Talk:Visual Basic (classic)/Archive 1

message: Fixed VB5 CCE download link, MS link was down.Obi-w00t 17:54, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  VB5 CCE 

message: User:Enochlau: VB doesn't have poor and inaccurate documentation now, but I have heard suggestions that it did in the past. Mr. Jones 13:32, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poor Documentation 

message: This page redirects from VBDOS 1.0, but it does not seem to have any information on VBDOS. In fact, it even says VB is only for Windows, which seems in contradiction with the existence of a VBDOS 1.0. What's with that? (VBDOS 1.0 is linked from 'QBASIC programming language.') --[anonymous], 2002-12-17 3:58 pm
:I vaguely remember seeing VBDOS marketed, and that's about it. If someone knows something more about VBDOS, slap it in. 
:--- williamv1138
::Done.
::--cprompt 08:05, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for information about VBDOS 1.0 

message: Awful, awful writing. I tried to tighten and copyedit, but died of crap writing fatigue half way through. Anyone else want a go? - David Gerard 10:49, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)
I like the edits by 128.32.36.26, but the Evolution of VB ought to emphasise the importance of VB3 as being a stable version, the one that cause the popularity of the program to soar -- VB3 is to VB as Windows 3.1 is to Windows. I'd be bold and make the change but don't have NPOV words for it at the moment.
- Mark Hurd 15:59, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Despair at "bad writing" 

message: Doesn't it seem like the part on VB vs Hypercard is just out of place? I don't think it should be in there.
::--ronincyberpunk
It was a reaction to an earlier form of the article which implied that VB was a completely original invention by Microsoft, failed to credit Alan Cooper, and failed to acknowledge any intellectual heritage for the product. Readers might have inferred that VB sprang full-grown from the head of Gates. I thought and think that a VB article needs to give some background and history. I think the absolutely essential points are:
*VB had some distinct similarities to HyperCard; HyperCard and other similar environments were "in the air" (fully-functional and available?) (Sure. HyperCard, in something (alas) very close to its final form, was introduced in 1987. VB, 1991. HyperCard was definitely available, so was Toolbook, I believe several Mac HyperCard-like products such as SuperCard had been released... Dpbsmith 16:11, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this little historical footnote is interesting. OTOH, I don't think there's enough in it for another article.  Mr. Jones 14:06, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does The section on VB and Hypercard belong here? 

message: Ok.  I complelty rewrote the Advanages/Disadvantages section in an attempt to provide a neutral point of view.  I personally lean more towards a critisism of Visual Basic.  The VB project I work on at my job has recently upgraded to VB.NET, and I like VB.NET more than Visual Basic.  So someone pro Visual Basic should read this article and correct any of my mistakes :) Wuzzeb 20:36, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Point of View 

message: I said above that Wirth said something that soon became corrupted by instructors and by arrogant young students who were proud of being in Pascal classes into something like "BASIC rots your mind." I was wrong in attributing this to Wirth.  The BASIC programming language has a link to the source , which was Edsger Dijkstra in 1975, and the actual passage in question is (in part):
*FORTRAN—"the infantile disorder"—by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
*PL/I —"the fatal disease"—belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set. 
*It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
*The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
*APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.
So, actually, Dijkstra's language was quite strong, but the criticism was being applied to virtually all of the most popular languages of the day. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:44, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Dijkstra was an important voice in programming, but he was a critic. It would be more unusual for a language NOT to be critisized by Dijkstra.--Samiam95124 19:44, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: BASIC and "mental mutilation" of programmers

message: The article linked by "banker's method" doesn't mention said method. Something needs to be fixed but I'm not sure what. Deco 03:22, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. The original significant figures page had significance arithmetic split from it last month. Mark Hurd 16:05, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to "banker's method" 

message: I changed this line: "The VB.NET programming language is surprisingly very different to that of VB6, however, the application itself does feature the ability to import and convert existing VB6 project files." to "The VB.NET programming language is surprisingly very different to that of VB6." VB.NET can import VB6 projects.
Cwenger 01:42, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The VB6 import facility results typically results in horrendous code and more often that not the best method of 'conversion' is a manual re-write.  I think I may add something to the article to this effect.  I've seen the import facility spoken of in many places without mentioning it's issues and I believe this leads people to a false sense of ease of converting code from VB6 to VB.NET Ralphy 10:53, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Importing VB6 Projects with VB.NET 

