Visual Basic 6

The Corinthian

rsynnott wrote:

Any question which can be trivially answered through use of Google or a bit of common sense should not be answered here.

In fairness using App.Path in this way is not really something that can easily be Googled. Where the OP went wrong is, as has been pointed out, by insulting the people he was seeking help from - not too bright.

As for his lecturer not knowing 'off hand' - well, if he did know, he'd probably have a real job.

bonkey

The Corinthian wrote:

Where the OP went wrong is, as has been pointed out, by insulting the people he was seeking help from - not too bright.

To be fair, the thread seems to be more continuing on Laguna's high-horsedness than the OP's initial gaffe when referring to VB.

And to be fair to the OP, if he/she is doing it in college, and is being made learn VB as a subject (instead of something kule n secksy like Java, C++, or anything webby), I can kinda understand the comment. I don't agree with it, but if I was to spend my days correcting everyone who makes false assumptions about VB....

The way I look at it...no matter how good a programmer the OP turns out to be, if he/she doesn't like VB, thats one less bod to compete with in that market when I choose to work in it. Why would I encourage them to do otherwise?

Hmm...that gives me an idea.

Please Achilles. Ignore these clowns. VB is a toy language, and no-one writes real applications in it. Take Laguna's example, and choose a different field. I'd recommend something web-releated, as long as its not back-end enterprise-level systems. Or games programming. I hear thats a growth industry, (and uses computer languages so real you won't believe they're not butter). Oh - and avoid project management like the plague too. No-one serious will want it.



jc

Hobbes

bonkey wrote:

Please Achilles. Ignore these clowns. VB is a toy language, and no-one writes real applications in it.

It was a toy language 10 years ago prehaps. But there certainly real-world applications made in it. People tend to only notice that is done in VB when the developer makes a complete Pigs ear of the UI design (they should give classes in that).

Java has this same problem of people spouting "Its not a real language" based on how version 1.0/1.1(MS) worked.

Other then that, your second post back is spot on. Should almost go into the charter.

bonkey

Hobbes wrote:

It was a toy language 10 years ago prehaps.

I think you missed the implication of this bit, Hobbes:

if he/she doesn't like VB, thats one less bod to compete with in that market when I choose to work in it. Why would I encourage them to do otherwise?

Either that or this week's flavour of humour doesn't translate so well in writing.

Other then that, your second post back is spot on. Should almost go into the charter.

Shux. Thankee sir.

Draupnir

I like when I hear students insult VB, it makes me feel a great sense of job security.

MrVestek

Well this thread has certainly spiraled out of all control, perhaps we should Wiki it under the great VB debate. Anyways I retract my comment about VB seeing as it caused so much fuss, and I am currently learning Java here in college too, although it has a much steeper learning curve than VB. VB in my eyes is almost too user friendly, hence the 'inspiration' behind my original comment.

That said tho the Java teacher is straight out of college herself and can barely explain the bloody language to us. I'm one of about... 2 people in the class that actually understand what's going on. Guess the old rule of 'there are only 2 types of people in this world... those who understand binary...' applies here.

The Corinthian

Achilles wrote:

VB in my eyes is almost too user friendly, hence the 'inspiration' behind my original comment.

There are numerous complaints that I could make about VB, such as the fact that it’s inflexible in its handling of memory, is not really designed for multi-threading easily and less said about arrays in VB the better. However, it is the language to use in some projects and not in others; dependant on the platform used, functionality required and business constraints. Simple as that - anything else is nothing more than a mixture of fashion and bluff.

However being too user friendly is a new one on me. Do you mean it is not strict enough on data types or has an easy to use IDE?

That said tho the Java teacher is straight out of college herself and can barely explain the bloody language to us.

I refer you to my earlier comment on this.

rsynnott

The Corinthian wrote:

However being too user friendly is a new one on me. Do you mean it is not strict enough on data types or has an easy to use IDE?

VB (especially pre-.NET) makes it quite easy for frighteningly stupid people to write programs which at first glance look okay. This is not a good thing; such programs are invariably broken.

Drag and drop database design is possibly the silliest idea in computing history.

And no, it is certainly NOT strict enough on data types. 'variants', indeed! (PHP and similar have the same problem).

"On Error Resume Next"? What were they THINKING of?!

The fabulous Verity Stob sums up some of the issues here: http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=1503/ddj0001vs/jan00.htm

All that said, it is of course perfectly possible to program well in VB. (A few issues remain, particularly the portability and runtime issues)

bonkey

rsynnott wrote:

VB (especially pre-.NET) makes it quite easy for frighteningly stupid people to write programs which at first glance look okay. This is not a good thing; such programs are invariably broken.

To be honest, I don't think VB is in any way unique in that regard.

In my experience, the biggest problem users have had with VB apps has been the UI.

Up to Version 3, VB was more-or-less at the cutting edge of the whole idea of Drag-n-Drop UI-building scene. The downside of this was that it meant people could build UIs without learning how to do so. This was bad - I lost track of how often in teh early-to-mid 90s I had variations of the following conversation...

me: Why did you add those frames-within-frames-within-frames, and why are you using purple, green and pink for frame-titles.

developer: Coz it looks nice. Its boring when you make an application look like a boring, ordinary windows application.

Of course, now that web-design has caught the "anything goes, and the less standard the better" bug, people may not see this as a bad thing any more....but that point is that it destroyed VBs reputation at the time. People looked at these shocking-looking apps, discovered that even when functional the code quality was as high as the UI-quality....and decided that it was the language's fault for letting some idiot produce something vile.

Post-VB3, the biggest problem has been that MS are doing their damndest to keep VB in the "Windows 95 Look-and-Feel" groove. To do most of the by-now-standard things like graded shading, "Outlook-style" toolbars...hell....even proper XP-themed checkboxes and stuff.....you need to go find third-party add-ons.

So now, even though the language has matured somewhat...it still manages to produce ugly apps really well, and allows idiots to produce them relatively simply.

If you know what you're doing, you can write some serious stuff in VB. PULSE, if memory serves, is primarily a VB application. Thats not where the problem is.

The problem is that VB gets you up and running far before you should be even considering anything more than crawling, people get ahead of themselves, and the language gets blamed for letting them.

jc

Evil Phil

Yeah, Pulse is VB6.

Kernel32

VB3 to VB6 which was what I used to do the bulk of my development up until .Net Beta 1 put many thousands of dollars, pounds and euros into my bank account. No matter how much I didn't like working with it sometimes it will always have a special place in my heart.

rsynnott

Kernel32 wrote:

VB3 to VB6 which was what I used to do the bulk of my development up until .Net Beta 1 put many thousands of dollars, pounds and euros into my bank account. No matter how much I didn't like working with it sometimes it will always have a special place in my heart.

I have a somewhat similar feeling about PHP.