.Net Tips and Tricksby Peter Vogel

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Visual Basic 6: Old Tools Never Die...

It's been twelve years since the last release of the "non-.NET" version of Visual Basic and five years since support was terminated. But there's still room in the toolspace for new products.

This month eXontrol released their eXCalendar, eXEdit and three other OCX controls (all part of their eXsuite package). Also this month, BCL Technologies released easyPDF SDK for "any language that supports COM objects." And Korzh.com released EasyQuery.Ax, a COM/ActiveX extension to their Easy Query product line.

All of these products are available in .NET versions (or are part of a product line that includes .NET versions). But what's interesting is that these product announcements all featured COM/ActiveX/OCX implementations. I made a very good living from Visual Basic 6 for a long time and, while I'm not currently developing in it, it's a testament to the power of the tool that it (and its COM brethren) still provide a market for tool developers.

Posted by Peter Vogel on 12/01/2010 at 10:00 AM


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Reader Comments:

Thu, Dec 16, 2010 mark juras Dublin, Ohio

I also love VB6 for its speed and simplicity. But it is frozen in time -- last major release was around 1998. The world moves on and VB6 is getting farther behind. Many COM components are also over a decade old. The supply of willing and able VB6 people will spend there time on other things. VB6/COM systems will suffer incompatibilities and failures and it will be hard to find people to fix things. This is not a bright future for businesses who insist on running on VB6. See a business case for modernization here: http://www.greatmigrations.com/resources_business_case.aspx

Fri, Dec 10, 2010 VB Dude

The reason it is still used is because it is effective and it works, even when it is abused. I leverage the very stuff that C and C variant snobs complain the most about such as the ability to mix and match data types without type conversion, especially strings. (As long as you are aware that you are doing so and clearly comment that you are doing it). I think the reason the CS major guys hate it is that VB6 proved that anybody can create code and get results. (Not that anybody should mind you...)

Thu, Dec 9, 2010 Karl E. Peterson

I just ran across another set of tools that are still rolling out, and are just damn impressive. In particular, the new Cairo graphics package for VB6!

http://www.thecommon.net/3.html

Enjoy...

Mon, Dec 6, 2010 Allen Texas

I have a program we still sell nationally in VB6 that we ported from DOS. Finding programmers is a problem but it still serves us and many customers very well.

Fri, Dec 3, 2010

The market for VB6 is still better than that for VB.NET, believe it or not.

Thu, Dec 2, 2010 Russell Mazonde Harare, Zimbabwe

I loved Visual Basic 6. The first programming language i used outside of pascal. Most people think because it is so old it doesn't have a use but it is still relevant in most things today.The first thing i experimented with were OCX objects and that made a world of craziness. I agree with you, Old tools never die

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