message: The On Error keyword is suggested as a legacy component of visual basic, but it is often required for components that throw errors but have no mechanism for pre-determining that the error will occur. An example of this might be the MsCommCtrl.
:Not applicable in VB.net afaik. They use a try/catch pair there. Still applies in VB6, though. Let me know if I'm wrong. --dionyziz 12:29, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know what the history of On Error is, but I think "legacy" has an incorrect connotation.  It's quite powerful, and while it may not be as "pretty" as try/catch, it's no less capable (except for lacking the ability to use an arbitrary error object, but I've never needed anything not included in the built-in Err). --Mr Wednesday 16:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  On Error Keyword 

message: VB does support threading but its not as simple/easy/unsafe as other languages. It is done by using ActiveX EXEs and "Out of Process" COM objects. If you use CreateObject on public object in your own project, VB will start a new thread for it.
--Dean Earley 11:57, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no way for two threads to communicate in VB, right? It's as though they are run in separate processes. IMO that's not the thing to be called "support for multithreading". --tyomitch 12:30, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, As its all done via COM, its just "Object.Method". It uses apartment threading so calls in are serialised/held until the thread is ready to process the pending calls. --Dean Earley 20:40, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I see; then the article should have more details on this rather than "Simple threading support not present". Something like, "multithreading only supported by creating apartment-threaded COM objects on new threads" (I can't word this well right now.) --tyomitch 06:33, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Threading 

message: In the section "Visual Basic and VB.NET":
"Some believe VB.NET support will diminish, with C# becoming the preferred language for .NET programming. This is despite the fact that both languages compile to the same .NET Common Intermediate Language, with the programming language choice merely a matter of syntax preference."
I believe that this is an overstatement.  A basic program written in C++ utilizing OOP could (for the most part) be converted to C, this does not make the choice between C++ and C one of simply syntax.
:The article does mean "the difference between C# and VB.NET is mostly in syntax" (and that's true). The quoted sentence is supposed to mean "not only the languages are equally powerful, they also get compiled into the same MSIL code." --tyomitch 00:50, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just an issue of syntax? 

message: This section seems to be singular in it's presence across pages devoted to programming languages.  Why is it here?  The first point, 'Not being very portable', could apply to many languages. Im the case of VB, one of it's strengths is that it is included in so many applications in it's derivative form, VBA, which is even available on the Mac.  This has been a factor in the growth of its popularity and surely it counts as a degree of portability.
The second point, "Being too big" states that the required runtime is 1.4MB.  How can this be too big?  It also states that 23MB is required for VB.NET but this is true of any .NET language yet I do not see similar criticisms on the C# page, for instance.  The point about Visual Studio is totally irrelevent.  This is the development IDE and one would expect it to be rather big when considering the other languages and tools it includes.  How can this possibly be applied as a criticism of VB?  Again, one would exepect to see similar criticisms on the VC++ page, etc. but one does not.
3rd point, "Having bugs in the IDE".  Show me an IDE without bugs?  Indeed, as the point mentions most of theses have been fixed, so why bother mentioning this?
4th point, "In VB6 and prior versions, the use of many core OS functions required directly calling the Windows API.".  The same applies to C++ yet I do not see a similar criticism there.  Most of the work I've done in VB (and I have been programming with it for many years) has not needed calls to the API unless advanced tasks are required which are not covered by the standard API.  This is acceptable for a language like Visual Basic.
In summary I believe this whole section should be removed.  It is POV and irrelevant. Unless anyone can convince me otherwise I intend to remove it. --Ralphy 09:04, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. However, the necessity of a large runtime is still worth mentioning somewhere else in the article. Most other languages can be compiled into independent executables, unlike VB. --tyomitch 09:24, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If the runtime required for VB6 is 1.4MB then that's very small.  The current MS platform, .NET, requires a 23MB runtime (the framework) and can't be compiled into a standalone exe either. --Ralphy 10:03, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's around 2 MB for latest SP. That's minute compared to .NET framework, but it makes a really heavy addition for tiny (tens of KBs) utilities. --tyomitch 12:48, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough.  I've removed the section and I've added a line about the runtime to 'Language Features' --Ralphy 13:38, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other criticisms of Visual Basic 

message: it was exposed that Microsoft's new anti-spyware offering, Microsoft AntiSpyware, was coded in Visual Basic 6.0.  I'm sure that it's true, but can someone link to a reference that supports this?  But further to the point - Does it even belong here?  Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of programs have been written with Visual Basic, so what makes Microsoft AntiSpyware significant enough to be in this entry? DBBell 17:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know of any written reference, but you can tell yourself by using Spy++ (Or any other utility to see window classes). The class names are mostly VBThunder* which is the window class names used by VB. --Dean Earley 19:11, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Why is this significant? Because now Microsoft won't be supporting their own product in a few years, unless they make the painful translation from VB6 to .NET. They will be feeling a little of the pain that the aggreived users are feeling. --Mike Van Emmerik 05:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Microsoft AntiSpyware 

