost for a replacement ERP system. But that's only the beginning of it. Since ERP is so fundamental o an organization, replacing an ERP system with something totally different (and be it SAP, AX, or any of the other solutions out there) to what runs on an AS/400 is going to require a complete rethink of the organizational processes.
You replace an ERP (or even just upgrade your existing one) when your business demands it, and for no other reason. It's simply too costly in terms of money, time, retraining, and the inevitable go-live issues that happen.
Heck; I've been assigned a new client to sort out their database because the go-live went so bad: the initial data load was bad data, and there are bugs throughout the system because the client never tested but pushed for a go-live before they were ready. For the last 9 months they can't run an AP aging report!
Replacing an ERP system is not like replacing Word Perfect with Word. It takes a serious commitment of time, money, and most importantly of all client buy-in: if the client's employees haven't bought in for the need for change, your ERP project is dead in the water.