VB6 to VB.NET Comparison

I posted a thread awhile ago about me using vb6 and explained I was new to programming. Someone told me that if I was new I should just jump to vb.net. I believe I explained my job uses vb6 and wants me to learn it. Personally though I would like to learn programming for myself. After taking the advice to move on to vb.net I went in search of a good book. Something I could take with me places to reference back to. Anyway I found one and it will be delivered soon :)

Programming itself makes me very excited I can't wait to get my book and learn! Like I said I am just a beginner but knowing something that not EVERYONE knows or even looks at makes me feel good personally and all of you who are already experienced programmers or even the not so experienced should feel the same. It is amazing what you can do by "simplest terms" typing to a computer.

After sharing my opinion like I said I am very excited to jump on vb.net and hope that the person who gave me that advice knows I took it.

I was wondering if someone could please post a comparison code for me to kind of get a feel for vb.net. What I mean is make a code that does something in vb.net and then show me the code that it takes to get that same thing done in vb6. I know there is not gonna be a length difference or anything I just know the languages are suppose to be different and I just wanted to see an example if someone could

Congratulations :wave::wave:

A code sample like you asked for is not really meaningful. It is the entire philosophy that is different. The syntax for many (most) things is nearly identical.

Since you are just starting out, you don't have an existing "mindset" that needs to be broken.

On the otherhand, when I train people in .NET development, I will almost invariably:

1) Teach VB6 developers in C#
2) Teach C++ developers in VB.NET

This minimizes the students attempting to apply old approaches (which are comfortable) to the new environment.

Only once they are comfortable with the architecture of a good .NET application, the last class (or two) will actually bring the VB6 people back to VB.NET and the C++ people back to C#....

Difficult to give an example as there is much which seems to be nearly the same and lots of new stuff which isn't there in VB 6.0
For example in VB6.0 there as no real multithreading possible in vb.net you easily can do this. For example loading data from a database using a backgroundworker thread. there was nothing compareable in VB 6.0

But eementar coding like if... then ... else , loops and others han't changed.
You can download and use VS 2005 or VS 2008 express as a free version for working with VB.net. No problem if you are using XP or Vista as an OS. But the old VB 6.0 you will run into lots of troubles trying to use it on Vista. I have heard it can be done in any way, but I never have found a real working solution to use old VB 6.0 on my Vista PC.
This all are good reasons to forget thinking about VB 6.0 if you are new to programming.
Or would you try to use a penny farthing (bicycle) if you want to learn riding a bicycle ? :D ( yes maybe if you want to work in a circus, or if you will need it for carneval :D )

thanks to both of you for explaining that there are some similarities in syntax...i've been a vb6 beginners book for some time and breaking my head with it. Then i joined the forum and heard it was old...i felt like i waisted my time reading it 2 begin with but since ur telling me its similar that helps some because reading 500 pages off a 700pg book sucked! lol I am not a big reader and its hard for me to pick up a book so the thought of reading for basically nothing was running threw my head.

I guess I understand a little more now...the capabilities of vb.net are greater and overlap vb6 which makes vb.net require knowledge in more things Or expect you to know that doing something in vb6 has a different outcome in vb.net.

I needed to know vba for work but I am wondering now if vb.net would solve my problems. Basically i only needed vba for mircrosoft access and needed it to further customize my forms.

Would i just be able to go around learning vba and build a program which would update my access database?

I work for a company which uses access and their forms to manage files. Those files are pdf's which each have to be edited and orgainzed. We have to organize the files in the database and open up the pdf to edit. My boss has made it possible to use a form in access which will organize the files however the user would like and when double clicked would open up the pdf within the access form.

Would that be possible to duplicate with a vb.net program? Something that would allow me to edit pdfs within the form and have drop down menus of records in a access database? I just wonder if it is possible to use vb.net for access without having to learn vba.

:D

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Originally Posted by BadNews01

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Would that be possible to duplicate with a vb.net program? Something that would allow me to edit pdfs within the form and have drop down menus of records in a access database? I just wonder if it is possible to use vb.net for access without having to learn vba.

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You need to use VBA if you are working inside Access. This is a bit different to VB 6.0 and also different to VB.net
If you already work on existing Access Databases which already have forms added then you will need to learn and use VBA. Stop.
If you have an Access database and no Forms inside and you just are beginning to do some Forms for using the database, then and only then I would do a separate application which connects to the access database and doing all you want to do using VB.net
But in all cases a) I would talk with my cjief about what he prefers
b) To learn soething is never a loss. Talking one language yu will much easier learn the next one and the next one..
During my life I learned: Fortran, Basic, C ( before windows ) C++
VBA Access, VBA Word, ( which in the beginning 90th was quite dfferent to VB too , VB5.0 -> VB6.0 , C# ... ASP.net
We will see what the future brings :D
But as I already told you, learning ih reading and doing. More of doing examples then time is needed for reading !!

Yes that is what i was asking I don't really NEED to work within access. I was just wondering if it was possible to connect a vb.net application to a access database to work out of it. Personally I hate how Access adds to my toolbar with everything I open in it. My company uses access to orgainze projects we work on. Every project we do comes with 15,000+ files depending on its size. We organize it within access so my boss makes custom forms in a access database to help this process. There are several steps the files have to go threw before the project is considered complete and for every step he usually makes a quick form using existing tables as sources for the objects he uses. Usually the forms display valuable information when...lets say a file is selected in a listbox.

We don't have actual forms or databases we use everything is custom made when new tasks are given. All we do is copy tables from a existing database that we need and make forms to work on them. I believe you are telling me working on databases is possible with vb.net and I hope it is.

