Picked up from Jackie Goldstein's Weblog, Mainstream Support for VB6 Ends This Month.

Lets all have a moment of silence for good old VB6.  I have spent many years with the product and almost every predecessor.  I really cant say I'm sorry to see it go since its departure will only force people to make the move to .NET.

The Mainstream phase will be in effect for six years after the product's general availability date. Visual Basic 6.0 was generally available in January 1999. Mainstream support will end March 31, 2005.

The VB6 petition to MSFT just makes me shake my head.  Hey people, its time to move on.

4 Comments

• mschaef said Wednesday, March 9, 2005 11:08:00 AM

  "Hey people, its time to move on."
  
  The problem is that if you have a bunch of money sunk in VB6 code, there's no cheap way to move on. You either stick with your now unsupported development environment or incur the costs of porting to a new tool. That's an unpalatable choice tjat Microsoft has forced on folks who have explicitly chosen to support Microsoft by using VB. VB.Net being the vast improvment that it is isn't much solace to the folks that have to pay for that choice.
  
  In any event, Microsoft has now provided a great argument to avoid going with one-vendor development tools.

• Paul Speranza said Wednesday, March 9, 2005 11:35:00 AM

  I had used VB from the beta of 1.0. I understand the need to keep supporting those apps and the cost involved. As long as MS provides help and support I think (hope) people are ok.
  
  Aside from any nostalgic reasons, it was nice knowing ya VB. I had a chance to do some Java for over a year, then went back to VB for a consulting job I picked up. I learned OO from Java and as soon as I got back to VB I felt like I wa all dressed up with nowhere to go.
  
  When .Net came out I took a look at VB.Net but decided on C#, but thats my personal preference.
  
  The point is once I got a hold of a full OO tool like .Net I just couldn't stand VB 6 anymore. Now the whole Visual Interdev product seems so archaic. .Net works for me and the needs that I have.
  
  

• Leonardo Azpurua said Thursday, March 10, 2005 6:09:00 PM

  The problem is not whether *I* move on or not. I already did, and yet have to decide whether I like my new dwelling: I don´t trust much the landlord, anymore.
  
  The real problem is a couple of large systems, entirely developed in VB6, that will not benefit from porting (the actual advantages of VB.NET over VB6 are not leveraged by "ports" but by "redesigns"). They will never "move on": there is no need, to move'em on. I don´t want to move'em on. And I don´t want anyone deciding for me what the evolution of my products will be.
  
  If MS guarantees the stability of my "legacy" VB6 apps, I might start working in the planned redesign for VB.NET. If they don´t I´ll start working in an unplanned redesign for Java.
  
  Salud!

• rck said Saturday, March 19, 2005 11:08:00 AM

  I'm from Austria and don't have the slightest clue what "trigin" means :-) Could you translate?
  
  Also, I don't see the positioning of VB. Nowadays, most developement seems to take place on the Web. Be it through Intranet Applications or Internet Applications. JAVA works wonders for them, even though I personally prefer a php and MySQL solution most of the times.
  
  Like already mentioned by an earlier writer: Even C# is an improvement over VB. I started with GWBASIC, btw. :-)