Support Classic VB

[mstraf]

Just when all of us is just slowing converting to .NET, here comes this article by Karl E. Peterson (old time VB programmers for sure remember him) on Visual Studio magazine:

http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2005_05/magazine/departments/guestop

This is the headline:

A group of MVPs, frustrated that Microsoft plans to end mainline (unpaid) support for VB6 on March 31, initiated an online petition recently that asks Microsoft to extend ongoing support of Classic VB (aka VB.COM). In short, the petition asks that Microsoft incorporate VB.COM into the current Visual Studio product line. This suggestion is in the best interests of both Microsoft and its long-term customers.

I always thought that dumping support for a (any) programming language was the worst idea ever, if you agree and want your voice to be heard visit the web site http://classicvb.org to sign up this petition.
Sorry if this is not a technical post, but I thought that the "VB Classic" forum was the best place for it.

Marco

[pclement]

Marco,

I moved this message to the The Lounge with a redirect from the VB Classic forum.

Just my two cents, I still support Classic VB as well as VB.NET but I simply see this issue as a natural evolution of the language. While the migration path from Classic VB to VB.NET may be considerably less than acceptable for many, I don't see it as something that cannot be overcome - at least not from my experience so far.

In any event, I personally don't expect Microsoft to continue mainstream support for Visual Basic 6.0 beyond the time interval of that for Visual Basic 5.0, which was six years. I've had a conversation with Karl on this subject but I was never provided with enough technical information to convince me that what is requested by the petition is even the slightest bit feasible.

It's time to move forward, or at least seriously consider where you want your code assets to be in the future.

[mstraf]

Hi Paul,
Thanks for the reply and for moving the post.
In fact my company is doing all the new develepment in .NET (that I very much prefer against VB). We still have dozens (almost a hundred) of COM components written in C++ and VB, and we'll take years to replace them (so we just leave them, and 'wrapped' them in .NET)
Regarding dropping VB, I stand my point. Microsoft gave us a programming language and now is taking it away. Is anything like that ever happened? But this is away a much broader discussion... that I know I will never win!
Cheers,
Marco

[dkroger]

Just because Microsoft is ending support for VB6 does not mean that you cannot continue to use it. I have some older programs that I do not intend to update to .Net simply because it would cost too much time and effort (therefore money) to do so. However, I intend to continue to use these programs and make minor changes when needed until they reach their end-of-life cycle at which time I will replace them with something new if I still need their functionality.
I very much prefer writing new programs in .Net, but not eveyone is willing to install the framework, yet.