The one about the VB6 petition.
March 18, 2005
The whole VB6 Petition thing erupted while I was going dark learning VSTS so I only found out about it because Darren Neimke mentioned it in one of our late night IM sessions – he was getting IBF working and I was figuring out why the Check-in window was giving me an ArgumentNullException.
My initial reaction was extreme, and I am pretty sure some censorable words passed my lips but Darren’s reaction to my reaction caused me to re-evaluate my position (my intiial ones was that the whole petition was stupid and they should just get over it).
I then went back and re-read the petition (if you agreed with my initial reaction – go and read it now, I won’t repeat it here). I think what they are asking for is really quite valid. I’ve got some clients at the moment that are still maintaing parts of their code base inside QuickBasic! The point is that correctly functioning code is a very valuable asset to most organisations and platform changes can introduce bugs that are very difficult to find – especially if your code base was written before unit testing was the new black.
The idea of providing a unified IDE for VB6 and .NET languages is compelling but not terribly realistic. While I don’t think the technical issues are insummountable I doubt that any development team could bring together a useful integration of the code bases in a timeframe for which it would be useful – would be an awesome skunk works product, but who has the time these days?
Now I’m faced with the dilemma – do I sign the petition?
March 18, 2005 at 12:00 am
Hell no!
I’ve actually got nothing against the problems they’re talking about, and I guess maybe a solution needs to be found.
I refuse to sign it myself for two main reasons:
1) I don’t feel that the end of mainstream support is a problem for anyone still living in VB6 land.
B) The demans they are making – that is, the specific things they they think should be done to keep them happy are unrealistic and not very worthwhile.
Perhaps if all the petition said was ‘We want mainstream support to be extended another few years’ then I’d think seriously about it. But i’m not putting my name to _those_ demands.
March 18, 2005 at 12:00 am
I think having a VB6 project as a potential part of the project system is interesting because you could add references to VB6 projects (from say a C# project) and that would imply that a RCW is created behind the scenes when the project is built. Likewise for references flowing the other direction.
March 19, 2005 at 12:00 am
Hey Mitch,
yep I think you are right on track with all you have said. I would add to that a couple of points.
(1) timeframe. converting a VB6 app to Winforms right now is not really a good move, unless you really really need to. Most folk would be better off getting ready for Avalon, and convert in about 2 years from now. One conversion instead of two. And that’s roughly how long it would take to bring about a VB6 inside .NET to make that process easier.
(2) COM itself is not dying, in fact last night on the Eric Rudder chat the C++ team talked about COM and native support for VC++ continuing into the distant future. Yet for VB they are pulling that same support rather than enhancing it. Technically there is no reason to drop support for COM based VB, it really is because VB has been locked in to Microsoft products, Microsoft can more readily attempt to force those people to undergo expensive sets of changes.. Yet ironically MS wouldn’t even dream of doing the same for their own code base, such as make VS.NET completely managed code, Office completely managed code, IE , etc, etc. So it really is a case of one set of standards for the developers inside MS, and another for those who trusted them with VB.
This is all sad, and really neeeds Microsoft to stop and listen (not just throw out rhetoric abotu support phone calls as if anyone ever useed them anyway <g>)
So why should you sign ? Well apart from standing up for the right thign, the fair thing, that Aussie “fair go” thing, and apart from standing up for your customers, well becuase you are a nice guy Mitch, and a sensible one too
This does go beyond just VB6 in tech circles, it goes to the core of whether locking in to any MS products will just be lockign you into huge and expensive changes as MS sees fit. You have to remmber here that MS decided to pull the plug on VB part way through what peoeple thought was a logn term commitment. They weren’t given 5 or 6 years notice, no more like 3 at best. You know how long it takes peoeple to train up personelle, get skills and libraries in place etc. Then to have it un-necessarily pulled really is bad. It’s bad for all of us working with Microsoft products. It’s bad for the develpment community as a whole.
Sure there are some jerks out there who don’t use VB, who are trying to tear this petition down, but I don’t think you’d ever be one of them
It’s standing up for friends, for mates, standing up for what is right. Go on sign 
http://classicvb.org/petition