Question on Classic VB's future

[Shannon]

I'm just a hobby programmer who likes coding in VB6. I read that anything that runs on Vista will run on Windows 7. Can I assume this means VB6 applications will still work in Windows 7?

And when the day comes that Windows no longer directly supports VB6 will it still be possible to write VB6 Applications for 'Future Windows' and somehow include in our installation package the files 'Future Windows' no longer possesses?

Any input is much appreciated.

Thanks!

[Phil Weber]

VB6 applications are simply 32-bit COM programs. As long as Windows supports 32-bit COM (the same as MS Office 2007, Visual Studio 2008, etc.), VB6 apps will continue to work. When Windows will no longer run MS Office 2007, then you may have to update your programming language, but I'd say that day is still several years away.

[pclement]

Just to expand on what Phil said, as long as Microsoft supports the 32-bit technologies used by your application then it should function. Windows 7 is more of an upgrade to Vista so I don't expect that you will experience problems in that environment that are any different than those in Vista.

Microsoft will be supporting the core run-time for a number of years yet. But that doesn't mean that extensions to your application will be supported (if you are using any). Beyond that it's rather difficult to make any predictions with respect to future versions of Windows.

[Shannon]

Exactly what I needed.

Thank you!