message: The following phrase is currently present in the “Controversy” section: “many programmers have strong feelings regarding the quality of Visual Basic and its ability to compete with newer languages like Python”. I am afraid that Visual Basic is at least not older than Python, since Python was created in 1990 (according to the corresponding article), whereas Visual Basic 1.0 saw daylight in 1991. I think this passage should be somehow reworded. --qvvx 19:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I remove "like Python" from that sentence. How does it look now? The Rod 03:57, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think it is OK now. Although I am not quite sure if the original meaning intended by the author has been preserved. If we compare Visual Basic to Python, then the article should say “its abilitiy to compete with other languages like Python”. If we compare Visual Basic to newer languages, we should mention these languages. I guess that the original meaning is that Python became more popular recently, and that it represents newer practices; thus Visual Basic may seem somewhat old and outdated in comparison. But I am no expert and I think that someone with a deeper understanding of the subject should check this out. --qvvx 11:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A minor issue with wording 

message: I look at the top of the article and I see
:This article is about the Visual Basic language shipping with Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 and earlier. For the Visual Basic shipping with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, see Visual Basic .NET.
I look at the botom of the article and I see 
:4.2 Timeline of Visual Basic .NET
Is it just me or is there something wrong here... -- 204.209.24.2 18:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Article focus

message: There seem to have been a few edits regarding the VB6 Icon. Is there any problem with it going to the right of the "this is a vb6 article" header once it's replaced with a tidy version?
Similar to the way its used at 
--Dean Earley 11:12, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  VB6 Icon 

message: Ok, I copied the current Controversy section over to Talk:Visual_Basic/VB_Controversy, and started removing a bunch of stuff.  I am thinking about removing the entire list of "Programming constructs not present in Visual Basic", I am not really sure if it is needed in the controversy section.  It might be better in the language features section, and remove the comparison to other languages.  I removed most of the stuff like bit shifting on the list anyway... that was mostly just a bunch of minor stuff that served no purpose.  I also removed the behaviors... that should be moved to Language Features, if it is kept at all.
I left the Dijkstra quote, and attempted to provide a little explination of why a lot of people hate VB.  I do make several claims without sources or examples "Advantaced programming techniques" (which?) this is very broad... "Visual Basic has espically been singled out for this criticism because most software written in VB starts out as small and RAD applications."  that last sentence might be better as something like most critics percieve VB that way, when in fact it might not be true.
In any case, I am not the greatest at NPOV (I lean against VB6, having had to use it for 3-4 years before my company bit the bullet and upgraded the code to VB.NET.  Many of the features and code I write in the program in VB.NET could just not have been done in the VB6 version of our program) Wuzzeb 00:35, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Attempt at Controversy Rewrite 

message: There are weasel words hiding all over the page. --ScarletSpiderDave 22:14, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weasel Words 

message: In what sense, exactly, is debugging a weakness of VB?  I would classify it as a strength, the interactive debugger is every bit as capable as the debugger for VC, and the ability to execute arbitrary code in the immediate window is a huge plus that I've never seen anywhere else.  It's even possible to debug a VB executable in an external debugger, although you won't get much use out of this with anything involving objects because of the COM implementation of properties. --Mr Wednesday 16:09, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I've rewritten this into a strength.  Have also added a blurb about debugging into VB code using other debuggers, something I do have some personal experience with (both the VC IDE debugger and the Microsoft Windows debugger). --Mr Wednesday 21:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Debugging a weakness? 

message: The article states that "On Error Goto" provides "basic" error handling, and VB does not have exception handling.  I think the use of the word "basic" is misleading, as the "On Error" facilities are very capable.  Also, I disagree that the error facility is not exception handling.  It's closer to exception handling than to signals or event handling, with the main proviso being that the only exception handled is an Error object (which is still capable of providing arbitrary numeric codes and description text). --Mr Wednesday 16:18, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've re-written this a bit to give a more accurate picture of the capabilities of the On Error feature. --Mr Wednesday 21:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error handling 

message: The article claims that conversion functions are used instead of typecasting.  However, the Cxxx family are all built-ins, rather than library functions, so I think it is a reasonable argument that these are typecasts, rather than functions. --Mr Wednesday 16:25, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Typecasting 

message: Maybe we need a new screen, the code in this one is ghastly, with it's superflous Me.Show and the horrible use of End instead of Unload Me!
:Not to mention the superfluous assignment to lblHello.Caption (already set in the property form, according to the displayed form image...). :) --Mr Wednesday 18:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  vb6 session.png 

