back to article Microsoft throws a bone to those unable to leave the past behind: .NET 5 support on the way for Visual Basic

Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away as the Windows giant announced support for Visual Basic in its upcoming .NET 5.0 There has long been a low rumbling of developers disappointed to find that .NET Core and Visual Basic were not the best of buddies. At first glance it seems that Microsoft has listened and those lucky …

  1. richardcox13
    Boffin

    F# FTW!

    1. Alan Bourke

      Yeah you really wan tto be writing a GUI-based application

      in F#.

      1. the spectacularly refined chap Silver badge

        Re: Yeah you really wan tto be writing a GUI-based application

        It adapts quite well, the event driven paradigm suits FP were I/O is the traditional ballache. The problems tend to arise with coders with no grounding in functional code: it is a considerably different mindset to procedural code. Essentially instead of saying what you want to do you make a set of statements that are true.

      2. Another Developer

        Re: Yeah you really wan tto be writing a GUI-based application

        There are some nice ways to do this with F#, especially if you're using the browser to display that UI.

        1. serendipity

          Re: Yeah you really wan tto be writing a GUI-based application

          Yes F# works well with Windows Forms apparently, yes really! ;)

          To the uninitiated, Windows Forms is a GUI technology that has been pronounced dead for decades now but developers stubbornly carried on using it because it's great for small LOB apps that don't need a fancy front-end and is easy to use and dead reliable. MS has now changed tack, pronounced the patient still has a pulse and is supporting it in the latest .Net Core, along with that other dead UI tech, WPF - plus ça change!!

  2. macjules
    Devil

    Oh that's nice

    Good of MSFT to think of Travelex, I am sure they will be pleased.

  3. karlkarl Silver badge

    Visual Basic did not *evolve* into Visual Basic.NET.

    VB as a standalone language was killed and a new language also called VB was created. Microsoft is good at muddying up peoples education and expectations so that they can sell their products. Even at just the naming level!

    Similar to C#. It has no business having C in the name other than again to trick people. Sun obviously sued them for using J++ and J# as another deceitful name of their product but because C and C++ is a truely *open* standard, no-one was really in position to defend the identity theft.

    Some minor trivia: C# used to be called "Cool-lang" internally in Microsoft (before they got enough courage to fraudulently use C#). How yuck is that.

    I can't wait until Microsoft drop the whole .NET crap and just fsck off. The old VM/Bytecode architecture can be better carried by more open technologies like WASM and even Java.

    Any C# developers who think C# is superior to VB.NET are kidding themselves. If you code in C#, you are basically just a VB.NET coder. They are the same technologies and the VB.NET compiler even started life as a C# compiler.

    And anyone who says that C# is basically a more modern C++ (ala C++++) should get a slap (at least once the virus social distancing measures are relaxed XD). C++/clr would be the closest to that (and is fairly satisfactory)

    1. Mage Silver badge

      Re: says that C# is basically a more modern C++

      Um.. C++ and C# are different things. One started as preprocessor for C and intended to replace C, C++ usually produces native code.

      C# developed from J++, the MS take on Java, so like Java, UCSD-Pascal and VB before .net uses a virtual machine and intermediate code.

      Indeed VB.net isn't really VB at all. Basically C# made to look like VB6. An unrelated product. VB.net was PR and people needed to migrate to C# by 2006!

      1. karlkarl Silver badge

        Re: says that C# is basically a more modern C++

        @Mage:

        Um... Yeah, that is kinda what my large rant was about haha

        A lot of developers (especially managed developers) do not know this. They do fall for Microsoft's trick of putting 'C' in the name. And it makes me cringe.

        1. FuzzyWuzzys

          Re: says that C# is basically a more modern C++

          "A lot of developers (especially managed developers) do not know this."

          Obviously ones who've never coded in Java ( or C )! The second you go near C# you know instantly it's closer to Java than C. Most people will learn Java and/or C at college so they should be able to see C# heritage immediately. This leads me to assume you're applying the word "developer" to people who've never really used a fully fledged programming language write code and are not "code monkeys" but more "markdown jockeys" from HTML/CSS backgrounds and we know what the two camps think of each other!

