In March 2005 Microsoft made officially the end of the free two incident support for Visual Basic 6, while other forms of pay support will continue through at least March 2008. The buzz on the internet was clearly stating what a lot of VB developers already feared the end of VB.  Ever since Microsoft started on .NET we saw the beginning on a new strategy targeting web development, ecommerce and enterprise. A large community of developers feels like Microsoft is abandoning their customer base. Some programmers outside the VB circles may wonder what is the issue. VB.Net is simply syntax in top of .NET Common Language. Coming from VB6 to NET is just like porting to any other language, simply because it's another language and not a successor of VB6. Before .Net developers were able to update their code to new changes in the language with little effort. From one version of VB to another syntax compatibility and functionality was greatly respected. The .Net migration wizard does wonders on getting VB6 code into VB.NET but for most developers the conversion process is still a quite painful one.  The migration wizard does not convert code to an optimized native equivalent in .NET instead you get you get VB code with .NET syntax which given the difference in the languages is far from good code. This means that VB developers must learn VB.NET and the Framework in order to rewrite their code. The only similarity between VB and VB.NET is BASIC constructs like IF, THEN, DIM, ect besides that VB.NET is an entire new language. It has a lot of new syntax, a completely different methodology, and an entire new toolbox of libraries to learn.

While NET brings a lot of new exciting functionality and power it lacks the power of the simplicity with which we could develop solutions in Visual Basic. Visual Basic is (was) the kind of application that allows any kind of developer to get the job done. It had a fairly short learning curve. What made Visual Basic famous was its revolutionary way of doing things. Visual Basic marked the beginning of Rapid Development Environments.  Today when you look at almost any visual development environment we see the magnitude in which Visual Basic changed programming.

 The action taken by Microsoft caused an instant revolt from a very significant number of developers. A numerous of campaigns spawned over the internet urging Microsoft to continue support and to commit to a path ensuring the existence of Visual Basic or Classic Visual Basic how it's called by many developers. Many worried that with the advent of Longhorn support for their apps will end. Even if the required VB6 runtime makes it into longhorn without support critical bugs will cripple their software and they will be on their own to bridge the gap between their apps and new OS functionality. Microsoft also stated that support for the runtime in Longhorn will only last five years, the IDE will be supported for three more years. To many support is not the issue, as Jim Mack, president of MicroDexterity Inc. and a Visual Basic MVP from 1994 to 2004 comments: "The real issue is MS' support of its customers in their need to preserve the value of their assets, in this case literally billions of lines of BASIC code that—until VB .Net came along—was brought forward, with more or less effort, in each succeeding generation".  The bottom lines seems to be that developers want VB not an entire new language like VB.NET.

 In the other hand while rumors of an imminent end for VB6 spread quickly over the internet Microsoft assures the developers that this is merely a transition from the free support model to a paid support model according to a comment from S. "Soma" Somasegar, Chief of Microsoft Development Division in MSDN chat covering Visual Studio 2005 new features.  Yet it seems clear that in the roadmap for Microsoft development tools there is only room for .NET. In an email send to MVPs by Jay Roxe Visual Basic product manager said "There are strong feelings on all sides of the issue that sparked this petition, and I know that this note is not going to address all of these concerns, However, I hope that we can continue to have an open dialogue around this issue." This message gave VB developers what some called "little hope" of seeing future development of VB. To me it seems clear that Microsoft needs to add more VB functionality into VB.NET, and ease the pain of migrating to VB.NET.

 Following these news a series of development tools companies like Borland, PowerBasic, IBM and REAL Software presented their plans to draw the orphan developers.  In March 21 REAL Software offered a free upgrade to REALbasic to VB6 developers. REAL Software presented REALbasic as a solution to VB developers. A language very similar to VB6, powerful OOP and a mature feature set. Now one of the main concerns of many VB developers is being able to preserve their investment in existing applications. I have use VB for about 11 years now, starting with VB3.0. Ever since the first time I used, VB became one of my favorite languages.  When I found CrossBasic later REALbasic I new I had found my VB for Macintosh. I started switching my development to REALbasic quite some time before all this new fuss. Even my self decided to keep some applications on VB and not to port them to REALbasic. Not that it cannot be done in REALbasic but is not quite a smart action to take just yet.

In REALbasic I found many great features that made me fall in love with the language yet the scope of this talk back feature is not to discuss a quite extensive list of features in RB. This article is mainly intended for developers using REALbasic coming from VB to discuss what we need from REALbasic to fill the gap of Visual Basic.

Like always this is not a place to discuss details of bugs or to start flame wars on features you have to have. Share you issues and experiences here, use the NUG or the Beta list to discuss actual details.

If you want to write a talk back article or to suggest a subject send us an email to ctk at classicteck.com.