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Visual Basic Developers Revolt Against Microsoft
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Mar 14, 2005 08:34 AM
from the the-battle-of-the-programmers dept.
from the the-battle-of-the-programmers dept.
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."
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Oi. (Score:3, Funny)
What's the fuss about? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's the fuss about? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What's the fuss about? (Score:5, Funny)
Correct
all of a sudden
Incorrect
Parent
Re:What's the fuss about? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What's the fuss about? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:What's the fuss about? (Score:3, Funny)
.
Re:What's the fuss about? (Score:3, Funny)
long *lpActiveTurdPolish;
HRESULT h = GetPolisher(&lpActiveTurdPolish);
if (h == S_OK) {
((void STDMETHODCALLTYPE (*)(PROGLANG*))lpActiveTurdPolish)(visual_basic);
}
They managed to polish win32 and COM too.
stranded (Score:5, Funny)
Listen, if you're a programmer who is only proficient in VB 5 and 6, its time to think about moving into another occupation. I suggest becoming a cab driver or farmer.
Re:stranded (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:stranded (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is within their rights to do whatever they want. It's THEIR language. Remember the previous rant on Slashdot about sharecroppers? [slashdot.org]:
"A farmer who works a farm owned by someone else. The owner provides the land, seed, and tools exch
Re:stranded (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:stranded (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:stranded (Score:3, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Breaking news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Breaking news (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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VB6 isNot VB.Net and VB.Net is C# (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:VB6 isNot VB.Net and VB.Net is C# (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:VB6 isNot VB.Net and VB.Net is C# (Score:4, Insightful)
When developing a commercial application you often have no other choice than to select from the available tools if you want to finish your application before your competor does. And most often you are quit restricted in your choices, if you want to deliver fast and cheap. It is very difficult to look in the future, and often the people managing software development are not aware of the fact that every "short time" decision often has "long term" effects. The name software is very misleading, because over and over again reality proofs that "software" is much harder than "hardware". The hardware we have is completely different from the one that we had ten years ago. Everything has changed. It is relatively cheap to change hardware, even to change hardware interfaces, compared to the cost of changing software to another development platform.
Parent
Ah, the joys... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unbelievable (Score:5, Interesting)
No surprises (Score:4, Insightful)
VB6 People Whine Too Much (Score:5, Insightful)
Also why should Microsoft continue to support a language that they are no longer developing, or using, or plan on using. They have moved into a new area of development, over 3 years ago. The developers that use VB6 had plenty of time to learn
Stop whining...
I'm sure there are people who want support for NT6 (Score:4, Insightful)
In MMO terms... (Score:3, Funny)
Reconsider? (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds to me like Microsoft refuses to kill off VB, and those who know its horrors best are demanding that it be extinguished so that another generation of programmers will not have to endure what they have gone through.
I can respect that.
This just in (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did you mean? (Score:3, Funny)
Cry babies (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, we're talking about Visual Basic! VB programmers who complain about having to do more work and learn more stuff deserve to have their jobs outsourced.
Re:Cry babies (Score:5, Insightful)
These millions of lines constitute already running applications, many of which have taken years of work. True, they will continue to run as long as people still have copies of VB 6.0 to use. But when Microsoft adds new technologies for, say, interacting between VB programs and Word, the old software won't be able to take advantage of this.
Products are indeed eventually end of lifed, but generally they are replaced by new, comparable products. I've owned Mercedes-Benz cars for all my life, and the same basic driving techniques I've used on the ancient 1972 280SEL 4.5 work now on my 1991 420SEL. If I walk into the showroom tomorrow and buy a 2005 S500, I can drive out without an extensive retraining course. I might want to learn the new features, but the core driving techniques don't change. All my old skills and habits will still work fine.
In many respects, VB is actually a very nicely designed environment. The concept was brilliant, despite what all you code snobs say today. I loved VB and then I grew to loathe it, because bugs and bloat made the product I wrote in it much less than it should have been. As a direct result of my VB experience, I grew to loathe Microsoft with a passion, and became an all-Macintosh kind of guy.
I remember in particular how awful the change from VB 3 to VB 4 was. Every SQL statement in my program - and there were hundreds - had to be found, tracked down and recoded. It was a real nightmare. I can only imagine what today's VB programmers are doing trying to imperfectly convert 6.0 to
So I would not be so harsh on VB developers, because converting thousands of lines of code into an all-new environment with completely different designs and challenges is a tough, thankless job.
