Posted: 12/12/2007 8:39:25 PM EDT
| What is a legitimate place to get a copy of Visual Basic 6? I want to code some applications in the language I used in high school and I don't want to bother learning this new .NET crap. I'd like to get a legit copy of VB6. What's the best place? |
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www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Visual-Studio-Professional-Version/dp/B000CSX23M/ref=pd_bbs_4?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1197524441&sr=8-4 Or man-up, learn a little .NET for free... www.microsoft.com/express/vb/Default.aspx |
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A VB6 programmer calling .NET crap. If you were a C or C++ programmer, I'd think "Well, okay", but the irony here...oh, the irony.  Anyway, to answer your question, it's going to be difficult to find, since pretty much everybody else who makes money at it has moved on.  EDIT: Or, I suppose they still sell regular old Visual Studio, like DVDTracker posted. |
I work in C++ as well, but I have a special love for VB6. It was the first language I learned, and I did my best to push the engine to the limits. I made text-based adventures (one was published on Download.com ), side-scrolling games, and whatever I could think of.My favorite project was to have the computer randomly generate letters. Then I had the program go through in order and see what words were written. I was hoping for a satanic message, but the best I ever got was ADD AN ASS
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| It would be easier to learn a little .NET than dig up dinosaurs. It will be easier to write better code once you learn .NET anyway. Besides, you can get Visual Studio 2005 Express for free. And there is a little backwards compatibility for some of the basic tasks. |
I've been to C++. As much as I love semi-colons and compiler errors that look like a string of hex and symbols had an orgy, I'll stick to VB6 for farting around and making silly applications. |
So far, the one's you've described can be made as shell scripts. You don't even need a compiler.
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You can make a text-based adventure in a shell script? 
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I missed the winky at the end...just giving you shit. I have a special hate for VB ever since our operations team wrote a bunch of terrible production control tools in VB. After the database came screeching to a halt from their shitty queries, engineering was forced to rewrite the tools in Java to make use of our JDBC connection handling framework. Fuck that noise. |
VB = abysmal for databases. My least favorite chapter in high school on them. Microsoft JET (don't even remember what it does, all I know is it sucks) can lick my taint. |
I don't even know what a shell-script is. Much less anything with UNIX. I'm just a sad little amateur programmer with some big dreams
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Man, you'll totally dig them. You don't even have to use semicolons. 
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No more cout? |
Depends on what you do with it. I write VB all the time for quick internal projects, it's easy for me to switch between VB and VBA for Office macros (and I write a lot of macros). I'm not a software engineer, I just write programs to do most of my work for me. VB.NET is a great language for non-developers to write useful programs to automate your work IMHO without C++ complexity. C# and VB compile to the same assembly, so no big difference. |
I lol'ed. Anyway, to roboman I would recommend the free Visual Basic 2008 Express. It's similar enough to vb6 that you will be able to hack together those simple programs you did before in fairly short order but has enough object oriented modern capabilities that you will be able to step up and learn more about programming if you want to. |
It doesn't help that the standard libraries only produce pseudo-random numbers. |
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Some of you guys crack me up. There is nothing inherently wrong with VB 6. The real problem is with VB 6 programmers. VB 6 is thought of as a toy language mostly because it has the highest number of toy programmers using it. That's the real problem. It's probably the best language to use for any kind of COM programming. That includes database front-ends that use ADO, and Office Add-Ins. There are hundreds of vertical applications written in VB. ISVs have made a living off of VB for years. I think C# and .NET have a lot more to offer for the future, but VB is still the king of COM. |
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Eh - VB is alright. I learned it a long time ago and then forgot it (It always seemed to me that VB was like the programming language for 'normal' people - kind of like how 'normal' people make webpages using DreamWeaver instead of actually typing up HTML). I'm personally a fan of Java - C++ is alright, but it's really just C with OOP and a standard library tacked on - Java was designed from the ground up to be OOP and I love the whole virtual machine/portability aspect of Java - it will run on damn near anything - from a PC to a Cell phone to a GPS unit.
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That is not even the real problem. It is when non-engineers write mission-critical applications with VB, then expect engineering to integrate their toy program into the production product. As long as engineering stays in the engineering group, life is good (mostly). When every marketing douchebag with Visual Studio thinks that he is Richard Stallman, then we have a problem. |
shell scripting is a vital skill for anyone working with *nix based machines. It is incredibly powerful. My friend made a flash game of a shell based text adventure. you had to cd to different folders to go where you wanted to go. then edit files to have conversations with the NPC's Personally I started on C++ then went to vb.net but te best language ive ever learned was java. |
Same here. I've written a lot of VBA code to automate data and reporting tasks. It works great for that kind of small stuff. |
