Talk:Visual Basic (classic)/Archive 1

VB5 CCE
Fixed VB5 CCE download link, MS link was down.Obi-w00t 17:54, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Poor Documentation
User:Enochlau: VB doesn't have poor and inaccurate documentation now, but I have heard suggestions that it did in the past. Mr. Jones 13:32, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Visual Basic, Scripting Edition and for Applications
Are these the same? Or is VBA a subset of VB proper that compiles in the same way? What about the Windows Scripting Host?

Mr. Jones 21:15, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No, VBScript is a mostly cut-down version of VB6 with only Variant variables. It does have the ability to define multiple classes in one file (like VB.NET) and is thus still rather powerful for algorithm and OO design.

However, VBA is VB6 or rather VB6 is VBA with a forms engine. Because Excel and Word have forms of a sort, almost any program that can be produced in VB6 can be made to be contained in a document.

Windows scripting host, and now WMI, facilitates the use of VBScript (and occasionally VB in general) for computer system administration tasks, which is the normal reason to use scripting languages in general.

Now why did you ask? ;-)

Mark Hurd 04:00, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

So, VBScript is interpreted as JavaScript or Python are and VB4, 5 and 6 (and .NET?) are compiled to POFF .exe files. These then call functions in DLLs, either the Forms code (VB4/5/600.dll?) or a DLL for the application (e.g. Access). OK. What about programs in (e.g. word) documents? Are they scripts or compiled binaries embeded in the OLE2 structure?
 * Yes, VBScript is interpreted (though ASP caches the parsed code -- tokens -- to gain some benefit from code that isn't changing).
 * Yes, VB programs are compiled to PE .exe files, however until VB5 the code was compiled to P-Code, VB5 and VB6 have a choice of P-Code or 'true' compiled code (using the C++ compiler's back-end), and VB.NET uses the .NET arhitecture which is effectively a compromise of the two, with extra features.
 * Yes, there's a run-time library required for all versions:
 * VBRUNx00.dll for VBx, x=1-3 (16-bit)
 * VB400bb.DLL for VB4 16-bit (bb=16) or 32-bit (bb=32)
 * MSVBVMx0.DLL for VBx, x=5-6 (32-bit)
 * .NET Framework for VB.NET.
 * VBA macros are stored as P-Code in the OLE2 structure. (P-Code means tokenized scripts.)
 * Mark Hurd 15:46, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I would like to talk around this a bit, because I would like to establish a clear picture of the situation.

As to what I am interested in knowing at this very moment; I wonder if it is possible to use languages other than VB in office applications (e.g. by instantiating interface objects as one does in ASP). It would seem not.
 * The Office applications themselves are just ActiveX (COM) servers, so they can be manipulated with any language that can talk COM. However, the VBA IDE is tightly coupled with VBA, so you'd need an external editor.
 * Mark Hurd 15:46, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Many thanks for helping clear this up for me. I hope to come back and work the information you supply into the article. Mr. Jones 10:49, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Removal of non-NPOV
took out the sentece, "Virtually every Microsoft product has a corresponding VB component library, which gives Microsoft a powerful lock-in on their customers." Doesn't seem neutral.

--MarXidad, 2002-01-19 9:15 pm

took this out: "One can build a simple web browser in 30 seconds flat with Visual Basic version 6, simply by following a built-in application wizard step by step." -- it seemed irrelevant. Leon

Request for information about VBDOS 1.0
This page redirects from VBDOS 1.0, but it does not seem to have any information on VBDOS. In fact, it even says VB is only for Windows, which seems in contradiction with the existence of a VBDOS 1.0. What's with that? (VBDOS 1.0 is linked from 'QBASIC programming language.') --[anonymous], 2002-12-17 3:58 pm
 * I vaguely remember seeing VBDOS marketed, and that's about it. If someone knows something more about VBDOS, slap it in.


 * --- williamv1138
 * Done.
 * --cprompt 08:05, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Despair at "bad writing"
Awful, awful writing. I tried to tighten and copyedit, but died of crap writing fatigue half way through. Anyone else want a go? - David Gerard 10:49, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)

I like the edits by 128.32.36.26, but the Evolution of VB ought to emphasise the importance of VB3 as being a stable version, the one that cause the popularity of the program to soar -- VB3 is to VB as Windows 3.1 is to Windows. I'd be bold and make the change but don't have NPOV words for it at the moment. - Mark Hurd 15:59, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Does The section on VB and Hypercard belong here?
Doesn't it seem like the part on VB vs Hypercard is just out of place? I don't think it should be in there.
 * --ronincyberpunk

It was a reaction to an earlier form of the article which implied that VB was a completely original invention by Microsoft, failed to credit Alan Cooper, and failed to acknowledge any intellectual heritage for the product. Readers might have inferred that VB sprang full-grown from the head of Gates. I thought and think that a VB article needs to give some background and history. I think the absolutely essential points are: These statements should be in the article somewhere, and to avoid POV needed to be more than bald assertions. In my efforts to support these statements, I got a little carried away. Dpbsmith 13:50, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * VB had some distinct similarities to HyperCard; HyperCard and other similar environments were "in the air" (fully-functional and available?) (Sure. HyperCard, in something (alas) very close to its final form, was introduced in 1987. VB, 1991. HyperCard was definitely available, so was Toolbook, I believe several Mac HyperCard-like products such as SuperCard had been released... Dpbsmith 16:11, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)) at the time.
 * VB was not a copy or clone of HyperCard and represented an equal or greater breakthrough. (For an example of a HyperCard knockoff or clone, I'd cite Asymmetrix Toolbook, which was at one time bundled with Windows 3.0).
 * I think this little historical footnote is interesting. OTOH, I don't think there's enough in it for another article. Mr. Jones 14:06, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Negative POV expressed
It's my opinion that the article currently sounds pretty biased against VB. It has a list of reasons why VB is a bad language, but doesn't list advantages to it, or counter-arguments to the flaws. For instance, it says that VB doesn't use a syntax common to other languages, such as C/C++, Java, etc. But, it doesn't say that the syntax is easier for newcomers to learn, and looks more human readable to inexperienced programmers. Likewise, there's no mention of the fact that small, GUI-based applications with rather simple functionality (especially those not needing to use much API, COM models or similar) are easier built and maintaned in VB than many other languages.

Anyone else think that the article should add some positive points?