My personal goal is to be able to duplicate what my boss does. He informed me that he's been doing this method for 4 years learning by reading and experience. He is a type though that sticks to things he knows works. He is also very stubborn. Once he has a opinion on something he sticks to it. Thats why I was just wondering if there was possibly another way.

Thank you personally for telling me learning something is never a loss. My goal in life is to be able to do something great with programming or learn enough to be able to freelance. I have to be honest though that my goal seems unreachable with all these sub forms of different languages. I know that knowing ALL languages is not nesscary lol but knowing that languages upgrade and upgrade and that some even die is what makes me nervous about continuing to want to do this. You like other people tell me that they know different languages.

I am a normal person I do not consider myself smart at all to be honest. I am glad your telling me that learning a language helps to learn another but do you believe it is possible to know several languages? You say you do but I personally can't see myself jumping from language to language and actually KNOW what I am doing. lol I feel like there would be lots of confusion wanting to use code and methods from a different language

You can definately connect to an Access file (.mdb) with .NET.

However, with the availability of both the Compact and Express versions of SQL Server there are many fewer reasons to do so than there were even a few short years ago.

I love this comment !

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He is a type though that sticks to things he knows works. He is also very stubborn. Once he has a opinion on something he sticks to it.

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You also add

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Thats why I was just wondering if there was possibly another way.

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This is really advanced thinking - Something is working well and therefore it needs to be redeveloped in a language you know nothing about.


This reminds me of ........


Back around 2001 Microsoft released .Net 1.1 - the whole programming world was celebrating the wonders of this new platform

Many companies embraced the platform for major new ERP projects so they could replace their old fashioned VB6 technology

Today, I know of several of these companies which either

a) Went bankrupt
b) Will go bankrupt
c) Are in 2008 still trying to complete the project !!!! - Have not released even a Beta
d) Have completed their project but users complain that it is Unreliable and far Too slow (Slow even with dual Xeon 3.00GHZ with 8GB Ram)

We are not talking about a bit of code to solve a couple of problems - we are talking ERP with many hundreds of Forms and Perhaps 1000 or so reports

Personally, back in 2001 I viewed it all suspiciously

I am like your boss

If something works well - why fix it ?

You see, Microsoft didn't get it right straight away

So .Net 1.1 became .Net 2.0 became 3.5 and is about to go to .Net 4.0

And Visual Studio 2001 - 2005 - 2008 - 2010 ?

What was written in 2001 does not just work in 2008
Even the upgrade wizard that pops up when trying to open a previous version files has NEVER WORKED FOR ME (except in the most simple of cases)

And thats Microsoft trying to convert their own languages

AND ...

The promise of Web Services to answer all the maidens's prayers for Internet connectiveity and speed have failed dismally (especially the speed)


And what about the wonders of plugins in .Net ?

These have cause some optimistic system designers to create systems which, yes, may be modifiable because they are based on plugin concepts, but they are a JOKE (BIG BIG JOKE) to operate as they take forever to load screens and process data

The user experience is SUICIDAL


But all this comes at the cost of LEARNING WHAT .NET can do

LEARNING TAKES BIG TIME

The advice given to you to follow the .Net path is probably OK in 2008 but I would suspect that the same people giving you that advice today, would have given you the same advice back in 2001-2

In the meantime, people like your boss, and myself, have been able to deliver working solutions while the rest of the world was scratching its head and muttering "nice" things about Microsoft

Jump into .Net by all means, but if you have never programmed at all before get ready for the most complicated collection of syntax and rules you can ever imagine - life should get easier and less complicated - Microsoft have succeeded in adding a complexity to the factor of 10 times in creating .Net

(But there are lots of programmers - excellent programmers - who love it)

Now you just have to ask yourself - "Do you feel lucky, punk ?"

"Are you an excellent programmer ?"

(I'm not - I'M STILL WAITING FOR IT TO ALL SETTLE DOWN)

THERE HAS TO BE A MUCH EASIER WAY !!!

But jump into .Net (boots and all) and rest assured that when you post in CodeGuru, there are many dedicated helpers who will give you a serious hand in solving your problems along the way !

George1111,

As a professional developer, I have to strongly disagree with most of your post.

Of the 25+ enterprise level projects (in the 1-3 million lines of code range) that I have been directly involved with, over 90% saw immediate benefits moving to the .NET platform. And this experience correlates well with the experiences of other people (also professional developers) that I know.

The ones that ran into trouble invariably attempted to keep "old ideas" and not embrace a new design methodology.

The fact is that developing a .Net solution requires as big (and possibly bigger) mental paradigm (mindset) change as the switch from "structured" programming to "object-oriented" programming required.

This change encompasses everything down to what items should be memver variables of a class, and what should be dynamically created or passed as parameters.

Even today, I see people making critical mistakes at the very initial phases of architecture and implementation.

As far as "what has happened to companies", I have not seen any documentation that shows a statistical difference in the number of profitable companies vs. bankruptcies (or even decreased earnings) that has been attirbutd to .NET.

(And yes, I have been running my own firm since 1984. OVer the past 5 years approximately 80% of my income derives from .NET solutions. My "bug rates" have decreased by 40%, and my average development budget (even with inflation) is down by more than 1/3 specifically because of this change in technology.