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: says that C# is basically a more modern C++

          VB, C# and Java provide much better support for bugs than C. If you write in C or even C++ then it tends to indicate that you actually know what you are doing.

          But I wonder which entity would want continued support for a bug environment? Hmm, I can't find their name anywhere...

    2. codejunky Silver badge

      @karlkarl

      "VB as a standalone language was killed and a new language also called VB was created."

      Well said. I loved VB6 it was a great language to work with and while killing it off hurt a little I was irritated by the name being plastered on a very different language.

      1. Captain Scarlet
        Facepalm

        Re: @karlkarl

        But it wasn't killed off, it continues to live on in literally every MS Office product as VBA?

        Yes it has had some features removed but these are easily replaced in code.

        1. codejunky Silver badge

          Re: @karlkarl

          @Captain Scarlet

          "But it wasn't killed off, it continues to live on in literally every MS Office product as VBA?"

          Not really. Its not the same. Imagine grabbing your favourite language, porting parts of it over into something else (which is the primary) leaving it a minor roll and killing off the actual programming language.

          Hell I wrote a game in VB which I would never do in VBA. And various tools and applications I created just wouldnt without the full stand alone language.

    3. JDX Gold badge

      And you know what else - Javascript isn't Java. GASP!

      .Net is far superior to WASM and the JVM for people who are objective, and the toolchain for developers is better too.

      C# is not C but it very deliberately uses C-derived syntax rather than Java syntax. As a C/C++ developer of many years, C# was an extremely intuitive language to pick up in early versions.

  4. Steve Channell
    WTF?

    VB.net, not Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)

    Visual Basic was always an odd cludge, but back in the day you could write VBA in Excel, export the model to VB6 and compile.. and for performance change classes from VB6 to C++ without changing the COM interface.. VB.net was **not** Visual basic (array offset changed from 1 to 0) - a completely new language that begged the question "why".

    supporting a VB.net to C# transalater would be more useful to those foolish enough to build apps in VB. They'd be better spending their time on C++/CLI which is best language for native interop.

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Re: VB.net, not Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)

      OPTION BASE 1

      Although anybody with any sense ran OPTION BASE 0 The statement dates to GwBasic. (Which is why I know it exists.)

      1. Geoffrey W

        Re: VB.net, not Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)

        Not sure if I'm misunderstanding your comment but Option Base statements got left behind when VB.NET took over from VB6. It's base 0 or bust.

  5. Mage Silver badge
    Coat

    We knew this in 2005?

    When Vb.net and C# came out the top VB6 guru said something like:

    The VB.net is a C programmers idea of VB. It's nearly impossible to convert any serious VB5 application for VB.net. Better to put the effort into C#.

    By 2007 I'd concluded he was right. VB.net is not VB6. Why anyone committed to RAD on Windows used the incompatible VB.net instead of moving to C# was a mystery to me.

    Also mysterious is that many VB6 programs NEVER worked on Win7 and later 64 bit, but the same programs do work on the crippled x86-64 Atom tablets and cheap latops that came only with 32bit EFI and 32 bit Win10.

    For a moment I thought MS was extending REAL Visual Basic support. VB.net was never Real VB. That died with VB6.

    Mine coat is the one with QT and GTK quick reference guides in the pocket. Meh, I gave up Java in 2008. C# is sort of mk2 of J++, the MS version of Java?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: We knew this in 2005?

      VB6 didn't really die - in a way it lives on in VBA in MS Office to this day. It was also used in some commercial projects until the early 2010's, such as Avaya's AIC (Avaya Interaction Center)'s desktop client. It could be customised using VB6. When I started to work on this I was really suprised it was still around, though my experience did come in handy :)

      And yeah I also thought they were extending the real VB support. Mainly because of the screenshot of VB6 on this article is a bit misleading.

      I did a lot of VB6 in its heyday. But to be honest I don't miss it either. Multithreading was really really sorely missed. Even in the age of single CPUs it was necessary to do multiple things at the same time. I tried to get around it at times by making everything event driven as much as possible, but one procedure would hang on something and the whole thing would collapse. And you had to scatter DoEvents all over the code. There was also the option of starting threads using the Win32 API but because the language itself was not thread-safe it would turn into a crash-fest very quickly.