Solver 10:35, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes. The positive points you mentioned are attributes rather than counter-POV. Additionally, there is much evolution through the versions that is not described. Be bold. Use NPOV. -- Zigger 14:58, 2004 Apr 4 (UTC)


 * Yes. Visual Basic (this is all for the talk page, of course, not for the article) is a often the target of ill-considered hostility, for several reasons. First, in the 1980s, the BASIC language itself was disparaged within the academic computer science community. Wirth had proseletized successfully for PASCAL as a better teaching language, an idea with considerable merit, but the actual adoption of PASCAL by universities led to a kind of snobbery in which instructors implied that using BASIC would rot your brain and students parrotted the sentiments. The academic community frequently disparages languages such as (in chronological order) COBOL, MUMPS, VB, etc. which are superbly designed for the real-world requirements of real-world application programmers. Second, VB is Microsoft-proprietary and attracts some scorn for that reason. Bill Gates himself, of course, together with Paul Allen, personally developed an 8080 BASIC implementation, and Microsoft corporate ego tends to push BASIC. Third, and I think you can see clear signs of this in the present market, VB knowledge became a marketable job skill in the late 1990s, with VB programmers being paid less than C++ programmers, and this intensified the snobbery (and attracted hostility from the more sophisticated programmers who perhaps saw their jobs under attack by a form of deskilling). Dpbsmith 15:10, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree that the article should present positive points, and I'm not going to modify it, but please would someone consider the following points (quotations from article): "Being large enough to contain functions for all common tasks without the requirement to include external libraries." - the VB runtime library which is external? And VB .NET requires the .NET framework. "Being just object oriented enough and no more. (Unfortunately this advantage has been lost in VB.NET)" - this is surely biased! "Being more visually-based than other products (e.g. some C++-based tools), requiring less hand coding" - maybe this should be changed into a general point that it is easier to program in VB. "Having a visually clear syntax (e.g. requiring special line terminator syntax to allow statements to span more than one line and thus limiting syntax errors to the line in which they occur.)" - this is also not necessarily an advantage. "Having syntax unrelated to the esoteric C-like syntax used by many other popular languages (e.g. Java, ECMAScript/JavaScript, C#, PHP, Perl, C++, C) -- this is a general advantage of BASIC-like languages." - this is clearly the opposite of the negative point mentioned earlier in the article. Maybe this point should be removed from both lists and a general point added about VB syntax, with its advantages and disadvantages together, so that it doesn't look like it was written by lots of people disagreeing about it. "Some of these advantages have been lost in later versions of VB, particularly in VB.NET, and in doing so backwards compatibility has been sacrificed." - Maybe some advantages of VB .NET should be presented as well, e.g. advantages of .NET such as ability to use .NET language interoperability, more consistent object orientation and structure, non-Microsoft versions of .NET such as Mono. Ablewisuk 16:55, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * The list of advantages is just a simplistic refutation of each criticism. I'm new here, I don't know how to go about changing this but it seems that these lists should be independent from each other rather than just being a point-by-point pro/con argument. --Rhobite 17:20, Jun 30, 2004 (UTC)

I started rewriting and rearranging much of the top part of this page. The Language Features section should be expanded. As said above, the Andvatages of Visual Basic section should just be junked and re-written. Actually, we should probably rename the Disadvantages section to Controversies and talk about the disadvantages and advantages of the language. Wuzzeb 07:02, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Edward G. Nilges: I read this article after visiting discussions in philosophy sites on NPOV. After reading it I am surprised to hear that NPOV is at all important to Wikipedia, because this article is a polemic against Visual Basic.

It is logically possible to write any program in VB, trivially because a Turing machine simulator can be written in VB: VB, unlike HTML, is Turing-complete. Recently I wrote and published a compiler written in VB .Net (Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler, Apress 2004).

Where is the old view, that our job is to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? Programmers in my day (by cracky) used to take pride in transgression, and making a tool (such as Cobol) do what it wasn't supposed to do as a minor rebellion against moronization. Why, we had to walk from the antiwar demonstration to the computer center in the snow both ways! :-), big time.

You guys ain't happy unless you have a computer in your bedroom running Linux, Python, etc.

Seriously, folks, the POV that VB is inferior is technocratic and ethnocentric, because it completely ignores the fact that for a "native" speaker of Visual Basic, his critical success factor in writing any one program is the distance from his knowledge of VB to the solution. His distance from his knowledge of C is longer if he doesn't know C. Meanwhile, the user needs a solution. Sure, use the best tool, but factor it against the real world...in which educational differentiation and racism operating within computer science "tracks" white and upper middle class students into high-class computer science programs, and the rest to DeVry, where I taught (and had to fight to get training for my students in Web technologies).

The ethnocentricity pays attention not to his training and his abilities but to the language he uses, and like Prospero in Shakespeare's Tempest, says he "gabbles like a thing demented" without being qualified to do so; for the early Elizabethan and Spanish adventurers of Shakespeare's time, on whom Shakespeare based The Tempest, did not know Carib languages...but were nonetheless authorized to judge entire peoples as Calibans.

It is true that in terms of overall programming ability, most Visual Basic specialists are inferior to C programmers. But this is not an artifact of their language; it is an artifact of their training, and the increased pressures of lower level jobs into which they are tracked.

For this reason, a truly NPOV article would have stayed clear of the issue of the "quality" of Visual Basic, reporting debates about this issue in a sidebar.

I am frankly astonished to hear claims that articles on Kant and Derrida have a POV when an honest attempt is made to bring views to life on the page, but then read this turkey on VB.

What are you guys, anyway? A bunch of Linux nerds chained to VB projects by the economy, taking out your frustrations? Come on, you can do better than this!

Neutrality ISN'T reporting the views of a dullard mass, nor is it reporting the views of people who hate Visual Basic. Neutrality is purity of heart.


 * I agree with the issue. Pages of complaints about what people don't like about VB. Wikipedia entries are primarily to inform about what something IS, not what it is NOT.


 * In addition, the endless comparisions to C/C++ are very tiring. All languages don't need to look like C. Do we need run on sentences to state the obvious, that VB does not look much like C ?


 * I am not a VB avocate by any means. But the standard ethic on Whackypedia is turning into one where any subject people have strong opinions on turns into a battleground. Lets talk about positives, leave negatives for usenet, and help Wikipedia be NEUTRAL.