Exactly my point

There ARE a FEW excellent programmers, like yourself CPUWizard, who have done the hard yards of Assemblers through Cobols and so on. perhaps you even went to University and Studied computing - or even Taught Computing

You are geared mentally to do it - you have done your apprenticeship - you have earned the stripes of mental anguish becoming what you have become - you paid the price of YEARS of dedication

.Net is clearly something that Microsoft itself considers a work in progress - they are evolving the platform at a great rate, because they are realising that what they have done before "IS JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH"

eg, Database Access has taken several major turns along the way

You have been developing .Net projects in NOT QUITE GOOD ENOUGH technology (but you made it work because you are a professional)

Imagine the difficulites of all the newbees who did not have such an apprenticeship as yourself.

They just go bankrupt. They fail. They just wonder.

You may be a "professional programmer" and that is the problem with .net

UNLESS YOU ARE A "professional programmer" THERE IS A HIGH POSSIBILITY YOU JUST MAY MESS THINGS UP

But then again, you can mess things up in any language, can't you ?


My biggest disappointment with .Net was and still is the IDE help.


You need to look outside the IDE for help ( this is one place that VB6 just kills .Net - the HELP Department)

As I said - CodeGuru is here to HELP (thank God!)

@George1111:

I know you don't take your opinion by heart too much. So I just want to make this is clear that I am just using an example and though its its a drastic difference. It is what it is and its an example. You said to basically be suspicious about change. Cassette taps don't scratch. You can drop them, slide them on the ground, and they are small and compact. CD's DO scratch you CAN'T do the same you could with a cd that you could with a cassette and cassettes are ok but without getting into this example to deep cd's are better.

First off I don't want you to take my example insulting. I just want to make that very clear. I appricate everyone who has responded to my posts and feel like everyone is very helpful. I basically just used that example to be funny :) But in all seriousness I think it seems somewhat relevant. Cassettes have always been dependable but there was change and cds were developed. My opinion is that yes my boss is doing the work and we are doing good but maybe there is a better way. I personally don't know right now but maybe there is.

Anyway besides that more on topic. I am new so I do not know as much as others as it seems also as much as you do. So I thank you for your advice. I also defantly do not know the problems vb.net has but as you said it there has been several versions. It never seems like anyone can get something right the first time. When something new comes up i personally always think it will be out done.

Anyway thanks for your opinion i really do appricate it and before when I would answer "yes." to your question of my feeling lucky. I answer "maybe" now lol :)

:wave: Thanks for the kind words.

(Actually my university backgound was physics...)

It is NOT the "newbies" that I have seen have problems with .NET.

Like most other changes in technologies (and I did start with punch cards and paper tape) it is the people who hold on to old ideas that have the most problems.

I count 5 major occurances in my 36+ years of programming that I had to "unlearn" and break habits.

EVERYTHING is evolving. Consider that until V7.0 of C++, it was NOT even close to being compliant with the standard.

On the .NET side, yes, the IDE has "lagged" (take a look at the CTP for VS-2010!!!!!) but the alternatives would have been worse. Imagine having the best IDE in the world, that produced unusable programs (regardless of the skill of the developer)....

You are so right BadNews01 !

I now use CD's but am still waiting for the definitive MP3 Player

The whole world has used IPODS for years but I reckon something better is coming !!!

:)

lol yah i remember when ipods 1st came out...that was crazy i didn't expect those to kick off...well the mp3 yes but not the ipod...it looked weird and it was white! ***? lol

though everyone says "vb is the easiest language to learn", it sounds like a broken record at times lol, is it REALLY that easier? I mean like i said before i've ran into problems in understanding it....would someone in for example html look at the language and laugh? I was considering using html. for one it sounds like its well known and a lot of people use it. I've read somewhere before that no one can say one language is THE BEST because they all are used for different purposes. I was just wondering if, since vb for me gets a lil complicated, it would be EXTREMELY difficult to learn another language or are all these just rumors?

I just want to brace myself for what might come in the future and reassure myself

If you are concern with the future then go for .net, no need for verbose explanations and arguments, just common sense dictates it...

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Originally Posted by George1111

There ARE a FEW excellent programmers, ...

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No Geoge. There are lots of new programmers who never have learned the older stuff like I did. They came from univerities or other schools and they work with modern languages. There is no problem to go banrupt by this point,

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.Net is clearly something that Microsoft itself considers a work in progress - they are evolving the platform at a great rate, because they are realising that what they have done before "IS JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH"

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Hey George come on, your sight of things...:rolleyes:

You cannot stop progress in the world. You cannot go and say Edison has told people that a candlelight is bad and people needs to use electric light now. You cannot .. never .. turn the wheel backwards.

Development goes forward and forward and only people who tries to stay on a point will succumb :cry: while others, able to learn and adapt their knowledge will succeed :wave:

Thats nearly all about and thats how life generally works. And sorry, life isn't developed by Bill Gates :lol: you cannot make him guilty for that.

If MS wouldn't have gone into this direction others liek the Sun people would have done and MS would have gone down the river IMHO

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You have been developing .Net projects in NOT QUITE GOOD ENOUGH technology (but you made it work because you are a professional)

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Hahaha... Strange comment. Have you ever seen one of Wizzards programs .. ( I dont believe that ) But generally said I have never seen a program without bugs as this is impossible by the laws of nature. If the amount of codelines increases the mathematical risc of having a bug increases (see probability calculations )

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Imagine the difficulites of all the newbees who did not have such an apprenticeship as yourself. They just go bankrupt. They fail. They just wonder

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Newbees needs at first to go to school, sorry true. They wouldn't even learn VB 6.0 anymore in school.
They all will teach them net languages now. But maybe some of them fail because they forget to learn all the basics behind any language.

There is one point BadNews01 you have to understand.

