VB6 and VB.NET

[fade2black]

I'm taking a VB 6 class now and I'm wondering how much different the .NET is. I've heard that it is a lot different, but the college here doesn't offer any classes in it yet. Is it going to be fairly easy to move to .NET after learning 6?

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[Garfield]

I can't imagine the language itself would change, just the IDE.

 

[Niloc]

I can't imagine the language itself would change, just the IDE.

I would have to totally agree.

 

[XWRed1]

I've actually heard that the language itself will be totally reworked, and some vb programmers are getting ****ed because they're skillset will be mostly obsoleted. I don't really care, though, so I've never researched it.

Maybe you should poke around on msdn.

 

[Krieger]

from what I understand is that it has been reworked as well. I'm working on getting a copy to play with, but I've not had much luck.

 

[foshdawg]

from what i've seen and heard (friends have VS.NET and are using different aspects of the web services) everything in Visual Studio.NET was completely reworked, most notably C#. os i'm pretty sure that VB.NET is going to be a kick in the teeth with its steep learning curve. hell, my friend was a pretty accomplished Java developer and he tried out C# (which is basically C++ and Java mushed together) and he had problems with C#.

 

[Krieger]

yeah I'm not looking forward to learning it.

 

[fade2black]

from what I understand is that it has been reworked as well. I'm working on getting a copy to play with, but I've not had much luck.

Same here. I've heard both sides of this. Some say it's MUCH different and others say it's no big deal. I'm trying to find someone that has actually used both to find the differences to see if I should continue on the VB6 track or wait until I can find classes on .NET.

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[foshdawg]

go ahead and learn VB6 as a lot of places still require and use it. VB.NET is especially helpful for web services. i'd say around the fall is when it'd be a good time to start looking for VB.NET classes as that lets professors have enough time to wrap their heads around it and get more comfortable with the IDE.

 

[Cooler666]

another reason not to use any programming language made by Microsoft

 

[foshdawg]

another reason not to use any programming language made by Microsoft

*claps* indeed

 

[XWRed1]

Why? Because every once in awhile, the decide to try and make it not crap?

This change isn't change for change's sake, its to improve vb and bring it up to the level of versatility that .Net provides.

 

[Cooler666]

Versatility or not Visual Basic is only losing popularity by the day whilst C++ and particularly Java are rapidly increasing in popularity. I think Microsoft took the wrong step with Visual .Net, especially when programmers may need to reprogram vasts amounts of code to conform with the new software libraries. Whilst programmers need to be reintroduced to a programming language they are veterans in. But i mean it could easily work if it actually does improve the usability and effieciency of the languages.
I know to program in Visual Basic, Borland Delphi, Pascal, Java and now starting C++, i must say Visual Basic 6 is quite poor and not powerful at all, i hope they did something to it to make improvements in programming syle.
One think for sure i'm not gonna start learning C# or J#

 

[Krieger]

not to knock you Cooler666, but when was the last time you used vb to develop a complete business solution? I've done it dozens of times since I started programming. It's much more powerful then books and other people portray it. It's rapidly becoming the tool to use when developing business applications(the most common of custom made software). C++ is still used alot in connection to VB in the form of dlls(I've often used API's from other companies in some of my software). But what people need to realize is that every language has it's use. It's easy to disregard one but then you might be able to do something 100x faster by using it. I know that there are thing I can do in VB that only take a few lins of code, that take dozens in C++. Might not be as fast, but to be honest when we are talking milli-seconds on today's highspeed processors it doesn't really matter.

I do agree that java is fast becoming the language to use though, as a matter of fact I've got three books on it.

 

[SBeaver]

I have used vb6 and 5 a lot and must say it's a great language to learn.
It's great that they are improving it so that it may be able to compete a little more with c++ and such (im not in to those so I can't really tell whats so great about em, just what eveyone keeps telling me)

And speed differs are almost eliminated now, i've heard vb6 is just as fast as any other OS.

I think it's great that there is a simple language that everyone can learn and that it's still powerfull so that real programmers can use it too.
As for the C# and .net, I was informed a year ago (aprox) that all the languages was to be compiled in c# so that if you write one thing in vb and the same in c++ and then compile the program you would get would be almost the same.
Maybe MS changed their minds.

 

[fade2black]

I'm taking VB so I can develop apps for SQL server. We just added 3 servers and a lot of our custom apps are in VB. I'm trying to effectively eliminate our consultants Plus it makes the resume look that much better.

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[William]

VB is a nice language that doesn't have the learning curve of other languages. I am sure it isn't powerful enough(I am going to step into the C++ world soon) but when I was using VB it was simple and clean. I know its bloated when it finally goes to the EXE and all, but for interfacing with a DBASE, it does an awesome job. I don't think games development would fair too well in it though.

 

[fade2black]

I don't think games development would fair too well in it though.

I agree.

For DB apps though it's the fastest to deployment, which in the business world is very important....at least where I work.

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[TheFlutePlayer]

I heard one thing new in VB.NET is that it now has true Inheritance instead of simulated inheritance. Not sure how this works in .NET though. Do you still create a Class then call that class from another class?

Haven't installed .NET yet. I'm just staring at the disk...

 

[XWRed1]

One thing is that since its all in with the .Net CLI, you can do something like write a class in C#, inherit and extend it in VB, then inherit from that new VB class in your C++ (assuming you are using a .Net compiler, like VS.Net, I guess).