      It was nice in 1999 when the whole "draw a button, click it and type code" was a fresh approach and a huge boost to productivity. It really set the standard for RAD and had an excellent IDE for its time. Now there's much better options.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: We knew this in 2005?

        I love VB ( although ew ) because it introduced me to RAD and was so accessible that with some Googling ( Altavistaing? ) and judicious use of the function list drop-downs, I could just start using it.

        It's a dog egg of a language, but the draw button, click, type, autocomplete was incredibly responsive and without that I might not have been amazed by what was possible and thought programming to be dull and hard work.

    2. serendipity

      Re: We knew this in 2005?

      Funny how our mileage differs. I loved VB.Net precisely because it was completely redesigned to be object orientated from the ground up and a much more elegant language than VB6/VBA ever was - remember classic VB started as a procedural language that had object orientation bolted onto it, which was inevitably a bit of a cludge. And the libraries were an inconsistent mess. I've always thought of VB.Net as C# but without the annoying sparse syntax!! ;))

  6. J27

    VB.NET is basically just C# libraries coded with a VB syntax. Might as well just put it out of its misery and just provide a VB.NET to C# syntax converter (these do exist, but I don't believe that MS has an official implementation).

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Meh

      I do not think that word means what you think it means, MS...

      I stopped using VB after VB3 when it became obvious that the use of MS's shared components in ANY install would probably result in a "worse than DLL HELL" situation, even though it made a great front-end that could be designed by someone who wasn't much of a programmer [and then I'd fill in the blanks so to speak].

      And as for "stability" - I do not think this word means what MS thinks it means.

      VB1 was unique and interesting, and I hacked a few things to make stuff work - then VB2 broke my hacks but added some better ways of doing the same things, and then VB3 required a few more changes, yotta yotta to the point where I knew that EVERY incarnation of VB would require REAL effort and if VB2's shared DLLs wouldn't work on "THAT OS", so you HAD to "up"grade to VB3, yotta yotta, it showed me a path of CONSTANT "support the version changes" nightmare that I decided NO WAY VB! and I haven't really used it since.

      And of course ".NOT" just made things THAT! MUCH! WORSE!

      1. serendipity

        Re: I do not think that word means what you think it means, MS...

        Hi bombastic bob, program language wise, you seem to be stuck somewhere between the mid 90's and the early noughties!! I think you'll find thinks have changed a bit since then. For starters, .Net is a rock solid (but not perfect!) industrial grade framework that supports thousands and thousands of applications.

        As regards change, well that's inevitable ask the dinosaurs! But seriously, just imagine being an IOS Obj-C developer, Apple is constantly moving the goal posts and is now phasing out the language in favour of Swift And that's just one example, all companies do it and even open source languages suffer the same problems look at the angst around Python V2 vs V3. That's how life is now, as a developer you have to run to stand still!

  7. Hubert Cumberdale Silver badge

    v5?

    What happened to v4? Are they doing that thing where they all have to be odd numbers, like processors (Core i3/5/7 & Ryzen 3/5/7...)? To be fair, you should never trust an even number, and you're always safest with primes. But then that leaves me conflicted about the number 2. Reminds me of my other self-generated conflict of axioms: 1. Crème brûlée should have exactly four ingredients, specifically cream, egg yolk, sugar, and vanilla, and must never be adulterated; 2. Every food can be improved by bacon. One of these axioms has to be wrong. I'm building up to an experiment to find out which, but I'm having trouble recruiting for the randomized controlled trial. And it's hard to get hold of placebo bacon.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: v5?

      There was a VB4, but it was pretty terrible. People generally don't talk about VB4.

      1. David 132 Silver badge

        Re: v5?

        ISTR that VB4 is the version I was using during my internship in Switzerland in 94-95. I don't remember it being that bad, but maybe my taste in languages was as dodgy as my taste in music back then!

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. simonlb Silver badge

        Re: v5?

        And there was also MSDOS v4 which was bad. MS do have prior form with versioning numbers.

      3. Hubert Cumberdale Silver badge

        Re: v5?

        I meant .NET v5...

