[dba-Tech] A petition for the development of unmanaged VB and VBA...

Mark Breen marklbreen at gmail.com
Thu Mar 10 04:13:18 CST 2005


Hello Shamil,

Is VB6/VBA worth keeping?  Is there something that is more special
about it that deserves to retain it than lets say, word version 2 or
other technologies that have been retired in the past.

Is it not the case that for financial reasons, MS push us all the time
to the limit of our abilities to keep up with the code that they
produce.  But at the same time, they drag us kicking and screaming
along the technology trail?

I am aware that the migration from Com to .Net / managed environment
is a big change for the world to make, but by MS forcing our hands, we
all have to move on.  If they do not reduce and finally stop
supporting com, then natural inertia will allow the status quo to
continue.

Sure, for the person that is currently lightning fast at developing
vb6 apps, that suits them, but is it progress to let the existing
situation remain as is?

Now I know that we could argue that if we remain in the com
environment, we can focus our energies on User Interface Design and
other ergonomic issues, also we can focus on addressing, more
accurately, the business requirements.  Whereas if we all have to
learn .Net, we will spend the next two years trying to figure out how
to populate a list box etc.

But my suspicion is that the individual programmer or development
department will continue to place the same priority on those
non-technical issues as they have in the past, in other words, blaming
the learning curve of new technology is not the real culprit in bad
software. In my opinion, ideology - or lack of a good one - is.

So, to summarise, given my limited knowledge of the differences and
benefits of the managed vs un managed environments, and my lack of
awareness of any huge benefits of remaining with the un-managed
environment, I would be more in favour of 'bring it on MS",

sure we will burn the midnight oil again for the 10th time in fifteen years, 
sure we will struggle and buy more books, and say "once I over come
this new hump in my lack of knowledge, I will be flying"
sure we did it with dos, windows, Access 2, Access 97, VB, SQL, Dot
Net, the internet etc etc,

but that is what we signed up for in our vocation, I think that it is
the nature of the it industry, I do not expect it to ever be easy, now
or in twenty years time.  It I wanted a static industry I could have
chosen carpentry, it is around a while.

I have one exception to all these thoughts, if you have any
information that I am unaware of regarding benefits of the old
platform, tell me / us and with that I reserve the right to change my
mind to an extent.

Thanks for the FYI though
Oh, and do you think that it has even a one percent chance of succeeding?

I hope that you are well, and I hope that my comments come across as
friendly, but not sharp.

Mark Breen
Ireland





On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 11:44:06 +0300, Shamil Salakhetdinov
<shamil at users.mns.ru> wrote:
> FYI: http://classicvb.org/petition/
> 
> Shamil
> 
> _______________________________________________
> dba-Tech mailing list
> dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com
> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech
> Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
>



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