Doing Forms inside Access is quite a quick and easy job which needs very small programmming knowlwdge and is the quickest way if you have permanently changing enviroment with permanently chanes of tables ( when I understand you correct )
It needs much more time to develop an application which can do that for you normally.
As time is money it will depend on what needs to be done with the data to decide if you are using VBA or if you will better do it with an application outside the database.
And this decision cannot really be made without knowing a bit more of the background.

You have to understand that VBA is like a tool added to Access to get people able to handle easy data aopproaches without the need to contact a programmer. On the opposit side maybe there could be done one solution which handles all the views you will need one time and you would only connect to the database and read out the data automatically. But this would be a much more complex application as you would be able to design as a newbie.

So as I told you learn VBA, use it and also learn VB.net and with the knowledge of both then decide yourself which approach is the best in a given situation. This may be different each time

Ah Jonny, you should know me by now ...

I put out the small fish to catch the big fish - and now you have bitten !

I hope we all enjoyed the playful conversation

But now I have your attention, read on please ...

If you really are ready to embrace something NEW, then this is where to look - it will leverage all you have learnt with .Net and take you into a new world - (ie, from Candle Light to Electric Light)

http://www.visualwebgui.com/

http://www.chillisoft.co.za/habanero/

(Both development platforms are FREE - Open Source)

VB6 had some problems in the early release as well, I remember the first time I used it that the first field in the first record was showing up blank in a datagrid control. I ended up going back to VB5 and then moved to VB6 about a year after it came out.

I tried the first release of .net but did not write any applications for a customer in it. I started using it as of 2003 version and aside from the non existant serial class I did not run into any real problems. It was difficult to get my IP routines to work initially after having been used to using the winsock control but once I figured it out I have to say the resulting .net is better than what I had in VB6 and is 100% reusable whereas the VB6 code had to be tweaked each time I added it to a new project.

So far the biggest portion of my dot net apps have been in the compact framework.

Well i already got basic...VERY basic vb6 knowledge...i am waiting for my book to come in the mail...STILL and can't wait to check it out...everyone's arguements and points had gotten me excited to check it out myself!

Yes i do know i need to learn vba but personally i feel like vb6 or vb.net would be way better as you said jonneypoet vba is only a tool...screw tools! i want the good stuff! lol so yah i think i might grab vba later on

Just as a side note.... Support for VB 7.0 ended last month [14-Oct-2008]...This leaves:

8.0 (VS-2005) good until 4/12/2011,
9.0 (VS-2008) good until 4/9/2013.
10.0 (VS-2010) currently available in "CTP".....

I know I shouldn't, but I am going to post :D

First, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love .NET, but I also feel the same about VB 6.

The main "issue" with .NET seems to be the the frequency they roll them out.
I mean, how long was VB 4 in use, how long was VB 5 in use, before VB 6 ¿

Now, the whole revolution of the .NET framework took over.

They released .NET 1.0 ( VB 2002 )
Then, .NET 1.1 ( VB 2003 )
Then, .NET 2.0 ( VB 2005 )
Then, .NET 3.0 and 3.5 ( VB 2008 )
Soon they'll release .NET 4.0

Because of the frequency, and ever changing of technologies, make it difficult to stay ahead.
For instance, with the introduction of the .NET Framework, things have changed, and you had to learn all the new concepts ( MSIL etc. )
Then WPF and WCF - who knows what is going to change again, and what new thing will be the new standard. I think all the morals and principles of programming are also starting to reduce, and as time goes on, who knows what will happen :mad:

I love both technologies, and with both I learn new things every day.

Moral of this post :
Let's stick to one Matrix, and stop reinventing it. ;)

Actually VB4 and 5 were not really out that long, VB4 required windows 95 so I would assume that it came out around 95 or after. I barely used it at all. Not sure when VB5 was released but when I started my new job in spring of 97 they had already made the switch to VB5 and I had been using it for a while already. VB6 I think was released around 99 or so.

It seems that there is about a 2 year gap on average which still seems to be the case.

I knew someone would respond :)

Actually VB 4 was released in 1996
VB 5 was released in 1997
And VB 6 was released 1998.

Right, now, what major alteringdifferences were there between those 3 ¿
Did the whole ball - game change, did VB 6 revolutionise such as the .NET Framework ¿ No.
Did they reinvent the wheel everytime with each of those 3 versions of VB ¿ No
I'm not talking about improved features of the language / product. In any case, I could still do most things with VB 5 & 4 & 6.

Now, look at .NET 1.1 ( actually any version prior to 3.0 ), then look at .NET 3.0 and higher

Get what I mean ¿

Actually .Net 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 all use the exact same CLR.....Each release added new integrated functionallity be expanding the library.

There were (of course) bug fixes [including a few Service Packs] but that should be expected with any program.

VS-2010 will be using .NET 4.0 which DOES have some significant differences, but also a high compatibility level.

In fact the only language that really took a big hit between 1.x and 2.0 was C++ when Microsoft "realized" that the goal could be achieved within the "approved" extensibility methodology of C++, rather than in a non-conformant way.

OK, explain the coming of WPF and WCF etc. then. That is the precise point I'm making....

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Originally Posted by HanneSThEGreaT

OK, explain the coming of WPF and WCF etc. then. That is the precise point I'm making....

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What part of

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Each release added new integrated functionallity by expanding the library.

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Neither WPF nor WCF "broke" or "Changed" any existing behaviour.

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Originally Posted by HanneSThEGreaT

who knows what is going to change again, and what new thing will be the new standard.

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And how is this different then it has been for decades. Every time a vendor (and there are many) introduces a new library, this occurs. Are we going to standardize on Infragistics Controls? Are we going to use ABC's DatePicker,....

If WCF, WPF, and WF had each been introduced by other vendors and made available as addins to Visual Studio, comments such as this would NEVER be made.

