Wish Please develop Basic4Windows

• http://visualbasic.ittoolbox.com/
  
• http://www.a1vbcode.com/
• http://www.vb6.us
  
• http://www.planet-source-code.com/
  
• http://www.vbaccelerator.com/home/index.asp
• http://www.sourcecodester.com/visual-basic
  
• http://www.vbcodesource.com/
  
• http://www.visualbasic6class.com/
  
• http://www.vbforums.com
  
• http://www.devx.com/
  
• http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/
  
• Many more

We have read all of the comments on this thread and I’d like to thank you for providing your constructive feedback on this issue. Instead of merely repeating our support and migration guidance that has been laid out on http://msdn.com/vbrun, I’d like to address some of your specific comments here.

To play back the feedback themes we’re hearing:
- VB6 is awesome
- VB6 needs to be brought forward and maintained: in a new release or OSS

VB6 was and still is without a doubt awesome. VB6 made developers incredibly productive building a breadth of applications and as a result we have a wealth of applications and passionate developers to this day in 2014. One way I see our mission in developer tools is to empower developers to solve problems. This includes both today’s problems AND the problems of tomorrow. VB6, as you all have stated repeatedly in this thread, is an excellent tool for solving the problems of its day. We also stand behind our decision starting in 2002 to meet the current demands of our developers and the industry with .NET. For the scenarios VB6 set out to do, we see VB6 being “complete”. We feel good about VB6 being able to continue maintaining their applications for the past 15 years. Current needs ranging from distributed applications and services, to web applications and services, to devices, to new architectures and languages, required fundamental changes to the whole stack. We looked at how we could accommodate these needs through incremental changes to VB6 while maintaining its essence, and that was not possible.

To address the modern needs we would need to go far beyond updating the language. We have to remember that VB6 is not just a language. VB6 is a language, a runtime, a platform library, a tool/IDE, and an ecosystem tightly packaged together in a way that made all of them work well together. We’ve worked with many customers on migration from VB6 to .NET and found that while yes, there are language changes, the dominating factor in migration difficulties isn’t the language differences. Even open sourcing the language/runtime wouldn’t solve the fact that VB6 was thought for a different set of problems, and the fact that its strength came from the end-to-end solution provided by all these five pieces working together. Take a change like 64bit, the complete runtime, tools and ecosystem chain would need to be retooled.

So, moving forward what can we do? Where we have been able to help move forward is in our stance around support and interoperability. The VB6 runtime it is still a component of the Windows operating system and is a component shipped in Windows 8.1. It will be supported at least through 2024. This ensures your apps and components continue to run as you incrementally move forward to .NET. The support policy is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ms788708. There are numerous interop strategies that we developed and evolved to enable incremental migration as you upgrade your skills, described here: http://msdn.com/vbrun.

In summary, VB6 was awesome. We agree. We don’t expect or demand anyone to throw away their code or rewrite from any of our technologies unless it makes business sense for them to do so. We have to innovate to enable our customers to innovate. It is not a viable option to create a next version of VB6. We stand by our decision to make VB.NET and the .NET Framework. We think they are awesome too. It is not feasible to open source VB6 tools chain and ecosystem. The VB6 runtime was last shipped in Windows 8.1 and will be supported for the lifetime of Windows 8.1. Support and interop are great tools to move forward incrementally.

I hope you feel we’ve listened to your feedback and that I’ve explained things well enough that you understand our decision.

Paul Yuknewicz
Group Program Manager
Microsoft Visual Studio Cloud Tools

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• Has Free Version (NOT Trial) and Commercial Version. (Just like Express Editions of latest Visual Studio)
• Same VB6 syntax and format used and must be compatible.
• Ability to use ActiveX Components.
• Ability to have a reference from DLL, TLB, OLB, and OCX.
• Regfree application output which means the application dependecies must be present only instead of register the dependencies.
• Safer subclassing.
• Light and updated IDE environment but still the same as Visual Basic 6.0 environment and its characteristics.
• Allows to import VB6 Projects and its files (*.vbp,*.frm,*.cls,*.bas etc.)
• Better Data Report and Paper Print Output
• Ability to create Desktop Apps and Metro Apps also (if possible).
• The compiled Basic4Windows application has a communication also on B4A, B4J, and B4i applications.
• Ability to call Windows API functions.
• The written application must be compiled in Native code
• Can use also Visual Basic 6.0 runtime aside from Basic4Windows runtime.
• Single EXE file application deployment and has an ability to use third party installer creator preferrably Inno Setup

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj133828.aspx
• http://www.computerweekly.com/news/...call-for-Microsoft-to-bring-back-Visual-Basic
  
• http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/f...g-back-classic-visual-basic-an-improved-versi
  
• http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/f...g-back-classic-visual-basic-an-improved-versi
  
• http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/710181/Visual-Basic-A-giant-more-powerful-than-ever
  
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dn745870.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/msdnmagazine/archive/2014/06/05/10531518.aspx
• http://www.i-programmer.info/news/136-open-source/7454-microsoft-refuses-to-open-source-vb6.html
  
• http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/572061/Classic-Visual-Basic-s-end-marked-a-key-change-in
• http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/04/VB6-Crisis

Informatix said:

Why not Cobol4Android? So people born in 1935 could continue to develop in Cobol...
Sorry but VB6 is dead since 9 years! It's maybe time to move to something else.

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LucaMs said:

But, please, do not blaspheme: Cobol was a great language!

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Informatix said:

You have no idea of the number of apps in Cobol that still run in big companies and administrations. My government (which is my employer) decided this year to migrate to Java. And maybe we will have Windows 3.1 later this year...

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abhishek007p said:

Execution on JIT is slow, we all know that.

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abhishek007p said:

Yes, but that still requires Java, If people can install Java they would install .NET.

There are free C/C++ compliers available and then there are Basic compliers like FreeBasic and PowerBasic available which are good compliers but lacks a good IDE. There is one guy i know who developed Alpha version of VB6 Alternative, and there was one guy who was ready to start a Kickstarter crowdfunding project for funds. so if you ever work on something like this in future then there are people available who are ready to contribute.

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Num3 said:

Another alternative: Purebasic , compiles for windows, linux and mac. It transpiles purebasic code to C or ASM and then compiles it.
You can directly use any system or 3rd party DLL / SO.

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