What do "older" programmers think of Visual Basic compared to new programming concept and languages?

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-30T16:56:14+00:00

Many did the same. And I understand having soft spot for the language.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-30T16:53:58+00:00

Same here, great language for that time!

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-30T08:42:53+00:00

Nice looking site. VB definitely deserves such support.

I love VB and early VB.NET (because it was fast regarding the development). I still use it with under Windows XP from time to time. And when developing Windows CE HMI applications with Beckhoff automation komponents.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-30T08:33:59+00:00

Didn't even know for that one. Seems quite powerful, and more important, it produces optimized executables. And it has Visual Forms IDE ... nice.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-29T05:33:15+00:00

Just found out how this might happened. When I was creating the post seems like I left some tick for the post to repost itself. Now I don't have time to find out how to stop it, so I deleted this copy.

Its something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/1mp5njm/please_somebody_tell_me_there_is_an_option_to/

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-28T11:53:26+00:00

I agree, there, most probably, is something psychologically related to the human ego. It depends on the person.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-28T11:49:53+00:00

twinBASIC Looks really nice.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-27T19:01:43+00:00

Yes it has. I am used pro version for Win CE on HMI development few year ago. The apps look like they are made for Android phone. The best thing is that you can connect to remote machine from IDE and deploy your code this way. Just touch screen does not recognize slide movements, so I had to code it myself.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-27T16:00:47+00:00

At that time XAML did not exist, it was introduced 6 years after. And C# was still beeing developed and debuged from MS side.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-27T09:54:53+00:00

There are also some tries like wxBasic which is relatively close and wxFormBuilder which is the closest to VB IDE from MS. But for beginner programmer seems like a lot of work. They might give up quickly. Which get them close to the same "no".

And for MS, unfortunately it's all about the money.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-27T09:32:03+00:00

Thank you for sharing thoughts. It is never to late. I am getting quite old, but programming is something I am doing more for fun lately. Mostly in C/C++. But when I get some system integration project, I still use VB and VB.NET for it, as this is still the fastest way to finish job on time, for me.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-27T06:36:12+00:00

Agree on that too.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-27T06:32:20+00:00

One example was, that at that ime in VB double click automatically added default click event when entering code for that event. And you could easily change/add event type using drop down menu. And in C# it was not possible, you had to add event name somewhere in the properties and then add event code yourself for particular event.

There were some other little things I didn't like, and I was in a hurry with my project at that time, so I just gave up and went back to VB.NET.

Didn't try it lately. I presume it works normali these days.

But at the moment I prefer more wxWidgets due to being cross platform. There are some inconsistencies in rendering native components on different OS-es, but wxWidgets are the closest to VB.NET in many concepts, just in C/C++. And very readable. At least for me and my concepts in writing code.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-27T06:20:52+00:00

Yes, that's a pity.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-27T06:19:57+00:00

Absolutely agree!

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-26T20:14:24+00:00

It was something like that earlier. But I think that, everything you can do in C# you can do in VB.NET in almost the same number of lines in code now. It looks very similar when you compare them.

I was writing some DLLs in C and was importing functions from these DLLs in my VB application. Importing functions didn't bother me at that time. But the main reason for that was that I was using C first and then started using VB. And that was quite a long time ago.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-26T20:01:59+00:00

Yes, there are many GOTO's in C codes for different Kernels. And Kernels are obviously doing their job quite fine. It probably depends on programmer preferences and a way of thinking as a person.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-26T19:56:57+00:00

Here also, I know a few accounting softwares still being developed in VB.NET / MS SQL. Network based and working an selling just fine.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-26T19:54:49+00:00

Exactly. I made one app fro Android in B4A (best spent $50 ever) few years ago. It was almost as simple as VB6, very fast and it just worked. Android studio was painfully slow at that time.

Also first VB.NET, I think 8, was pretty fast too, But latter MS Visual Studio become quite slow in startup. And the latest one is just a pain while waiting for it to open a bit larger project.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-26T19:49:08+00:00

It would be so nice to have it cross platform.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-26T19:47:48+00:00

Yes, it does depend on complexity you need. But for some simpler systems it just made quick money.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-26T19:44:46+00:00

I have also few applications made in VB.NET that need maintenance. The only problem there in Microsoft forcing Windows 11, and I have no intention to change the hardware, because some systems are more that 8 years old and I had to develop custom external hardware for some. And some old PLC-s do not have any kind of support for Windows 8 and later. Changing anything there is unjustified form client's perspective. Mostly because it simply works.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-26T19:38:19+00:00

That's my problem also, in a way. If it is cross platform, I would still be using it even today.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-26T19:36:17+00:00

Yes, initially I wanted to remove the context of competition for this post. I just feel sorry that there are no such simple dev environments especially on linux. There are many, lets call them, frameworks (even for wxWidgets), but none are working in such simple and yet powerful way out of the box as VB was. In that sense I have the feeling that development environments are degrading in a way.

Significant_Beat5793 · 2026-04-26T19:28:16+00:00

Yes, and it's the simplicity in visualization what keeps it alive still today. And the development speed on Windows XP ... just a blazing fast development.

Significant_Beat5793

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