However many people (not just you :wave::wave:) seem to react differently because Microsoft introduced them as part of the product.

[note: that I deliberately left LINQ out since it did add to the syntax of the language, but it was still an addition]

I never said WPF, WCF, LINQ broke anything :)

It seems like I have to say what I meant, instead of letting people read between the lines - confusions will happen and are happening ;)

Imagine you are starting off on your programming studies, towards a programming career. Now, imagine you have to keep starting afresh with all the changes ( whether they are addons or not ), just to keep abreast with technology. Now imagine, you didn't. Now, the problem is, you have to these days, in order to find work - which is absolutely ridiculous, IMHO.
Now, you get stupid companies wanting experience in ( say for example .NET 3.5 ), of 5 years ( yeah, it happens ). How the ____ is that possible ¿
Now, you've just finished studies on .NET 2.0, and now all of a sudden, it is just not good enough. OK, right, then you decide let's attempt .NET 3.5 ( costin more money, more time etc. ). When you learn .NET 3.5, you all of a sudden are introduced to a new "standard" - LINQ, WPF, WCF - and you have to learn these now - by the time you're finally finished with .NET 3.5, you have to do .NET 4.0. Comeon, it's ridiculous.
Why can't the powers that be, just decide on a product, and stick to it - yes, the world must go forward - but to what lengths ¿ The world has gone mad. Nowadays, you need to buy a phone, to take photo's with, tell me, do you get a camera that you can phone with ¿ No. Same is true about HD TVs, these days nothing seems to be good enough anymore... And guess what, it's all about money - this is just my opinion, of course there'll be people agreeing / disagreeing about my point of view, but, this is just my opinion.

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Originally Posted by HanneSThEGreaT

<snip>Imagine you are starting off on your programming studies, towards a programming career. Now, imagine you have to keep starting afresh with all the changes ( whether they are addons or not ), just to keep abreast with technology. Now imagine, you didn't. Now, the problem is, you have to these days, in order to find work - which is absolutely ridiculous, IMHO.</snip>

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And nothing about this is new since I started programming back in 1972, and has nothing to do with .Net.

When I used to do presentations in secondary (ages 14-18) and college environments, I told the students that they had to be prepared to spend 15-20 hours a week in continued learning, once they had mastered their studies.

Even after 36 years, I still spend about that amount of time to keep up with technology (about 1/3 on .NET the remainder on other items).

Where alot of people get "fustrated" (and that is a nice word), is that in most cases employeers do NOT consider this part of the "work day" (at least here in the USA).

Consider that:

* There have been over 200 (major) processors over the past three decades (including more than 20 varieties of x86,x64.

* There have been over 30 (major) programming languages [not counting the assemblers for the various processors]

* There have been more that 500 (major) 3rd party libraries that have recieved wide spread adoption.

Now, lets consider .NET - 3 MAJOR generations (1.x, 2.0-3.5, 4.0) in a decade.

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Originally Posted by TheCPUWizard

And nothing about this is new since I started programming back in 1972, and has nothing to do with .Net.

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Can't be 100% true.

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Originally Posted by TheCPUWizard

once they had mastered their studies.

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At the rate we are going, that will never happen. I also teach classes ( as you may / not know ), but in the 21st century. Continued learning is a broad term. Heck, there are new things I learn on VB 6 almost daily.

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Originally Posted by TheCPUWizard

* There have been over 200 (major) processors over the past three decades (including more than 20 varieties of x86,x64.

* There have been over 30 (major) programming languages [not counting the assemblers for the various processors]

* There have been more that 500 (major) 3rd party libraries that have recieved wide spread adoption.

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I wouldn't know, so I can't agree / disagree par se

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Originally Posted by TheCPUWizard

Now, lets consider .NET - 3 MAJOR generations (1.x, 2.0-3.5, 4.0) in a decade.

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Book stores don't see it like this. Software vendors don't see it like this. All they see, is money. The majority of people ( including me don't see it like this ) - they just see, another framework, another new standard, another eon of studying with the hope of eventually getting somewhere.
We can "talk" like this the whole day, the whole week, the whole, it still won't change my mind :)

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Originally Posted by HanneSThEGreaT

I knew someone would respond :)

Actually VB 4 was released in 1996
VB 5 was released in 1997
And VB 6 was released 1998.

Right, now, what major alteringdifferences were there between those 3 ¿
Did the whole ball - game change, did VB 6 revolutionise such as the .NET Framework ¿ No.
Did they reinvent the wheel everytime with each of those 3 versions of VB ¿ No
I'm not talking about improved features of the language / product. In any case, I could still do most things with VB 5 & 4 & 6.

Now, look at .NET 1.1 ( actually any version prior to 3.0 ), then look at .NET 3.0 and higher

Get what I mean ¿

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I knew they could not have been to far apart and it is true that those 3 are not drastically different though VB4 seemed like a not quite ready for prime time player.

I have actually not looked much into anything above version 2 as of yet. Most of my apps have been done in 2003 and 2005 due to the hardware I am developing for. e.g. CE.Net 4.x requires the use of 2003 where V5 requires 2005.

Keep in mind though that VB4 5 and 6 where a major change from VB3 as was VB3 from previous verious of MS Basic like VBDos and Quick basic. Much of the syntax remained but the mindset was totally different and in the long run much better and faster to develop in.

I see dot net the same way as the earlier versions of VB.

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Originally Posted by HanneSThEGreaT

Why can't the powers that be, just decide on a product, and stick to it - yes, the world must go forward - but to what lengths ¿

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We'd all be stuck with Apple ]['s with cassette tape drives!