        1. richardcox13

          Re: v5?

          Answer is to avoid confusion with .NET Framework 4.x.

          .NET 5 is the next update to .NET Core, but will drop the "Core" becoming the next version aimed to (eventually) fully replace .NET Framework.

          (Framework does have the usual MS >10 years of support, so no rush to rewrite... yet.)

          1. Hubert Cumberdale Silver badge

            Re: v5?

            Hm. Thanks for the clarification. Evidently their attempt to avoid confusion has just confused me more... Sounds like a Traveling Wilburys mischief if you ask me. Maybe they should have called it something completely different. Like .NET X. Or .NET V. That sort of thing seems to be the fashion these days. Looking forward to the (eventual) death of the Framework, though.

    2. Steve Todd

      Re: v5?

      They are talking about .NET 5 (aka .NET Core).

      Other than that you probably should be aware of Microsoft numbering theory:

      Version 1: Incomplete and broken

      Version 2: Fixed version 1, but still lacking features

      Version 3: What users actually wanted

      Version 4: Reimplemented (and with incompatible bits to V3), fancy bits added, but broken.

      Version 5: Version 4 fixed.

      Versions 6 and onwards: Rinse and repeat steps 4 and 5.

    3. Anon

      Re: v5?

      There was (is) .NET Framework versions 1, 2, 3, and 4. 4 is up to 4.8 now. .NET Framework won't have more features added. 4.8 is supposedly the last version that will be made. It's only really for Windows. There was/is the Mono project for other platforms.

      There was (is) .NET Core versions 1, 2, and 3. To avoid confusion with .NET Framework 4, the version after 3 will be 5. .NET Core will have more features added, and it is multi-platform.

  8. serendipity

    Richard Speed joins a long line of IT commentators who talk utter bollocks about VB.Net because 18 years after it was launched they still don't understand how it is fundamentally different to VB6!! (Nobody who knows anything about VB.Net would put a picture of Visual Studio with VB6 at the top of their article!!)

    VB.Net and VB6 share some language syntax it is true but other than that they are totally different. As a fully fledged .Net language, VB.Net is much closer to C# than it is VB6. It would be relatively trivial to convert an application from C# to VB.Net and visa versa but it's much more difficult to convert VB6 apps to VB.Net as the architecture is fundamentally object orientated and a world away from VB6. As for feature parity between C# and VB.Net, personally I don't care. C# is aimed at geek types who think 100 line anonymous methods are great and code comments are bad smells. VB.Net is a nice environment for LOB applications with it's English like syntax and most VB.Net coders don't mind adding a few comments to let you know what the code might be trying to achieve.

    So RS, explain please why if I can compile my VB.Net code to virtually identical .Net Byte code as I could if I coded the same thing in C#, why is the VB.Net produced code legacy and the C# code isn't, particularly as the fundamental architecture of the two languages is all but identical?

    And while we are at it, I code in both and I don't mind C# but I wouldn't call the syntax 'modern'. The whole industry seems to be burdened with languages that need semi-colons and squiggly brackets to tell the compiler what the developer means - it's so 1970's! And I also find the VS experience with VB.Net just that little bit more productive than with C#, there seem to be fewer of those annoying framework/compiler glitches to deal with.

    And as for popularity, VB.Net has shot up the TIOBE index in recent years and in some months has ranked higher than C#! Last time I looked C# was 5th and and VB.Net was only just behind in 6th. Yes okay, I take the TIOBE index with a pinch of salt but at the very least it looks like somebody is still interested in this 'legacy' language that we apparently should of all stopped using years a go! ;))

    1. vincent himpe

      "The whole industry seems to be burdened with languages that need semi-colons and squiggly brackets to tell the compiler what the developer means - it's so 1970's! "

      My thoughts exactly. Why on earth do we need a semicolon ? there is a line terminator in the form of CR or CR/LF in the source file.

      yeah yeah i hear you , end of line is not end of statement. How many times do you spread a statement across multiple lines ? use a continuation character instead.

      Same nonsense for case sensitivity for variables and keywords . urgh . Fortunately we have cleanup in the code editor, but still. I Hate it when i have to dig through code that is written as x+ = x+X;, wtf ?

      write readable code. in that respect VB is still the best as it uses understandable keywords.