message: This article does not discuss that Visual Studio 2005 has Visual Basic 2005 (version 8) or that there is a free version of the Visual Studio suite named Visual Studio Express 2005 which also has a Visual Basic Express 2005 (version 8.0.50727.42) --150.226.95.18 15:03, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the VB classic page.  Visual Basic .NET is over there. --Mr Wednesday 04:55, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Visual Basic 2005 & Visual Basic Express 2005 (VB8) 

message: A recent edit by Jitbit1 claims that VB does not have polymorphism. I dispute this assertion, as implementation of interfaces creates polymorphism on any properties and methods published by that interface (this is a design feature that I have used on more than one occasion). Beyond this, there is further polymorphism through the IDispatch interface, where anything called through a late-bound object is treated polymorphically. In the absence of discussion to the contrary, I will revert in a day or so. --Mr Wednesday 15:57, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have removed polymorphism as a feature not present. --Mr Wednesday 17:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polymorphism 

message: The content of the linked page is interesting, but it suffers from major POV issues (and is largely unsourced). Considering it's an external link, not content on this page nor a citation thereof, is this a problem? --Mr Wednesday 21:38, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was the lead developer of the "Visual" part of Visual Basic. The "MacBasic plus Hypercard" page is wrong in just about every way—it's just a misinformed rant. We were aware of Hypercard, but none of us had spent any time using it. Hypercard wasn't the target at all. We were writing a shell for Windows that was intended to replace the infamous MS-DOS Executive. --Michael Geary 06:34, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I edited the article to remove some vandalism, and while I was at it I removed this link. Since the article's facts are wrong, all that's left is the author's opinion of Bill Gates. In its place I added a link to Alan Cooper's "The Father of Visual Basic" article, which is the true story, albeit with a little too much "I" and not enough "we". :-) (Disclaimer: I am mentioned in the article.) --Michael Geary 14:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  History of VB = MacBasic plus Hypercard link 

message: When Visual Basic came along, it was the cat's meow with respect to creating a graphical user interface for standalone Windows computers.  It sure beat writing Windows applications per Petzold or per MFC.  It provided a home for COM technologies much easier to use and understand than ATL, stubs, proxies, GUIDs and all that rot.  The ease of producing tangible results was a boon to the product's popularity.  That's why there are 3 million VB programmers.  Lotsa legacy VB code out in the world.  Bizarre line-by-line syntax, Dim statements to "declare" anything.  Why Dim?  Because in the mid-1960s, Dartmouth BASIC supported integer arrays that had to be declared before use with a Dim statement -- kinda like a declaration.  So, by extension, why not declare an instance of a class with a Dim statement?  --21:36, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The behavior of variable declaration VB is similar to older-styled Fortran, where variables had implicit type and you would "declare" an array using a DIMENSION statement. In fact, there are a lot of Fortran-isms in VB. Anyway, was there something from that paragraph that you wanted to see go into the article, or are you just musing? --Mr Wednesday 22:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  When Visual Basic Came Along 

message: I suggest we take out the references to Rapid Application Development, as if visual basic favors one methodology over another, I suggest we change:
"VB was derived heavily from BASIC and enables the rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications"
to
"VB was derived heavily from BASIC and enables the fast development of graphical user interface (GUI) applications"
or something similar, any suggestions? 
-Pat 12:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we should leave RAD, as VB is a prime example of a RAD IDE.  --tonsofpcs (Talk) 13:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The statement is misleading or confusing, as most people who have read it seem to think using VB is RAD. You can use any methodology with VB, I don't see everyones fascination with RAD, in my opinion it isn't even a good methodology. The sentence doesn't give the reader any useful information, it's like saying "VB Enables the top down development of GUI's", I don't think microsoft specifically designed it as a RAD Tool, although if Microsoft says that VB was intended for the RAD methodology then add it as a citation, else I think we should change it. Because surely you could apply any methodology to VB just as much as RAD. Pat 16:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rapid Application Development 

message: I have removed for the second time a link to an OPC Client on the Kepware site.  I have done this for several reasons.  To begin with, the links should be general in nature, not a specific program.  Another reason I did this is because the Kepware page seems dubious, and was nominated for speedy delete, which is why I regard this as linkspam.
IMHO, if/when Kepware is deemed a legitimate page, and the site contains pages on general VB topics, then perhaps this topic could be revisited. wrp103 (Bill Pringle) 20:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to Kepware 

message: What is the point of this section supposed to be?  It looks to me like it's just more POV rambling about the platform dependence issue (a legitimate criticism).  Among other things, despite the heading, there are no actual examples of patent limitations in the paragraph body.  Is there anything worth salvaging (possibly merging into the previous paragraph), or should the entire paragraph be deleted? --Mr Wednesday 21:44, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would have no problem if the section got deleted. wrp103 (Bill Pringle) 23:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Patented Technology section