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Originally Posted by dglienna

We'd all be stuck with Apple ]['s with cassette tape drives!

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Actually we would be stuck way before that...how about mechanical processing of punched cards...NO "electronics" at all.....

If you are building small projects then .Net may be the answer. (Should be the answer)

The real life example is this -

A company embraces .Net with VS2003 and embarks on a re-engineering of its ERP system (the system currently is working well in VB6)

Down the track VS2005 was released and the decision was made to embark on a re-engineering its VS2003 ERP system (again)

Down the track VS2008 was released and the decision was made to embark on a re-engineering its VS2005 ERP system (again)

It is now 5 years down the track and no beta is released

At what cost ? Will it ever be finished ? Will they lose all their customers and even bankrupt ? (They are losing customers by the day)

Should they have stayed with VS2003 and completed the project ?

We all know NOW, in hindsight, that would have been stupid. (Wonderful thing, hindsight)

With VS2010 on the horizon - do you start again ?

This is no fun when you are dealing with 1000's of forms and reports

But hey, this is progress, you say

The point is, if you want to make a reasonable sized project, you need to draw a line in the sand and complete it

The temptation though, for the sake of not being stuck with Apple 2 tapes, is to re-engineer everytime an improvement comes out

Thats why I, like others, am still waiting for it to "settle down"

It will never be complete - we all know that - but I'm not betting the farm on something which isn't quite there yet

By the way - do you all carry 3 different IDE's to support your .Net projects, or did you take those small projects you made and re-engineer them to the lastest ?

(I suspect most advocates of .Net have never created a large ERP system from scratch)

I have been the architect or lead developer on 7 .Net projects that each involved over 3-5 million lines of code (not counting "designer" generated code). These each had hundreds of forms/report (I have never in my 30+ year seen an application with >2000 reports/forms as you claim an ERP system would have).

These system included distributed procesing over multiple servers as well as multiple client implementations (eg Desktop, Web, and Service). A number of them interfaced with IBM WebSphere, SAP, MSFT CRM, and multiple rea-time data feeds.

With the exception of one application (which was started in 1.0 and released in 1.1) ALL of these went from concept to production release in under 24 months and were released in the same version (possible ad a different SP level, but that is a minor side effect) that they were originally architected for.

The 1.x application have all been upgraded to (at least) 2.0, with the average effort being less than 3 months of development. The ones architected for 2.0 are currently being scheduled for 3.5 with the average development time estimated at 4-6 WEEKS. [Of course the QA cycles will run longer, but that is the case for any update of any program in any language, and has little or nothing to do with updating to the newest CLR.

Preliminary tests on 3 [performed in the past month] of these applications indicate that there will be minimal issues bringing these up to 4.0

Reviewing the case studies of other consulting firms and large corporations (often made available through the International Association of Software Architects), these results are the norm and not the exception.

The documented cases that are anywhere close to what you describe, have usually been tracked to poor management and a lack of technical expertise. When the information is available, the company in question has suffered cost overruns and missed deadlines on multiple projects that have nothing to do with .NET.

With the exception of the transition from "Managed C++" [1.x] to "C++/CLI" [2.0] (which is aljmost invariably a BAD choice for general ap-plication development in any case), the versions are highly backwards compatable.

Just because 2.0 w/Extensions and 3.x support WCF does NOT mean that .asmx web services need to be (or even should be) redesigned. The same is true for Win Forms applications vs. WPF applications.

If a company "chases" technology; they will fail. This has been proven over and over going back (At least) to the mid 1960's. It is the EXACT same as the "feature creep" issue that has caused so many problems with software engineering regardless of technology or changes in technology.

Granted this is only based on my experience, and that of about 200 professional developers that I am in touch with and the experiences of multiple Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies.

And to all the advocates of .Net (because you have to jump on to new technolgy)

I presume you all camped all night outside the Microsoft Store to get the first release of VISTA (because this is the true platform for .Net development)

Whoopee !!!

(Again, HINDSIGHT tells us you would have been stupid)

Now I know you are all smarter than that ....

So, how long did you wait before you rolled out Vista to your 50 users ?

My guess is that you are still waiting - right ?.

C'mon guys - get with it - shouldn't you do the right thing for Microsoft

You see - you are all just blinkered programmers - you don't pay the bills

Implement Vista and .Net and not only do you have a new system to contend with, but you also need to upgrade ALL your hardware along the way (but why should you care - you just write super dooper .Net software)

So your fancy .Net project will only work so long as the user upgrades or replaces his 50 computers (and his server) - HUH ?

Oh, perhaps there is still a small place in this world for fast, slick, responsive, VB6

I would suspect in the current economic climate, companies will not be rushing out to replace their 300 computers, just because its a good idea to go to Vista and .Net

Perhaps all you .Net gurus may even have to lower yourselves and go back to coding VB6, just so you can put bread on the table

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The documented cases that are anywhere close to what you describe, have usually been tracked to poor management and a lack of technical expertise

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100 % Correct

Thats exactly the point -

How do you manage something you dont understand ? (Because it keeps changing)
We definitely lack of technical expertise (Because it keeps changing)

Do you need to go back to university (who have just discovered .Net 1.1) to learn about all the new stuff as it comes on board ?

Or, as we all do, just stumble in the dark and HOPE that the BASIC samples provided by Microsoft will be robust and stand up to real environments ?

(Microsoft HOPED Vista would be a world beater !)

Thank GOD for CodeGuru and the Internet !

Imagine trying to battle with .Net if there was no input from your peers other than hard back books and Magazine editorials (We would all still be back at VS2003 !)

