ICT magazine article on the Visual BASIC

[Antti J Ylikoski]

I'm authoring an article for the Finnish ICT press on the practical
use of the BASIC language.

The Microsoft Visual BASIC is a very well-known product; to my
knowledge, very often in commercial or industrial work, it is chosen
as the tool, because of its high quality as a software product, and
because it well supports the Microsoft environment, and it is
supported by the Microsoft Windows, and it has a very good IDE.

I have never myself used the Visual BASIC, I only have talked with
individuals who have used it.

In order to be able to write reasonably expert text on the Visual
BASIC, I would like to ask this newsgroup the following question.
Could some individuals who are knowledgeable about this topic, point
for me some pointers with useful information about the Visual BASIC; I
mean, the kind of information that would be useful in an ICT magazine
article.

For example, an Internet article about the Visual BASIC, that I could
use as a reference, would be great.

Finally, I have to admit that I always have liked Microsoft software
-- I have been using Windows since the era of Windows 3.11.

regards, Dr Antti J Ylikoski
Helsinki, Finland, the EU

[ralph]

On Wed, 03 Dec 2014 17:22:32 +0200, Antti J Ylikoski

Post by Antti J Ylikoski
I'm authoring an article for the Finnish ICT press on the practical
use of the BASIC language.
The Microsoft Visual BASIC is a very well-known product; to my
knowledge, very often in commercial or industrial work, it is chosen
as the tool, because of its high quality as a software product, and
because it well supports the Microsoft environment, and it is
supported by the Microsoft Windows, and it has a very good IDE.
I have never myself used the Visual BASIC, I only have talked with
individuals who have used it.
In order to be able to write reasonably expert text on the Visual
BASIC, I would like to ask this newsgroup the following question.
Could some individuals who are knowledgeable about this topic, point
for me some pointers with useful information about the Visual BASIC; I
mean, the kind of information that would be useful in an ICT magazine
article.

The most important thing to keep in mind and to be very clear about
when writing about "Microsoft Visual BASIC" is which "Microsoft Visual
BASIC" your article is about.

The original "Visual Basic" that shipped with Visual Studio 6.0 or
earlier, or the new "Visual Basic .NET" that ships with Microsoft's
.NET platfom?

They are not compatible.

[Mayayana]

As Ralph said, there's VB and there's VB.Net.
Since Microsoft ended support for VB many years
ago, VB.Net is sometimes just called VB these days.
Then there's also VBScript, which some people
mistake for being VB.

You're probably wanting to write about VB.Net.
This group is mainly used by VB people. For .Net,
try here:

microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb

Another interesting angle on this is the changes
at Microsoft during the lifetime of their .Net tools.
Originally .Net was designed for and targetted at
"web services", which Microsoft was hoping would
be a big business back around 2001. (Remember
the "thin client" fad and the "Internet keyboard"
fad? Companies like Microsoft were hoping, even
back then, to make money selling services rather
than software.) .Net was also targetted to take
on Java server-side.

When web services failed to materialize, Microsoft
then pushed the idea that .Net was also for Desktop
software. But it really wasn't, any more than Java
was. So .Net never caught on for writing Windows
software, but did become very popular for business
use and server-side.

More recently, Microsoft is trying to herd developers
toward their RT sandbox, to write Metro phone and
tablet apps. .Net is just one tool being re-purposed
for writing RT trinkets, in addition to javascript and
even C++.

To really tell the story of VB.Net, whether or not
you include the story of VB, I think it would be highly
relevant to tell that story in light of the changing
landscape, as described above. VB.Net has been around
for about 13 years now and a lot has changed in that
time.

Here's the original .Net press release:

http://web.archive.org/web/20101112114102/http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2000/jul00/pdcdeliverspr.mspx

Here's an interesting one from 2005 about how Microsoft
was trying to build something like Metro 10 years ago,
a sandboxed OS on top of .Net, but failed due to the
sheer bloat of .Net and ended up with Vista instead:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1820607,00.asp

There are also numerous articles around about the
transition from VB to .Net and how much resentment
Microsoft caused by trying to force people into .Net for
their own purposes. (Just as they're trying to force
Metro apps now for their own profit, despite it being
a bad business risk for programmers.)

Here's an overview article from Dr. Dobbs website:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050216183444/http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=9211/ddj050201dnn/

And here's another interesting angle from Joel Spolsky:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

(I'm coming to appreciate archive.org lately. There
seems to be a lot disappearing from the Internet
in the past year or so.)





"Antti J Ylikoski" <***@gmail.com> wrote in message news:_UFfw.70528$***@uutiset.elisa.fi...
| I'm authoring an article for the Finnish ICT press on the practical
| use of the BASIC language.
|
| The Microsoft Visual BASIC is a very well-known product; to my
| knowledge, very often in commercial or industrial work, it is chosen
| as the tool, because of its high quality as a software product, and
| because it well supports the Microsoft environment, and it is
| supported by the Microsoft Windows, and it has a very good IDE.
|
| I have never myself used the Visual BASIC, I only have talked with
| individuals who have used it.
|
| In order to be able to write reasonably expert text on the Visual
| BASIC, I would like to ask this newsgroup the following question.
| Could some individuals who are knowledgeable about this topic, point
| for me some pointers with useful information about the Visual BASIC; I
| mean, the kind of information that would be useful in an ICT magazine
| article.
|
| For example, an Internet article about the Visual BASIC, that I could
| use as a reference, would be great.
|
| Finally, I have to admit that I always have liked Microsoft software
| -- I have been using Windows since the era of Windows 3.11.
|
| regards, Dr Antti J Ylikoski
| Helsinki, Finland, the EU

[GS]

Adding to Ralph and Mayayana's posts...

There's also VBA6 (Visual Basic for Applications) which shipped with
Micro$oft Office (prior to v2010) and any other software of theirs that
supports macros. This is compatible with 'Classic' VB (up to 6.0), but
as of Office 2010 VBA7 is used to support 64-bit compatibility.