 * --Samiam95124 19:40, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

New Point of View
Ok. I complelty rewrote the Advanages/Disadvantages section in an attempt to provide a neutral point of view. I personally lean more towards a critisism of Visual Basic. The VB project I work on at my job has recently upgraded to VB.NET, and I like VB.NET more than Visual Basic. So someone pro Visual Basic should read this article and correct any of my mistakes :) Wuzzeb 20:36, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

String handling, other capabilities of VB
I've been using VB for many years now and even I'll admit that string handling is not its strong point. That statement is simply wrong, and I've removed it. VB6 has very weak string handling functions when compared to other modern high-level languages. Likewise, it's almost universally acknowledged that VB6 has poor math performance. I also removed these POV statements: "By some puritanical standards," "superfluous line termination characters," "according to some programmers unfamilar with its strengths." Rhobite 22:19, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

Bias in this article
Here are some word counts:

C Programming Language

controversial 0 harmful       0 poor          0 too           5 less          0 critic        0 criticisms    0 unintelligible 0 incomplete    0

Pascal Programming Language

controversial 0 harmful       1 poor          0 too           0 less          1 critic        4 criticisms    1 unintelligible 0 incomplete    0

Visual Basic

controversial 2 harmful       1 poor          1 too           5 less          1 critic        8 criticisms    3 unintelligible 1 incomplete    1

I say this article is mostly POV. Every time a benefit of VB is entered, it is nullified by virtue of it being VB and/or Microsoft! We do not go into C or Pascal limitations, shooting down the relative pains of semicolons, null termination, array bounds errors, and constant must-compile-first limitations which are commonplace. There are weakness of every language, VB is no exception. But this article has just become firing squad against Microsoft. Nice. DanP 15:19, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * There are plenty of criticisms of C, I recommend adding those to C programming language rather than whitewashing VB. In any case, please don't add false information to VB. Nobody thinks VB6 is ideal for string handling, for example. Rhobite 16:18, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)


 * Whitewashing is not the goal. Neutrality is better here.  I haven't found anything better for string handling, and I am not nobody, as you say.  I did not mean to say VB was absolutely ideal, only that it is better than average.  Doesn't that merit even a mention?  The BStr objects integrated into VB are pretty speedy and adaptable to different memory models, parameter passing, pattern matching, and a few other things that work pretty well.  They are not the fastest, and they are not the most robust, but they balance both reasonably well.  I hope you can agree. DanP 19:09, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * In the article you said that case insensitive comparison is a unique and ideal feature of VB, but this is a common feature available in every one of VB's competitors. I also don't know what built-in functions are uniquely adapted for string handling, as you say. VB has very rudimentary string support: instr family, len, replace, lcase/ucase, trim family, strcomp, join/split, and the VBScript regex library. This is all very standard stuff, available in just about every high level modern language. To name some examples of string functions lacking in VB: You can't insert one string inside another without multiple concatenations. Regular expressions have to be done through the VBScript library. Concatenations are often slow. Rhobite 19:57, Sep 2, 2004 (UTC)


 * Here is how to "insert one string inside another without multiple concatenations", something which has been possible in Microsoft BASICs since the 1980s.
 * LET Text$ = "Fred's young sister"
 * MID$(Text$, 8, 5) = "older"
 * PRINT Text$
 * The second line is the one that does the trick. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:16, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, and now try to create "Fred's old sister".134.130.4.46 00:53, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * A lot of the bias against VB is not anti-Microsoft bias, but anti-BASIC bias. (Although the two are somewhat tied together, because of Bill Gates' personal involvement in the development of early versions of BASIC for the 8080). In the mid-seventies, several trends collided. First, Dartmouth innovated the idea that all students should know how to use computers. This resulted both in a) widespread familiarization with BASIC and b) association of BASIC with non-programmers. Dartmouth BASIC was a nice, simple, practical, impure language that embodied one kind of teaching goal. The early microcomputer movement grew up completely outside the professional mainstream, and the people who developed hobby computers knew BASIC and implemented it.


 * Meanwhile, Wirth and others approached the subject of "a teaching language" with a different agenda. They had their own concepts of what the proper approach to programming was, and its heritage was academic computer science in general and ALGOL in particular.


 * BASIC was, in fact, regarded by its creators as a simplified version of FORTRAN--just as hard to believe as Volapuk being based on English, but true--while Pascal was a simplified (and improved) version of ALGOL.


 * Well, there was an enormous amount of snobbery displayed, which basically persists to this day, between the two languages. Pascal was associated with the academic mainstream, BASIC with the hoi polloi. I don't remember exactly what Wirth really said, but it soon became corrupted by instructors and by arrogant young students who were proud of being in Pascal classes into something like "BASIC rots your mind."


 * Bill Gates, because of ego issues, was having none of that and Microsoft has always used versions of BASIC in its flagship products.


 * All of this is amazingly independent of the actual strengths and weaknesses of the two languages.


 * C sprung up in the late 1970s and carried different load of snobbish baggage with it. In particular, whereever there is a tradeoff between performance and safety, C/C++ opt for performance. Of course, if you are an imperfect mortal, the chances that your C program has serious bugs in it are higher than if you programmed in a safer language, but what macho programmer will admit to being imperfect?


 * Now, as for VB having good string handling... sorry, that's not true. It only has good string handling in comparison to languages which don't really have strings in them as fundamental data types at all. That does happen to include quite a few languages, including C and C++. However, VB's string operations are very weak compared to SNOBOL or MUMPS, to pick two other languages at random. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:10, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Again I am reverting some of your edits, DanP. Explanations:

Saying VB is controversial according to critics is redundant. If there are critics, there is controversy. Do you really think VB is not controversial?

Rephrased some other stuff that was redundant, such as the database paragraph, which I like btw.

re: "poor mathematical performance." I am reasonably sure this is the case. I added a dubious tag and I will remove it once I add a reference showing that VB6 does in fact have poor math performance.

I also want to note that I find your edits sloppy and haphazard. Please make sure your tenses and capitalization agree, and that your headings match their contents. For instance, removing the text "VB is criticized for" makes the list that follows it confusing. Rhobite 21:43, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)


 * Some of that is your POV. Removing the text "VB is criticized for" is NPOV.  You cannot leave that in there while some feel those very criticisms are precisely some of VB's strengths.  That is POV.  It is clearly a value judgement which ought to require changing to "VB is sometimes criticized for, but sometimes praised for", which seems quite lengthy and frivolous to me.
 * I apologize for capitalization mishaps. I will try better next time.  Much of the poor math performance that is complained about is often simply a misunderstanding of the compiler options.  You cannot compare C++, or some math-optimized language with VB, while leaving out the fact that VB sets, by default, its math performance to the slower compiler options.  Correctly used compiler options using floating point math yield rapid enough performance, outpacing all but a handful of other languages with similar feature sets.  That is my experience anyway, so please don't leave a blanket "poor math performance" without some qualification as to what performance and who is making that judgement.  See weasel words.
 * Outside of academia and some hacker code puritans, VB is not so overwhelmingly controversial. It is a language like any other, and it is just one package available.  This whole article zooms in on controversy like it is the sole reason for VB's existance, and perhaps that doesn't need to be repeated over and over.  I'm not defending VB at all, but just saying it does not merit a slanted POV. DanP 14:45, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * I do not agree that the performance has increased with VB5 because code was compiled. VB1 to VB3 are build from a legacy code base borrowed from QB that was written solely in assembly. VBA and VB4 to VB6 have been rewritten entirely. I did a lot of benchmarking and I can tell you that if we exclude VB.NET, VB3 is the fastest VB I found so far. There are some exceptions depending on what code you are running but globally this is the case. If I had to put all VB in order of performance, that would do: VB3, VB2, VB1, VB6, VB5, VB4, VBScript. Do your own benchmarking and you will see. VB5 added compilation mainly for marketing purpose and to prevent third party from doing runtime interpreters for other platforms. Before VB5 a project was started to do a VB runtime interpreter for linux, after the VB5 launch, that project was stopped because it became too complex.