I really do appreciate the contributions made on this subject as we all, together, solve daily problems, and I certainly learn much from every single comment.

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Originally Posted by George1111

Now I know you are all smarter than that ....

So, how long did you wait before you rolled out Vista to your 50 users ?

My guess is that you are still waiting - right ?.

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Actually my first significant roll out of Vista (500+ desktops/laptops for a major publishing firm) was in May 2007 (after a 3 month trial on 25machines)

Since then I have done rollouts at 4 companies with machine counts of over 100. All with NO significant issues.

Additionally I have deployed into production Windows Server 2008 at 2 companies since July this year..Including major server consolidation using Hyper-V.

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How do you manage something you dont understand ? (Because it keeps changing)
We definitely lack of technical expertise (Because it keeps changing)

Do you need to go back to university (who have just discovered .Net 1.1) to learn about all the new stuff as it comes on board ?

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Universities are not and never have been the approriate place to learn current technologies. The inertia simply causes too much lag [as evidenced by your quote]

What you DO do, is register for Beta programs, TAP programs and other "early adopter" opportunities.

You INVEST the time (and by extension money) to be "up to speed" on the various "Release Candidates", so that when the next generation is released, you only have to pick up the differences that are (invariably) in the released product.

As an example, my firm is already commited to having our material updated to reflect VS-2010 features by the end of this year. This will allow our clients to make reasonably informed decisions of how to develop their current requirements using VS-2008 in the most effective manner.

Those who read my posts here on CG (and/or other places) are aware that I spend 15-25 hours PER WEEK just keeping up with emerging technology and evaluating which items my teams should invest their time in.

This has been true for many years before .NET was even a concept, and I believe will still be true once .NET is a long gone technology [assuming I live that long :) ]

George is correct. The universities colleges etc. are a bit behind, why &#191;
Because they have to restart the syllabus the whole time, because something else is the new standard. It is ridiculous. I work at a college. Now, the major problem mostly is books, and with every new release, the books obviously becomes more expensive, as well as the MS exams.

CPU: I have also done a lot of projects, with thousands of lines of code. I will not change something that works, I'll just improve it by adding new features to it. I will not move something which has worked flawlessly in .NET 1.1 to .NET 3.5 - that is plain stupidity, IMHO.

dglienna: That may be the case, but it still would have worked, wouldn't it &#191;

Yes, I do know all the frameworks, that is besides the point, the argument here is why should we be forced to shift to something else, why is there such a rush &#191;

As I said, we can discuss this the whole day, it still won't change my opinion :D
This is all I'm prepared to say about this topic :)

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Originally Posted by BadNews01

I posted a thread awhile ago about me using vb6 and explained I was new to programming. Someone told me that if I was new I should just jump to vb.net.
--SNIP--
I was wondering if someone could please post a comparison code for me to kind of get a feel for vb.net. What I mean is make a code that does something in vb.net and then show me the code that it takes to get that same thing done in vb6.

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Well i think i may just have what your looking for... Have a look at The VB6 vs VB.NET Code War thread, It's not that much, but it is comparison code, and we compare running times..

One thing puzzles me ..

Why are all you .Net gurus posting in the VB6 forum ?

You don't just happen to still be secretly using VB6, are you ?

Now why would that be ?

I'm not a guru in either :D
Just like posting if I think I can help :) :wave:

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Originally Posted by HanneSThEGreaT

CPU: I have also done a lot of projects, with thousands of lines of code. I will not change something that works, I'll just improve it by adding new features to it. I will not move something which has worked flawlessly in .NET 1.1 to .NET 3.5 - that is plain stupidity, IMHO.

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Much depends on exactly what you mean by this post. Assuming we are talking VB.Net or C# (in other words not "Managed C++" or C++/CLI"....

Of the projects you have done in 1.1, how many have you attempted to re-compile in 2.0??

NOT making changes to support new functionallity, just re-building so that they are running under the new version of the framework.

Remember .NEt 1.1 is now (as of 10/14/2008) no longer supported. This means that is your application "mis-behaves" on a customers machine you have no one to turn to for "real" help.

If you (or anyone else with a similar situation) has NOT tried compiling under 2.0 (or later), I really wonder WHY?

If you have tried it and NOT found any problems, then I REALLY wonder WHY one would still be deploying 1.1 application.

Perhaps more importantly, if you have tried 2.0, and found non-trivial, non-perscriptive problems, I would personally like to hear about it, and welcome PM's and e-MAils on the subject.

The same goes for 2.0 to 3.5, but the timing (IMHO) is a bit more relaxed as there is still about 28 months left to the support. (But why wait till the last minute when 3.0 has already been available for nearly 2 years [1/23/2007]

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Remember .NEt 1.1 is now (as of 10/14/2008) no longer supported. This means that is your application "mis-behaves" on a customers machine you have no one to turn to for "real" help.

If you (or anyone else with a similar situation) has NOT tried compiling under 2.0 (or later), I really wonder WHY?

If you have tried it and NOT found any problems, then I REALLY wonder WHY one would still be deploying 1.1 application.

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The fact that it is no longer supported by MS is not an issue to me. In all my years of developing software I have had the need to contact MS support on one occasion and they were not able to help with the problem anyway.

Yes I have rebuilt apps that were built to use 1.1 using 2.0. I received a few warning messages to change some code but it worked fairly well.

I also still build apps from time to time with 1.1 and have several that are deployed in 1.1 and will continue to be. The major reason is that 2.0 will not work in some of these cases and 1.1 does. Of course I am talkign smart devices here running CE.Net 4.x and many of the ones that I have rebuilt was because the device was replaced with a Ce.Net v5.0 device.

