I just wanted to put it into words and say this - that this forum is one of the reasons why VB6 is still usable today. Twenty or more years of explained code, resources of all kinds, the code bank and the summed experiences of hundreds of programmers who have posted here and still do so on a regular basis, still providing targetted help on a daily basis.
It is so impressive that a forum with this level of vigour still exists so long after the main developer of the product exited the market.
When I post a request for help on a 20 year-old product I generally receive exactly the help I need within a day bearing in mind the timezone delays, the response is generally almost immediate.
It is impressive that such a community exists, it is the backbone of this site, and I somehow doubt the other sections (.NET, ASP, VBA) being not quite tributaries but certainly existing here because of VB6, wouldn't even be here if the VB6 section wasn't still thriving as it does.
We have to give MS some credit for creating such a useful tool, pitched so accurately at the market and targetted so well as a RAD tool for the masses, still used by them in its other direct incarnations, VBA and VBscript and also used by the world in that less VB6-derived product, in the guise of that non-basic but thoroughly .NET product - VB.FRED.
We VB6-ers are often Microsoft haters in that the companies' later products and more recent design methodologies have taken a turn for the worse but the fact that this part of the forum won't die is a testament to one of Microsoft's most rock solid products that it ever made.
VB6 has been criticised massively over the years but what they criticise (who are 'they' anyway?) has probably been the reason that VB6 survives in the third decade of the 21st century.
I just wanted to say how impressed I am that posts on this forum receive the amount of responses that they do. I could list those that regularly help me but I won't as I'd be bound to leave someone important out.
I have been having a discussion with a .NET programmer of many years experience and he sees me programming in VB6 and working with APIs to do this and that and he initially asked why I persisted in coding in a twenty-year old language that had fossilised in time and could not do the things later languages can do.
I explained that I am intending to contribute to ReactOS and precisely because VB6 cannot do the things later languages can do, learning how to replicate that functionality in code, gives me a lot of knowledge learning how APIs function and how Windows and therefore ReactOS does what it does.
C++ and C are not easy languages to use to learn these aspects but VB6 is the perfect tool for what I am doing. An accessible language used to learn about these aspects of the operating system using a strongly typed language to implement o/s type functions. There is some similarity to the use of C type languages in what I am doing.
I may yet be some way from contributing code to ReactOS yet but I am getting there. My code and understanding are improving.
I couldn't do any of this without this forum.
It is so impressive that a forum with this level of vigour still exists so long after the main developer of the product exited the market.
When I post a request for help on a 20 year-old product I generally receive exactly the help I need within a day bearing in mind the timezone delays, the response is generally almost immediate.
It is impressive that such a community exists, it is the backbone of this site, and I somehow doubt the other sections (.NET, ASP, VBA) being not quite tributaries but certainly existing here because of VB6, wouldn't even be here if the VB6 section wasn't still thriving as it does.
We have to give MS some credit for creating such a useful tool, pitched so accurately at the market and targetted so well as a RAD tool for the masses, still used by them in its other direct incarnations, VBA and VBscript and also used by the world in that less VB6-derived product, in the guise of that non-basic but thoroughly .NET product - VB.FRED.
We VB6-ers are often Microsoft haters in that the companies' later products and more recent design methodologies have taken a turn for the worse but the fact that this part of the forum won't die is a testament to one of Microsoft's most rock solid products that it ever made.
VB6 has been criticised massively over the years but what they criticise (who are 'they' anyway?) has probably been the reason that VB6 survives in the third decade of the 21st century.
I just wanted to say how impressed I am that posts on this forum receive the amount of responses that they do. I could list those that regularly help me but I won't as I'd be bound to leave someone important out.
I have been having a discussion with a .NET programmer of many years experience and he sees me programming in VB6 and working with APIs to do this and that and he initially asked why I persisted in coding in a twenty-year old language that had fossilised in time and could not do the things later languages can do.
I explained that I am intending to contribute to ReactOS and precisely because VB6 cannot do the things later languages can do, learning how to replicate that functionality in code, gives me a lot of knowledge learning how APIs function and how Windows and therefore ReactOS does what it does.
C++ and C are not easy languages to use to learn these aspects but VB6 is the perfect tool for what I am doing. An accessible language used to learn about these aspects of the operating system using a strongly typed language to implement o/s type functions. There is some similarity to the use of C type languages in what I am doing.
I may yet be some way from contributing code to ReactOS yet but I am getting there. My code and understanding are improving.
I couldn't do any of this without this forum.