| Product: |
MS Visual Basic Professional Edition 6.0 |
| Date: |
13/11/07 (36 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Very well supported with add-ons and user groups.
Disadvantages: Old technology and limited without external support
VB6 is the last version before .NET took over. It's a great language to get to grips with software development with but it's not so easy to do it well. VB is a language that can be written very sloppily and requires a lot of self discipline if you are going to write professional applications.
The reason that Microsoft made the leap to .NET was that they recognised that limiting themselves to the Windows environment was a short sighted view and so they made that great leap to web based applications. Some of us couldn't make the leap with them and so stuck with VB6.
Personally, I like VB6 a lot. It's pretty stable, provided that you get all the updates. It's still got a lot of third party support and there are a large number of support forums still going strong.
It lacks the visual skills to create great looking apps and without some sort of face lift from third party skins you'll only ever create drab and boring looking apps. This shouldn't be an insolvable problem, but it is something that you'll need to overcome before you can really get VB flying.
The development environment is very good. Windows are put together graphically and the code can be syntax checked as you write it. For known objects the IDE will supply you with pop up lists of allowed properties and events, so using early binding is a doddle.
The run time support requirement is still pretty big too. You can't expect to just deliver an EXE. There'll be a huge compliment of dlls and the like, but the supplied installer software can handle that.
Of course VB6 can do a whole lot more than just create applications. You can create a whole range of components for use in other applications and of course this package comes with good old Crystal Reports built in. Not that I recommend using it.
The language its self is easy to learn, but please, no matter how good you are at building apps that work, please, get a naming convention, formatting standards and comment the damn code. Even if you don't ever plan looking at it again, do it right.
If you want to develop software, do it well. :-)
When considering the ratings, I have taken into account the third party facilities that are available, many now for free.
Summary: A great way to start developing software, but .NET is the only next step.
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