 * I'd be interested in seeing any benchmark code you may have. Unless the VB compiler produces truly horrific intermediate representation, I'd be surprised if the performance for raw computational code is really worse when compiled than VB3 etc.  On the other hand, I'd be willing to believe that the forms engine has regressed, although it should be pretty rare to be doing things with forms that are CPU-bound.


 * I think it's doubtful that producing a VB interpreter for Linux became too complicated with VB5, which (aside from introducing compilation) did not significantly change the core language from VB4. If you were to tell me that it happened with VB4, that I could believe.  Regardless, there's still no reason (aside from possibly legality) that a VB compiler could not be written to target gcc. --Mr Wednesday 01:20, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Dan, if you can honestly say that array bases have never confused you in VB, I question your level of experience with the language. Rhobite 22:56, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * Not quite as much as outside VB. The constant juggling +1 and -1 to force everything to zero lower bound is commonplace in some languages.  VB seems to reduce this problem, though I'm not saying I prefer it.  I'm only saying some algorithms are simplified.  DanP 14:13, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * This is an issue with the BASIC language itself, not with VB. At least I think that's right; AFAIK the "OPTION BASE" statement is part of ANSI BASIC and common in BASIC dialects since the early eighties.
 * I wonder if it's asking too much to ask people to try to separate issues that pertain to VB from issues that pertain to BASIC itself? Once you've criticized Microsoft for deciding to make VB a dialect of BASIC, there's no need to go on and on criticizing Microsoft point-by-point for every individual disagreeable characteristic of BASIC.
 * Here's an interesting reference: Based arrays
 * Actually, ALGOL, ADA and Pascal all allow individual arrays to start at any base, so to my way of thinking it's a deficiency in C that you are forced to use zero-based arrays exclusively. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 18:33, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

BASIC and "mental mutilation" of programmers
I said above that Wirth said something that soon became corrupted by instructors and by arrogant young students who were proud of being in Pascal classes into something like "BASIC rots your mind." I was wrong in attributing this to Wirth. The BASIC programming language has a link to the source, which was Edsger Dijkstra in 1975, and the actual passage in question is (in part):


 * FORTRAN&mdash;"the infantile disorder"&mdash;by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
 * PL/I &mdash;"the fatal disease"&mdash;belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
 * It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
 * The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
 * APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

So, actually, Dijkstra's language was quite strong, but the criticism was being applied to virtually all of the most popular languages of the day. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 18:44, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Dijkstra was an important voice in programming, but he was a critic. It would be more unusual for a language NOT to be critisized by Dijkstra.--Samiam95124 19:44, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Link to "banker's method"
The article linked by "banker's method" doesn't mention said method. Something needs to be fixed but I'm not sure what. Deco 03:22, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Fixed. The original significant figures page had significance arithmetic split from it last month. Mark Hurd 16:05, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Visual Basic
Wikipedia is an on-line Encyclopaedia. Visual Basic is both a Programming Language and a commercial product, the commercial aspect unfortunately appears to raise the hackles of certain members of the IT community. Visual Basic has and is 'looked down on' by individuals and organisations citing that it is not a real programming language. Visual Basic 'warts and all' has its place and in professional hands is able to produce industrial strength applications, since Version 3, I know, I have been doings just that for 10+ year, as have my colleagues in number of organisations both large and small. The comment section of this article is being used by the detractors to voice their prejudices. An encyclopaedia is for information and facts not a forum for innuendo, prejudice and one-upmanship.

Nick.Adie

Importing VB6 Projects with VB.NET
I changed this line: "The VB.NET programming language is surprisingly very different to that of VB6, however, the application itself does feature the ability to import and convert existing VB6 project files." to "The VB.NET programming language is surprisingly very different to that of VB6." VB.NET can import VB6 projects.

Cwenger 01:42, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * The VB6 import facility results typically results in horrendous code and more often that not the best method of 'conversion' is a manual re-write. I think I may add something to the article to this effect.  I've seen the import facility spoken of in many places without mentioning it's issues and I believe this leads people to a false sense of ease of converting code from VB6 to VB.NET Ralphy 10:53, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Still POV?
Do people still consider this page POV? I just went through the page and made a number of edits, and think it is pretty much clear of POV statements. Since most programmers have a love and/or hate relationship with VB, opinions will probably always be present. Personally, I use VB when it makes sense, and use something else (usually C or Java) when it doesn't.

Perhaps we could create a list of what POV still remains? wrp103 (Bill Pringle) - Talk 15:42, 18 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I submit "many programmers have strong feelings regarding the quality of Visual Basic. Many programmers feel that VB is beneath them" as the bit of weasel-speak that made me flinch hardest while reading. Your edits are a great improvement, but to me the article still has the choppy feel of having been dragged up in bits here and there to a more neutral rendering.


 * I say keep the flag. The proportion of critical content (justified or not) to neutral is surprising to say the least in an encyclopedia topic dealing with a popular subject (I'm not counting us wikinerds as representative!) — and the breadth, detail, and rhetorical range of the criticism speak volumes when compared with the more prosaic neutral parts of the article.  All those quotes about people who learn VB being unable to learn good programming, and your new joke re VB not being used by anyone over 12, are sitting at the very centre of this article.  The opinions may be attributed and presented in a technically neutral sentence, but the selection and position of quotes still gives a strong bias.


 * I'm about a third-way through reading all the articles on the template by the way (that's how I arrived here tonight), and I have to say that in general their quality and style has been superb.  ~ Veledan • Talk + new 22:57, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Like Ann Coulter Discussing Liberals
Whoever wrote this page is the Ann Coulter of VB haters. It could not be more viciously snide. Letting him continue to touch this page is like letting Ann Coulter write the wikipedia article titled "Liberals" or (on the other side) like letting Saddam Hussein write the wikipedia page titled "George W Bush". Impartial dispensation of information? Not so much.