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Originally Posted by DataMiser

The fact that it is no longer supported by MS is not an issue to me. In all my years of developing software I have had the need to contact MS support on one occasion and they were not able to help with the problem anyway.

Yes I have rebuilt apps that were built to use 1.1 using 2.0. I received a few warning messages to change some code but it worked fairly well.

I also still build apps from time to time with 1.1 and have several that are deployed in 1.1 and will continue to be. The major reason is that 2.0 will not work in some of these cases and 1.1 does. Of course I am talkign smart devices here running CE.Net 4.x and many of the ones that I have rebuilt was because the device was replaced with a Ce.Net v5.0 device.

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Compact (and Embedded) Framework has a different set of issues (which I should have been explicit on). Here matching the OS and Framework is very important.

My experience has been frequent contact with the Dev groups (as well as suppport via MCS and Premier) averaging a couple of times per year over the past two decades. "Success" rates have been upwards of 90%....

Given that you are still "shipping" 1.1 based apps, I wondeer what the impact would be if next months "Windows Update" pushed out something that broke all of your applications. They would perfectly within their rights to do so. There already have been situations where "previously working" code in VB6 has been broken by published updates.

For any vendor, there must be an end of support (imagine if Windows 2.0 still had to be supported).

I have VB6 running on Vista Ultimate 64bit. Installing SP6 after VS2008 hosed things, but repairing solved the issues.

Putting VB6 after VS2008 proved to cause problems (couldn't locate the disk)

Now that I can, I'm going to try out VB10 as well.

The project that I'm working on now is in VB9, with DevExpress's controls.

It's running on a SBS2003 system, which I hope to upgrade to SBS2008

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Originally Posted by TheCPUWizard

Compact (and Embedded) Framework has a different set of issues (which I should have been explicit on). Here matching the OS and Framework is very important.

My experience has been frequent contact with the Dev groups (as well as suppport via MCS and Premier) averaging a couple of times per year over the past two decades. "Success" rates have been upwards of 90%....

Given that you are still "shipping" 1.1 based apps, I wondeer what the impact would be if next months "Windows Update" pushed out something that broke all of your applications. They would perfectly within their rights to do so. There already have been situations where "previously working" code in VB6 has been broken by published updates.

For any vendor, there must be an end of support (imagine if Windows 2.0 still had to be supported).

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Windows update does not apply to the devices I am shipping for and nothing newer than 1.1 will work unless the OS is upgraded. As for update breaking things, it has been known to happen and that is juts one of many reasons that I do not use the auto update features in the os. I always, and I do mean always look to see what the changes are in an update and if there is a chance it may break something I also make sure there is a backup before the update is applied.

If people take proper care then there is no big issues. If they start installing other programs, updates, new os and such then there is always a chance that a program may stop working. This is one of many reasons why backups are so important.

I suppose some people are concerned if support for a product is discontinued but really a product that is tried and proven in the workplace is known to work and onlyt by changing things will it not work. Solution don't do that :)

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Originally Posted by TheCPUWizard

My experience has been frequent contact with the Dev groups (as well as suppport via MCS and Premier) averaging a couple of times per year over the past two decades. "Success" rates have been upwards of 90%....

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This confirms what I suspected

I have noticed that many of your contributions (which I must say are normally excellent), seem to be coloured with intelligence which seems to be out of the reach of people like me who live in the "real world"

Is the contact, and "heads up" info restricted to an elite group, or are all programmers able to tap in to seemingly unavailable information ?

Or do you pay for this service ?

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Originally Posted by George1111

I have noticed that many of your contributions (which I must say are normally excellent), seem to be coloured with intelligence which seems to be out of the reach of people like me who live in the "real world"

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Thanks for the info. Very little has to do with "intelligence", but ALOT to do with experience. Although I have often been accused of "living in my own special world", it does not apply here.

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Is the contact, and "heads up" info restricted to an elite group, or are all programmers able to tap in to seemingly unavailable information ?

Or do you pay for this service ?

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I do pay for part of it. It is a cost of doing business.

The contact info, has been carefully cultivated over years. One good place for people to start is to get actively involved in oline and local environments where the dev teams are also involved. [CodeGuru is my favorite forum by far, but it is NOT a Microsoft feature - and in general this is a VERY good thing].

Some (10%-25%) of the heads-up info is to select groups, but things like the VS-2010 CTP have been available to the general MSDN subscriber population for a (short) while.

I do not believe there is anything I do, that can not be done by any professional developer, although the "investment" may be too high for the "hobbyiist".

It seems one major point is becoming lost in this thread, which is to help BadNews01 decide what to do with his project.

In the short-term, it doesn't seem practical to try to make substantial changes. While there are probably better ways to handle the task than VBA, the learning curve for you might be a bit too steep to get something meaningful in a short enough amount of time.

IMO, I'd suggest to learn your language of choice at your own pace. When the time comes when you have developed your skills enough to tackle the project, you'll probably know it. There's little doubt you'll still run into things which have you scratching your head, but your knowledge at that time should carry you through far more easily and faster than you could ever hope for now. And of course there is CodeGuru to pick up the slack.

Attempting to dive in head first and get up to speed quickly sounds quite likely to be overwhelming. What your boss wants is yet another matter, and non of us know him as you do. It sounds to me however, that you won't be able to walk into your boss's office and say "we're going to start over from scratch, and it will take awhile to get something usable."

As you learn the language, you'll have those light bulbs going off above your head, and you'll start to see possibilities and solutions. At some point you'll be able to begin putting something together, and the time it takes is dependent upon the complexity of the project, and your aptitude for programming.