Hey gang
If you open C:\Windows\System32 on a brand-new Windows 11 machine right now, you'll still find a file named msvbvm60.dll . Microsoft still patches it for security and ships it inside the OS alongside Server 2025 . Officially, Microsoft says there is "no supported method to create or maintain" applications for it, yet they explicitly guarantee existing programs will keep running on modern Windows.
It’s one of the most fascinating paradoxes in software history: Microsoft spent a quarter of a century trying to move past Visual Basic 6, yet they literally cannot afford to remove its runtime .
How We Got Here
Back in 1988, Alan Cooper showed Bill Gates a prototype called Tripod (later code-named Ruby) that allowed developers to visually draw controls onto a window instead of writing hundreds of lines of event-dispatching boilerplate . When Microsoft combined that visual designer with BASIC in 1991, Visual Basic 1.0 was born.
It launched an entire third-party ecosystem of VBX and ActiveX controls. Suddenly, an accountant, a lab technician, or a warehouse manager could drag a data grid onto a form and build a custom enterprise app in two weeks instead of waiting eight months for IT. By 1998, VB6 powered roughly two-thirds of all Windows business software, with nearly 3.5 million developers worldwide—more than 10 times the number of C++ programmers at the time.
The Decision That Fractured a Community
In 1999, Microsoft chose to build .NET and because VB6 was built on COM, integrating it seamlessly into .NET was deemed technically impossible without breaking compatibility As Microsoft executive S. Somasegar later admitted, they had to choose between full framework parity and backward compatibility. They chose the framework.
When VB.NET arrived in 2002, expert Don Bradner famously summarized it in one sentence: "It's a different language".
The reaction was unprecedented. In 2005, a public petition demanding Microsoft continue developing native VB6 garnered thousands of signatures, including over 200 Microsoft MVPs and figures like Joel Spolsky. Microsoft stood firm, offering paid support tiers ($245 per incident) while encouraging migration. Instead of converting to VB.NET, millions of developers migrated to web development or carried their logic over into Excel VBA macros.
Why This Matters to the B4X Community
Today’s big tech companies are spending billions trying to re-invent "low-code" or "citizen development". But as industry observers note, most of those modern platforms fail to capture what made classic RAD work: a lightweight language, a simple visual designer, native executable output, and true platform independence without subscription lock-in.
That’s why the spirit of RAD never actually died—it just moved to tools built by people who understood what made VB special in the first place.
I’d love to hear your thoughts:
Ta!
If you open C:\Windows\System32 on a brand-new Windows 11 machine right now, you'll still find a file named msvbvm60.dll . Microsoft still patches it for security and ships it inside the OS alongside Server 2025 . Officially, Microsoft says there is "no supported method to create or maintain" applications for it, yet they explicitly guarantee existing programs will keep running on modern Windows.
It’s one of the most fascinating paradoxes in software history: Microsoft spent a quarter of a century trying to move past Visual Basic 6, yet they literally cannot afford to remove its runtime .
How We Got Here
Back in 1988, Alan Cooper showed Bill Gates a prototype called Tripod (later code-named Ruby) that allowed developers to visually draw controls onto a window instead of writing hundreds of lines of event-dispatching boilerplate . When Microsoft combined that visual designer with BASIC in 1991, Visual Basic 1.0 was born.
It launched an entire third-party ecosystem of VBX and ActiveX controls. Suddenly, an accountant, a lab technician, or a warehouse manager could drag a data grid onto a form and build a custom enterprise app in two weeks instead of waiting eight months for IT. By 1998, VB6 powered roughly two-thirds of all Windows business software, with nearly 3.5 million developers worldwide—more than 10 times the number of C++ programmers at the time.
The Decision That Fractured a Community
In 1999, Microsoft chose to build .NET and because VB6 was built on COM, integrating it seamlessly into .NET was deemed technically impossible without breaking compatibility As Microsoft executive S. Somasegar later admitted, they had to choose between full framework parity and backward compatibility. They chose the framework.
When VB.NET arrived in 2002, expert Don Bradner famously summarized it in one sentence: "It's a different language".
The reaction was unprecedented. In 2005, a public petition demanding Microsoft continue developing native VB6 garnered thousands of signatures, including over 200 Microsoft MVPs and figures like Joel Spolsky. Microsoft stood firm, offering paid support tiers ($245 per incident) while encouraging migration. Instead of converting to VB.NET, millions of developers migrated to web development or carried their logic over into Excel VBA macros.
Why This Matters to the B4X Community
Today’s big tech companies are spending billions trying to re-invent "low-code" or "citizen development". But as industry observers note, most of those modern platforms fail to capture what made classic RAD work: a lightweight language, a simple visual designer, native executable output, and true platform independence without subscription lock-in.
That’s why the spirit of RAD never actually died—it just moved to tools built by people who understood what made VB special in the first place.
I’d love to hear your thoughts:
- How many of you started your programming journey in VB6 or VBA?
- Do you still encounter legacy .exe tools running silently in production environments today?
Ta!