 * I agree and have you read the Ann Coulter article here? It could well have been written by Saddam Hussain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.70.155.252 (talk • contribs)

I came here thinking I would contribute tips and tricks from my considerable (13 years) experience as a *very* serious engineer, but I found no place to interject because the entire page consists of sideswiping comments in the style, ironically, of someone who *is* twelve years old himself, and very intent on proving how much cooler he is because he's learning C. Extremely disappointing and immature content.

If the original writer continues in this manner I think their editorship title should be revoked, assuming they have one. They are using wikipedia to spread bile, not information. You do not come away from this page better informed for having read it. I don't know how to call for a vote for this, but I hereby suggest the entire page except for the few useful bits should be scrapped, begun anew, then rewritten organically. This page should be a rich resource, and read a lot more like a technical manual, than a tantrum. GreatAlfredini Sat 08/27/05 06:24 PM Pacific Time.


 * So rewrite it yourself rather than just complaining about it. Everyone's an editor, here. :-) GreenReaper 03:24, 28 August 2005 (UTC)


 * [+] But aren't we supposed to discuss it before making radical changes? The entire "criticism" and "controversy" sections, which draw most of my fire, should be deleted or greatly whittled down (I claim).  If reasonable people agree then yeah, I will do that.  GreatAlfredini Sun 08/28/05 08:30 AM Pacific Time


 * Hi GreatAlfredini and welcome to the debate :-)
 * I agree with you (see my comments in the last section) that the article needs a rewrite — and the only thing that's stopped me jumping in with it is that I lack the technical expertise on the subject, so I've been toying with the idea of asking here for assistance with correcting and inserting needed technical info if I were to attempt the rewrite myself.
 * Go ahead if you feel up to it! If your replacement article is obviously better, and takes account of the efforts and viewpoints that have gone into it so far, you'll get support for your new version.  My vague plan was to copy the structure for a new version from a related example that does read like an encyclopedia article (e.g. Python programming language or C programming language), rework the good info from the current article into it, and go from there.  As you noted re the criticisms, a short summary of the more important up-to-date and factual examples should be sufficient.
 * ~ Veledan • Talk + new 10:23, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree. I have used VB a bit, but it's been years.  I use PHP, Ruby, Perl, C, etc.  This article is immature and lacking in valuable factual content.  I want to know the facts about VB without quotes from people who absolutely hate it, even if it is Dijkstra.  Can people get together and make a balanced article that looks like it belongs in an encyclopedia?


 * A comment about Dijkstra, since I put that in. I hate language snobbery. I work mostly in C and C++. I did an important project in VB circa 1991 and I do significant work in REALBasic (a somewhat VB-like tool) today.


 * We should not exclude cultural aspects of computing from our articles on computer languages.


 * The objective fact is that language snobbery exists and that there is a widespread animus against VB. This expresses itself in very serious ways, such as lower salaries for VB programmers. The article should document this animus but should not itself reflect it.


 * The point that I was trying to make with the Dijstra quotation is that many knocks on VB--to call them "criticisms" dignifies them too much--are not really knocks on VB at all, but knocks on BASIC. The situation had its roots in the seventies, for two reasons. First, BASIC had its roots as a sort of proletarian "peoples' language" intended for non-programmers, as part of the Dartmouth curriculum. Second, the entire microcomputer phenomenon was created by hackers and hobbyists, who were at the time outside of the computing community which looked down at them and the languages (the "street BASICs," as Kemeny and Kurtz called them) which they implemented.


 * The Dijkstra quote is important for two reasons. First, it illustrates the prevailing attitude. Second, it was actually the direct source of a certain amount of computer-language "trash talk." Comp sci students studying PASCAL would have heard this sentiment, perhaps filtered through their instructors, and would tell their friends programming Integer BASIC on their Apple ]['s that "BASIC rots your mind."


 * Bill Gates, of course, along with Allen, personally implemented an early BASIC interpreter and therefore there is a good bit of Microsoft ego tied up in the language. That is probably the explanation of why the language underpinning VB is a variant of BASIC rather than (say) Smalltalk.


 * When Visual C++ came out I was very disappointed to find out that there was only a marketing similarity between the two languages. I was hoping that it was VB with a C++ interpreter replacing the BASIC interpreter. People who do not know VB are sometimes unaware of how very, very few of VB's real virtues are possessed by VC.


 * Dpbsmith (talk) 14:18, 1 September 2005 (UTC)


 * [+] Okay, I will do some of the work then, since people seem ok with this. I will cut most of the immature and unhelpful "criticism" and "controversy" sections, and replace them with a skeleton of the features present in vb, how it works, how it does things, a few other things.  I just don't want Mr. "I reversed your changes and put the crap back in" up there to trash all my work and revert the page to a VB-skewering article. GreatAlfredini Wed 08/31/05 11:33 AM Pacific Time
 * In my experience this tends not to happen if your version is obviously better for Wikipedia as a whole, especially when a few more people come in after and add their own material (and it sounds like there are a few of us just waiting for someone to get around to the initial rewrite!). Even people who dislike a topic usually have the project at heart and mean well.  I'm looking forward to reading it!  Best wishes ~ Veledan • Talk + new 21:34, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Visual Basic Popularity Note
I can't believe that no one noted that (my addition):

It is one of the most popular programming languages ever created in terms of number of users. It is estimated that there are at least 3 million Visual Basic programmers, making it more popular than such notables as C++ and Java.

To have this not be noted and to have info on Hypercard here is a disservice to this great encyclopedia which we all love. By the way I remember getting a Hypercard (or Supercard?) compiler error that said "Expecting the". Can you believe a compiler error because of a missing definite article? Now that's a joke!

BZ


 * A few people tried adding this info before, and it had been removed as POV. Unless you cite your sources, your edit might be reverted, too. --tyomitch 07:19, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * OK, I removed the numbers and C++/Java and changed everything to: "It is one of the most popular programming languages for business programming in terms of number of users." I think this is now bulletproof.  I limited the scope to "business programming", I defined popularity as "number of users" and I use the phrase "one of the most popular" which does not claim absolute numerical superiority.  In contrast the C language entry asserts that it is "most popular programming language for writing system software".  What do you think?  I will make no more edits on this issue.  BZ


 * It seems that you missed the point. There's no law that Wikipedia shouldn't give exact number of VB programmers; just point where you've got that number from, and it's fine. --tyomitch 13:10, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * VB having the most users was something that I heard repeated many times, so I assumed it to be true. I just pulled the smallest number I could find from this e-week article http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1250797,00.asp.  Later, as I started to investigate further, I noticed that the numbers given are all over the place and so it didn't make sense to give a number and make the comparisons.  BZ

An anonymous user added an uncited popularity claim ("atleast[sic] 3 million programmers", and that it is more popular than C++ and Java). I changed it to a referenced value, but I'm not sure my wording belongs in the intro, as it comes off as not in favor of VB. Should I just remove the declining figure or does it belong in a Criticism section? The Rod 20:24, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

On Error Keyword
The On Error keyword is suggested as a legacy component of visual basic, but it is often required for components that throw errors but have no mechanism for pre-determining that the error will occur. An example of this might be the MsCommCtrl.


 * Not applicable in VB.net afaik. They use a try/catch pair there. Still applies in VB6, though. Let me know if I'm wrong. --dionyziz 12:29, 1 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't know what the history of On Error is, but I think "legacy" has an incorrect connotation. It's quite powerful, and while it may not be as "pretty" as try/catch, it's no less capable (except for lacking the ability to use an arbitrary error object, but I've never needed anything not included in the built-in Err). --Mr Wednesday 16:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Request for external link
Can someone post the link to the free edition of Visual Basic 6 hidden within the depths of Microsoft.com?


 * I believe what you are talking about is Visual Basic 5.0 Control Creation Edition, which can be downloaded from . A FAQ can be found here . -MarkKB 08:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
 * That's the one. Thanks!

Threading
VB does support threading but its not as simple/easy/unsafe as other languages. It is done by using ActiveX EXEs and "Out of Process" COM objects. If you use CreateObject on public object in your own project, VB will start a new thread for it. --Dean Earley 11:57, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
 * There's no way for two threads to communicate in VB, right? It's as though they are run in separate processes. IMO that's not the thing to be called "support for multithreading". --tyomitch 12:30, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, As its all done via COM, its just "Object.Method". It uses apartment threading so calls in are serialised/held until the thread is ready to process the pending calls. --Dean Earley 20:40, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I see; then the article should have more details on this rather than "Simple threading support not present". Something like, "multithreading only supported by creating apartment-threaded COM objects on new threads" (I can't word this well right now.) --tyomitch 06:33, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

VB6 allows in-process(dll), out of process(exe), and com objects. You can also use APIs. These are the choices for threading. These are not allowed in the design and debugging enviroment.--Sthue 19:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Just an issue of syntax?
In the section "Visual Basic and VB.NET":

"Some believe VB.NET support will diminish, with C# becoming the preferred language for .NET programming. This is despite the fact that both languages compile to the same .NET Common Intermediate Language, with the programming language choice merely a matter of syntax preference."

I believe that this is an overstatement. A basic program written in C++ utilizing OOP could (for the most part) be converted to C, this does not make the choice between C++ and C one of simply syntax.
 * The article does mean "the difference between C# and VB.NET is mostly in syntax" (and that's true). The quoted sentence is supposed to mean "not only the languages are equally powerful, they also get compiled into the same MSIL code." --tyomitch 00:50, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Other criticisms of Visual Basic
This section seems to be singular in it's presence across pages devoted to programming languages. Why is it here? The first point, 'Not being very portable', could apply to many languages. Im the case of VB, one of it's strengths is that it is included in so many applications in it's derivative form, VBA, which is even available on the Mac. This has been a factor in the growth of its popularity and surely it counts as a degree of portability.

The second point, "Being too big" states that the required runtime is 1.4MB. How can this be too big? It also states that 23MB is required for VB.NET but this is true of any .NET language yet I do not see similar criticisms on the C# page, for instance. The point about Visual Studio is totally irrelevent. This is the development IDE and one would expect it to be rather big when considering the other languages and tools it includes. How can this possibly be applied as a criticism of VB? Again, one would exepect to see similar criticisms on the VC++ page, etc. but one does not.

3rd point, "Having bugs in the IDE". Show me an IDE without bugs? Indeed, as the point mentions most of theses have been fixed, so why bother mentioning this?

4th point, "In VB6 and prior versions, the use of many core OS functions required directly calling the Windows API.". The same applies to C++ yet I do not see a similar criticism there. Most of the work I've done in VB (and I have been programming with it for many years) has not needed calls to the API unless advanced tasks are required which are not covered by the standard API. This is acceptable for a language like Visual Basic.

In summary I believe this whole section should be removed. It is POV and irrelevant. Unless anyone can convince me otherwise I intend to remove it. --Ralphy 09:04, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Agreed. However, the necessity of a large runtime is still worth mentioning somewhere else in the article. Most other languages can be compiled into independent executables, unlike VB. --tyomitch 09:24, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
 * If the runtime required for VB6 is 1.4MB then that's very small. The current MS platform, .NET, requires a 23MB runtime (the framework) and can't be compiled into a standalone exe either. --Ralphy 10:03, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
 * It's around 2 MB for latest SP. That's minute compared to .NET framework, but it makes a really heavy addition for tiny (tens of KBs) utilities. --tyomitch 12:48, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. I've removed the section and I've added a line about the runtime to 'Language Features' --Ralphy 13:38, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Microsoft AntiSpyware
it was exposed that Microsoft's new anti-spyware offering, Microsoft AntiSpyware, was coded in Visual Basic 6.0. I'm sure that it's true, but can someone link to a reference that supports this? But further to the point - Does it even belong here? Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of programs have been written with Visual Basic, so what makes Microsoft AntiSpyware significant enough to be in this entry? DBBell 17:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't know of any written reference, but you can tell yourself by using Spy++ (Or any other utility to see window classes). The class names are mostly VBThunder* which is the window class names used by VB. --Dean Earley 19:11, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Why is this significant? Because now Microsoft won't be supporting their own product in a few years, unless they make the painful translation from VB6 to .NET. They will be feeling a little of the pain that the aggreived users are feeling. --Mike Van Emmerik 05:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

the study done in 2003 of VB's future popularity
I don't find the emphasis on the newly added reference to that 2003 study to be interesting enough to appear as prominent as it does in this article. That's a long time ago. What actually happened since then? - Bevo 21:05, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I only added that study to give a citation for this edit, which said:
 * Visual Basic is one of the most popular programming languages ever created and there are atleast 3 million programmers that made it more popular than other languages like C++ and Java.
 * That type of statement has appear in this article a few times without citing sources, so I found a source that gave a qualitative estimate of VB programmers. As you say, though, the study is somewhat outdated. A more current one would be much better to cite instead. Or, feel free to remove it entirely if we cannot find a relevant, current estimate. The Rod 02:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

A minor issue with wording
The following phrase is currently present in the “Controversy” section: “many programmers have strong feelings regarding the quality of Visual Basic and its ability to compete with newer languages like Python”. I am afraid that Visual Basic is at least not older than Python, since Python was created in 1990 (according to the corresponding article), whereas Visual Basic 1.0 saw daylight in 1991. I think this passage should be somehow reworded. --qvvx 19:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I remove "like Python" from that sentence. How does it look now? The Rod 03:57, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I think it is OK now. Although I am not quite sure if the original meaning intended by the author has been preserved. If we compare Visual Basic to Python, then the article should say “its abilitiy to compete with other languages like Python”. If we compare Visual Basic to newer languages, we should mention these languages. I guess that the original meaning is that Python became more popular recently, and that it represents newer practices; thus Visual Basic may seem somewhat old and outdated in comparison. But I am no expert and I think that someone with a deeper understanding of the subject should check this out. --qvvx 11:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

XD
"As of 2003, 52 percent of software developers used Visual Basic, making it the most popular programming language at that time. 43 percent of those Visual Basic developers, however, planned to move to other languages." &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.140.134.165 (talk &bull; contribs) 2006-02-24 23:01:05  (UTC)

Dumping VB - Financial Impact on Users
I feel that perhaps something should be said about the financial effect of Microsofts decision to dump VB on companies that used it. I work for a company that exclusively used VB for many years and we have years worth of VB code. In fact our main product is in VB6 and probably represents £400,000 of development man-time. We tried using the VB6 conversion wizard in .NET, but frankly that is not a realistic option. The only way to convert our product to .NET is to rewrite it. That is something we have neither the time nor money to do. I thought we might be able to do it in a piecemeal fashion by gradually replacing DLLs with .NET components with interop, but that has proven to be nightmarish. It's a big problem for us. We don't have the time or money to rewrite and because everything is in VB6, more VB6 code tends to get written. I suspect we are not the only company in this position.

In contrast to our predicament, our competitors that chose to use Java must be laughing now. They don't have to worry about a rewrite and can instead concentrate on writing new features. The tragedy is that management have decided we should write all new software in C# .NET. How many years will it be before we go through the whole cycle again with Microsoft dumping .NET after we have invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in it? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.34.139.186 (talk &bull; contribs) 2006-02-25 17:49:49 (UTC)


 * Without a good source for the claim that moving to .Net negatively impacts users, such a claim is unencyclopedic. Consider the point of view that continuing to develop VB6 applications, while still an option, may be even more costly because VB lacks features now considered crucial to software development projects of reasonable complexity. The Rod (&#9742; Smith) 23:02, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
 * There are certainly many companies that have been impacted in this way. This might be worth mentioning, especially if we can find something in the programming magazines about it. Deco 23:11, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * It's a bit like just finishing your 2000 page autobiography, only to be informed that the English language is being discontinued in favour of Esperanto. You are then told not to worry because you can just paste your autobiography into "Yahoo Esperanto Translator" and get a perfect translation. Yeah, right. I'm surprised that effected companies have not been more vocal about the financial impact. Then again, I suppose they do not want to let their customers know their products are in trouble. I know that the company I work for does not want to publicize the fact.
 * If anyone can cite a reputable source discussing the financial impact, put it in the article. Otherwise, it is original research. I disagree with that analogy, by the way. Although an autobiography is only useful if people continue to read the language in which it was written, a program is useful if it can be modified and recompiled with an existing compiler, regardless of whether new compilers are written for it. The Rod (&#9742; Smith) 17:18, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with all of the above. VB6 is a perfect example of the risks of, and downside to a single-vendor lock-in. You have no way of knowing how the company will decide to change what you thought was the deal. But, as always, if something is widely believed to be true (Discontinuation of VB6 is adversely affecting companies financially) it not be hard to find a reasonable source that says so, and cite it. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:32, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Article focus
I look at the top of the article and I see


 * This article is about the Visual Basic language shipping with Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 and earlier. For the Visual Basic shipping with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, see Visual Basic .NET.

I look at the botom of the article and I see


 * 4.2 Timeline of Visual Basic .NET

Is it just me or is there something wrong here... -- 204.209.24.2 18:50, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Nitpicking: sorta meaningless phrase?
"Visual Basic was designed to be usable by all programmers, whether novice or expert."

That seems irritatingly content-free to me. First, does anyone have a good verifiable source reference to any documentation that says specifically that that really was a design goal, or is this just after-the-fact marketing language?

Second, what would be an example of a language that was designed to be unusable by experts? By definition, isn't any language "usable" by an expert?

If it can really be shown that usability by "experts" was a formally articulated design goal--with a reference, please--then the sentence should stay. If it's just a vague counter to the idea that catering to novices makes VB somewhat less appropriate for experts, then it's an unsourced point of view. In the same category as "Pagan Pink Ripple Wine is designed to be enjoyed by all tipplers, whether derelicts or oenophiles," or "BIPPCO training wheels are designed to be usable by both novice and expert cyclists," or "A manly scent that women like, too." Dpbsmith (talk) 16:22, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I edited that line so that it says, "Visual Basic was designed to be easy to learn and use.". I agree with your comments.

VB6 Icon
There seem to have been a few edits regarding the VB6 Icon. Is there any problem with it going to the right of the "this is a vb6 article" header once it's replaced with a tidy version? Similar to the way its used at --Dean Earley 11:12, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Attempt at Controversy Rewrite
Ok, I copied the current Controversy section over to Talk:Visual_Basic/VB_Controversy, and started removing a bunch of stuff. I am thinking about removing the entire list of "Programming constructs not present in Visual Basic", I am not really sure if it is needed in the controversy section. It might be better in the language features section, and remove the comparison to other languages. I removed most of the stuff like bit shifting on the list anyway... that was mostly just a bunch of minor stuff that served no purpose. I also removed the behaviors... that should be moved to Language Features, if it is kept at all.

I left the Dijkstra quote, and attempted to provide a little explination of why a lot of people hate VB. I do make several claims without sources or examples "Advantaced programming techniques" (which?) this is very broad... "Visual Basic has espically been singled out for this criticism because most software written in VB starts out as small and RAD applications." that last sentence might be better as something like most critics percieve VB that way, when in fact it might not be true.

In any case, I am not the greatest at NPOV (I lean against VB6, having had to use it for 3-4 years before my company bit the bullet and upgraded the code to VB.NET. Many of the features and code I write in the program in VB.NET could just not have been done in the VB6 version of our program) Wuzzeb 00:35, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Weasel Words
There are weasel words hiding all over the page. --ScarletSpiderDave 22:14, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Debugging a weakness?
In what sense, exactly, is debugging a weakness of VB? I would classify it as a strength, the interactive debugger is every bit as capable as the debugger for VC, and the ability to execute arbitrary code in the immediate window is a huge plus that I've never seen anywhere else. It's even possible to debug a VB executable in an external debugger, although you won't get much use out of this with anything involving objects because of the COM implementation of properties. --Mr Wednesday 16:09, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, I've rewritten this into a strength. Have also added a blurb about debugging into VB code using other debuggers, something I do have some personal experience with (both the VC IDE debugger and the Microsoft Windows debugger). --Mr Wednesday 21:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Error handling
The article states that "On Error Goto" provides "basic" error handling, and VB does not have exception handling. I think the use of the word "basic" is misleading, as the "On Error" facilities are very capable. Also, I disagree that the error facility is not exception handling. It's closer to exception handling than to signals or event handling, with the main proviso being that the only exception handled is an Error object (which is still capable of providing arbitrary numeric codes and description text). --Mr Wednesday 16:18, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I've re-written this a bit to give a more accurate picture of the capabilities of the On Error feature. --Mr Wednesday 21:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Typecasting
The article claims that conversion functions are used instead of typecasting. However, the Cxxx family are all built-ins, rather than library functions, so I think it is a reasonable argument that these are typecasts, rather than functions. --Mr Wednesday 16:25, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

vb6 session.png
Maybe we need a new screen, the code in this one is ghastly, with it's superflous Me.Show and the horrible use of End instead of Unload Me!


 * Not to mention the superfluous assignment to lblHello.Caption (already set in the property form, according to the displayed form image...). :) --Mr Wednesday 18:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Visual Basic 2005 & Visual Basic Express 2005 (VB8)
This article does not discuss that Visual Studio 2005 has Visual Basic 2005 (version 8) or that there is a free version of the Visual Studio suite named Visual Studio Express 2005 which also has a Visual Basic Express 2005 (version 8.0.50727.42) --150.226.95.18 15:03, 12 October 2006 (UTC) Paul Deveau


 * This is the VB classic page. Visual Basic .NET is over there. --Mr Wednesday 04:55, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Polymorphism
A recent edit by Jitbit1 claims that VB does not have polymorphism. I dispute this assertion, as implementation of interfaces creates polymorphism on any properties and methods published by that interface (this is a design feature that I have used on more than one occasion). Beyond this, there is further polymorphism through the IDispatch interface, where anything called through a late-bound object is treated polymorphically. In the absence of discussion to the contrary, I will revert in a day or so. --Mr Wednesday 15:57, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I have removed polymorphism as a feature not present. --Mr Wednesday 17:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

History of VB = MacBasic plus Hypercard link
The content of the linked page is interesting, but it suffers from major POV issues (and is largely unsourced). Considering it's an external link, not content on this page nor a citation thereof, is this a problem? --Mr Wednesday 21:38, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I was the lead developer of the "Visual" part of Visual Basic. The "MacBasic plus Hypercard" page is wrong in just about every way—it's just a misinformed rant. We were aware of Hypercard, but none of us had spent any time using it. Hypercard wasn't the target at all. We were writing a shell for Windows that was intended to replace the infamous MS-DOS Executive. --Michael Geary 06:34, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I edited the article to remove some vandalism, and while I was at it I removed this link. Since the article's facts are wrong, all that's left is the author's opinion of Bill Gates. In its place I added a link to Alan Cooper's "The Father of Visual Basic" article, which is the true story, albeit with a little too much "I" and not enough "we". :-) (Disclaimer: I am mentioned in the article.) --Michael Geary 14:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

When Visual Basic Came Along
When Visual Basic came along, it was the cat's meow with respect to creating a graphical user interface for standalone Windows computers. It sure beat writing Windows applications per Petzold or per MFC. It provided a home for COM technologies much easier to use and understand than ATL, stubs, proxies, GUIDs and all that rot. The ease of producing tangible results was a boon to the product's popularity. That's why there are 3 million VB programmers. Lotsa legacy VB code out in the world. Bizarre line-by-line syntax, Dim statements to "declare" anything. Why Dim? Because in the mid-1960s, Dartmouth BASIC supported integer arrays that had to be declared before use with a Dim statement -- kinda like a declaration. So, by extension, why not declare an instance of a class with a Dim statement? --21:36, 1 November 2006 (UTC)151.200.238.201


 * The behavior of variable declaration VB is similar to older-styled Fortran, where variables had implicit type and you would "declare" an array using a DIMENSION statement. In fact, there are a lot of Fortran-isms in VB. Anyway, was there something from that paragraph that you wanted to see go into the article, or are you just musing? --Mr Wednesday 22:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Rapid Application Development
I suggest we take out the references to Rapid Application Development, as if visual basic favors one methodology over another, I suggest we change:

"VB was derived heavily from BASIC and enables the rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications"

to

"VB was derived heavily from BASIC and enables the fast development of graphical user interface (GUI) applications"

or something similar, any suggestions? -Pat 12:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I think we should leave RAD, as VB is a prime example of a RAD IDE. --tonsofpcs (Talk) 13:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The statement is misleading or confusing, as most people who have read it seem to think using VB is RAD. You can use any methodology with VB, I don't see everyones fascination with RAD, in my opinion it isn't even a good methodology. The sentence doesn't give the reader any useful information, it's like saying "VB Enables the top down development of GUI's", I don't think microsoft specifically designed it as a RAD Tool, although if Microsoft says that VB was intended for the RAD methodology then add it as a citation, else I think we should change it. Because surely you could apply any methodology to VB just as much as RAD. Pat 16:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Link to Kepware
I have removed for the second time a link to an OPC Client on the Kepware site. I have done this for several reasons. To begin with, the links should be general in nature, not a specific program. Another reason I did this is because the Kepware page seems dubious, and was nominated for speedy delete, which is why I regard this as linkspam.

IMHO, if/when Kepware is deemed a legitimate page, and the site contains pages on general VB topics, then perhaps this topic could be revisited. wrp103 (Bill Pringle) 20:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for you response. 24.97.250.66 22:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The Patented Technology section
What is the point of this section supposed to be? It looks to me like it's just more POV rambling about the platform dependence issue (a legitimate criticism). Among other things, despite the heading, there are no actual examples of patent limitations in the paragraph body. Is there anything worth salvaging (possibly merging into the previous paragraph), or should the entire paragraph be deleted? --Mr Wednesday 21:44, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I would have no problem if the section got deleted. wrp103 (Bill Pringle) 23:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)