Advice or Feedback. - VB6 versus something new ? - TechHui2024-03-28T13:25:26Zhttp://www.techhui.com/forum/topics/advice-or-feedback-vb6-versus-something-new?xg_source=activity&feed=yes&xn_auth=noYou could always look at Java…tag:www.techhui.com,2011-10-25:1702911:Comment:999612011-10-25T10:50:35.867ZTim Kroonhttp://www.techhui.com/profile/TimKroon
<p>You could always look at Java. The platform is free, and they have a lot of free and open source development environments and tools. It will take a little getting used to if your accustomed to developing on microsoft platforms, but for your intentions it may turn out to be a simple endeavour. It get's a little hairy when you're doing enteprise (server) development but for desktop you should be fine. </p>
<p>My suggestion would be downloading the latest JDK and Eclipse. The beauty of using…</p>
<p>You could always look at Java. The platform is free, and they have a lot of free and open source development environments and tools. It will take a little getting used to if your accustomed to developing on microsoft platforms, but for your intentions it may turn out to be a simple endeavour. It get's a little hairy when you're doing enteprise (server) development but for desktop you should be fine. </p>
<p>My suggestion would be downloading the latest JDK and Eclipse. The beauty of using the Java platform is that the VM can run on almost any platform without needing any code changes or recompilation. There are both 64 bit and 32 bit flavours. The only trick is ensuring you have the right java runtime environment installed on the target machines (i.e for a 64bit windows 7 machine, ensure you have at least JRE 1.6.0_14 but your apps should behave identically on all platforms given they have the correct runtime environment installed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html">http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Dan Leuck and his company IKayzo have actually developed a framework for punching out desktop designs using SWING quite simply and effectively:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ikayzo.org/confluence/display/SSW/Home">http://www.ikayzo.org/confluence/display/SSW/Home</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Cost wise, it's probably your best bet. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p> If it's a one-time thing, you…tag:www.techhui.com,2011-10-25:1702911:Comment:997722011-10-25T03:06:15.794ZLaurence A. Leehttp://www.techhui.com/profile/LaurenceALee
<p>If it's a one-time thing, you could try locating a trial-version or a borrowed copy of Studio 2005(? has VB6), as I notice you're looking for in another thread.</p>
<p>You might find it more and more difficult to continue with VB6 in the long run. 16-bit code and OCX controls are deprecated and completely unsupported in the current 64-bit operating systems -- so avoid running Windows 2008 R2 (64-bit) if you need to run the old stuff. This comes into play if you're establishing a Terminal…</p>
<p>If it's a one-time thing, you could try locating a trial-version or a borrowed copy of Studio 2005(? has VB6), as I notice you're looking for in another thread.</p>
<p>You might find it more and more difficult to continue with VB6 in the long run. 16-bit code and OCX controls are deprecated and completely unsupported in the current 64-bit operating systems -- so avoid running Windows 2008 R2 (64-bit) if you need to run the old stuff. This comes into play if you're establishing a Terminal Server.</p>
<p>Plain old 32-bit Windows 2008 Server works fine as a Terminal Server, and is the last of the 32-bit Server Operating Sytems in Microsoft's current lineup.</p>
<p>The downside of "current" flavors of VB is that they all depend on .NET to do the dirty work; whereas (IIRC) VB6 was the last to support native Win32 APIs. It's a learning curve, but not so bad if you're already familiar with Java. Much of .NET's function signatures have roots in Java's APIs, with only minor camel-case changes. I'm not a VB programmer (most of my windows code is done in MSVC), but my understanding is that VB won't allow you to get out of the .NET Sandbox. </p>
<p>In other words, I don't believe there's a "mixed mode" for Visual Basic (to gain access to Win32 APIs), as there is for Visual C. It's all "managed code" in .NET.</p>
<p>Regarding software costs.. I'm assuming you're already an MS Open or Charity-specific Volume Licensee. Is there an option to pick up a recent copy of Visual Studio under that program? It might save you a lot. Otherwise, it may be cheaper to contract that task out to a developer who already has the needed license. $X Hourly for a one-time update beats $1K license any day. :-)</p>
<p>One last thing regarding improvements in .NET -- if you're doing heavy OLTP stuff, you'll find the new way of accessing databases (with built-in connection pooling) to be superior to the old ADODB way. Plus, LINQ queries are fantastic to work with -- if you've done COBOL, you'll appreciate how LINQ attempts to be "Embedded SQL" on Steroids. Well worth the learning effort for DB programming.</p>