No wonder a lot of them switched out of the Microsoft domain. Clearly, you can't trust Microsoft. And doesn't that make most of us, well, actually agree with them for a change?
D
Parent
Artificial Jobs? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Artificial Jobs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Artificial Jobs? (Score:4, Insightful)
The people complaining are owners of a lot of code that won't work under
The knee jerks here go on and on about coding skills, but it's the code base that quits working natively unless rewritten that is what is being fought to protect, in other words, a lot of investment. Money.
I don't code VB, but back in the day I wrote some big systems in DOS Compiled Basic, it's predecessor, which did the job well.
Nevertheless I convinced a Fortune 200 when I was there to use Delphi instead of VB, which raised all kinds of havoc. The Microsoft Certifieds walked. But Delphi was the right choice.
I guess Microsoft hired away the Delphi team, wrote C#, and now the Microsofties say C# rules.
Go figure.
rd
Parent
Here goes... (Score:5, Funny)
wait...
Nope, sorry, I just don't care. I tried my best, but I can't do it.
Perfect opportunity for Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose they won't do that because it would bring competition to Microsoft that they don't want. It would be interesting to see what someone would do with it. Maybe make a new language?
Re:Perfect opportunity for Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
This is probably one of the more constructive posts on this topic.
I don't think VB6 programmers are upset about not being able to build new applications in VB. Since they're on the Microsoft train they'd probably love to take on .net projects since it's the sexy new thing for them. I think the main issue is the fact that they probably have a gigantic codebase built on VB6 to fit some gargantuan business needs.
Someone mentioned that giving VB6 to the community would be a bad move for MS from a competitive advantage standpoint. This is only true from one standpoint: if VB6 is free, why use .net. Yes .net is probably orders of magnitude better of a platform, but free is free, and some customers would probably love to have at the VB6 platform, even sans MS support.
So the question is whether the potential loss of revenue for releasing VB6 OS is greater than the value of goodwill and lowered support costs. Then again MS has every right to simply cut support.
Honestly if I were a VB6 developer I'd consider this a good thing. I'd point my finger at MS discontinuing support then start writing up nice expensive proposals to my customers for migrating the existing VB6 codebase to .net. That's probably a good few years of consulting revenue. Money in the bank.
Parent
Re:Perfect opportunity for Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, that solution is already out there, and it does MacOS X as well as Windows and Linux. RealBasic just has a really crappy marketting effort behind it so nobody knows about it...
Parent
My first programming job (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would anyone miss that language? Let alone bother to sign a petition to save it. If your job relies entirely on a language that your average 12 year old can pick up in a week or two, you're in trouble.
I remember guys in bad suits (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Who's laughing now? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 choice
100 MVP's signed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe some are hanging out in the ASP (vbscript) or Office (vba) sections.
Re:100 MVP's signed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait a second.... (Score:5, Insightful)
VB allowed me to write my first app: a little one-screen program that calculated exposure times for pinhole cameras (in VB3). Knew zilch about programming at the time, but I was able to slap it together and it worked. The code was absolutely horrible and for such a simple thing, it had bugs simply because I didn't know what I was doing. When I gave it out to a few people (just the
VB6, honestly, is the only tool I can think of that retains that ease of use with a very forgiving nature ("don't worry about declaring your variables...we'll trust you") to allow the uninitiated a chance to come up with something that may be only for him or her, or becomes the next killer app. If I were starting today, looking for something to write my little pinhole calc app, what would I use? VS.net? I wouldn't know what project to start with. Java? Sure, what IDE? Python/Ruby/Perl? All good, but if I only have Windowz, and am not a programmer, I may not know they exist. I knew VB existed because quickbasic was already on the machine, and the high school student working at Software etc. knew to point me at the VB box when I said "well, I know qbasic, but I'm looking for something to run under this Windows thing..."
That is my only justification for really liking VB, even after all these years; sometimes you just want the functionality and don't care how it looks and it needs to be done fast (and hopefully with a minimal runtime if it's going to moved to another machine). MS is free to put the
They've always been revolting (Score:3, Funny)
I agree (Score:3, Funny)
I am glad I develop with free software tools. (Score:4, Insightful)
Real Basic(tm) as an alternative (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't Cry for Them, Argentinaaaa... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent