"Visual Basic And Weird" Topic

It has been a long while since I've written any code. I happened upon a copy of VB 6.0 Professional, a how-to guide, and a quick reference chart all for under $10, so I figured I'd give that a go. I then found out you can get a stripped version of the latest version of VB.NET from MS for free, so that's the way I went.

I found a lot of venom on various forums about .NET, etc., but the two products seemed pretty similar -- at first. However, at some point they must've appointed someone from the Mad Hatter's tea party to guide language development at MS:

There are wizards/tools/whatevers for all kinds of stuff but no longer a WAIT/DELAY/PAUSE type command. Some of the kluges people have put together for that are pretty interesting.

GOTO is still around but they got rid of GOSUB. In fact, something I was reading suggested GOSUB lead to hard-to-read code. When I was doing comp. sci. as electives, that sort of code writing was encouraged as being more organized.

Every possible kind of indefinite loop is supported *including* a new type that I've never seen before. At least five types are supported. This boggles my mind since only one type is required.

Some of the weirdness is probably related to backwards compatibility, but since there is a migration tool I'm not sure why it was necessary.

So far, I've found exactly one area where the .NET version of VB was more intuitive: VB Control Arrays vs. sticking separate controls into a control container in .NET.

In any case, my "solution" (apparently the new word for "program" like "app," "application," and "applet") is coming along nicely. This despite the manual for the Active X control for the hardware I'm using being written by an ESL person.

You do know that VB is obsolete, and Microsoft doesn't even give any support for VB any more. That's why you got VB 6.0 so cheap. .NET is the supported programming language now, and is the one supported by Microsoft now.

All major outfits are switching to .NET now because of that.
And yes, you might argue that VB is much better to work with, but when did that ever have anything to do with the MS gods making anything obsolete or not?

GOTO is still around but they got rid of GOSUB. In fact, something I was reading suggested GOSUB lead to hard-to-read code. When I was doing comp. sci. as electives, that sort of code writing was encouraged as being more organized.

Your comp sci course encouraged use of GOTO?????

I always thought it had been viewed as sloppy programming except in a few instances, such as in error handling, ie, in VB on error goto err_proc. I know when i did fortran back in 1981, we were encouraged to use ifs and loops instead.
--
Tim

No, he meant that GOSUB was encouraged. GOTO has been frowned upon ever since Dr. Dijkstra's paper in the late 60s.

I haven't written a line of code since being laid off in 2004 after 25 years. Changed career paths, don't make as much money, but much happier as a therapist specializing in orthopedic & sports massage.

Now I write poetry & bad fiction instead of "solutions." lol

I'm not in the VB side of things, I did webby based apps, but the thing about VB.NET is that, even more than VB, it is supposed to be event based.

So form loads up, execute all the events you need to prepare the form

Person clicks button, button click refers to a SUBROUTINE, executes the code therein

GOTOS and GOSUBS are not really the thing, compared to passing paramters into subroutines and functions

Apparently you can end FOR . . . NEXT with ENDFOR. Wow.

Yep, I meant GOSUB. It's just insane to me that it's gone, but GOTO is still around. I have not had occasion to use either since I'm CALLing, _EVENTing, _CLICKing, etc. everywhere.

Either of the VBs I've tried have to be about the easiest way to produce Windows code that I've seen. I think I'll try out Lazarus next.

I'm in a similar situation. I find .Net a lot better, but you have to change the way you think code.

Strings are still a bit of a problem. They are the single most commonly used variable type, but the string object could have many more usefull methods.

The hardest thing I find is finding good documentation. Documentation either assumes you know a lot about VB.Net, or that you have no knowledge of programming at all. Documentation that assumes you may know a lot about programming, but not exactly how to do it in VB.Net, seems to be missing.

I got VB2008 free off the net from MS

I did too, hence the discussion.