      For what it is worth : i am not a programmer , but i do need to write scripts and code to interact with other tools ( mainly CAD) , cronch some tables in excel and whatnot. VB is a dream to work with.

      also : in Vb you can stop a program mid run , alter some variables, insert some code, move the execution pointer and continue the run WITHOUT needing to restart the program .

      I haven;t checked , but do the othe rlanguages support that ? especially insertind or altering code and moving the execution pointer to re-run or skip a section of code .

      1. Robert Heffernan

        "yeah yeah i hear you , end of line is not end of statement. How many times do you spread a statement across multiple lines ? use a continuation character instead."

        Nah, give me the semicolon or death! I code C# professionally and recreationally, and once you start down the route of method chaining with "fluent" API's not being able to split across lines becomes an issue. If you want to add in continuation characters to tell the compiler you're continuing on the next line you're gunna have a LOT of ugly unreadable code to deal with.

        1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
          Coat

          We already have a lot of ugly unreadable code to deal with

        2. serendipity

          Err a language is not an API (I know Oracle doesn't agree!! ;)) and VB.Net manages just fine without annoying semi-colons and squiggly brackets. And remember I can produce near identical MSIL as you can with your C# code (or my C# code for that matter).

      2. FuzzyWuzzys
        Mushroom

        "For what it is worth : i am not a programmer"

        Oooh, so close my friend! Talking about code syntax and then dropping this bomb, I can hear the rumble of a flamewar coming...

      3. FrankVanRiet

        Vincent, seems you are a VBA wizard. That is not what the discussion is about here. VB.NET is a totally different beast. VBA resembles the most VB6.

        Also most of the stuff you are describing can only be done in an interpreted environment as it is the interpreter that is in control of the complete environment (program counter, variable management, stack management, etc vs compiled where the program talks directly to the CPU. (well not really with MS languages..but almost).

        Know that MS is also pushing to get rid of VBA... eg. in Office 365. From what i hear they are talking javascript, HTML5 etc .

        This being said, i'm more inclined to have similar feelings on all this semicolon, etc stuff..

        Still missing the good old Clipper compilers... :-) Or to dig even further in my past..Cobol/Assembler :-)

        And now i'll retire in my bunker until the flack wares off :-)

        1. GidaBrasti
          Pint

          A beer for you, sir, just for mentioning Clipper !

        2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

          "MS is also pushing to get rid of VBA"

          That will never happen. There are waaay too many people coding their Excel spreadsheets to do insane things for VBA to ever disappear. Last year I gave two initiation trainings for banking/investment types. I'm already slated to do another one in May this year.

          Companies use VBA and they will not accept MS doing away with it.

          1. serendipity

            Re: "MS is also pushing to get rid of VBA"

            I agree but I so wish MS had replaced VBA with VB.Net (even a dumbed down version). The VBA 'classic' Visual Studio environment is just so painful if you're used to using modern VS.

        3. serendipity

          Actually, in Visual Studio, you can still change VB.Net code on the fly like you can in VBA. Not something I do very often but it is there if you need to.

      4. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

          Clear, well written, and understandable code is a fundamental tenet of good programming.

          I can think of a number of things wrong with the above statement.

          Off the top of my head:

          Your variable names are absolutely rubbish. They should be descriptive.

          Single-letter variable names are a no-no, with the possible exception of loop variables (i, j, k, etc.), which are a widely-known convention.

          Variable names that differ only by case are also a recipe for disaster. Good luck finding that bug where you had the shift key down for a fraction of a second too long / not long enough when typing a complex statement.

          You are doing something non-obvious in this statement, thus it should have an explanatory comment above it.

          It could more clearly be written as

          x = (2 * x) + X
          which would compile to the same object code in almost any language. Note the redundant braces, which are included for clarity.

      5. Ken Shabby
        Headmaster

        Sometimes; semi-colon is not end of statement, for Pascal it is statement separator.

    2. karlkarl Silver badge

      @serendipity

      "long line of IT commentators who talk utter bollocks about VB.Net because 18 years after it was launched they still don't understand how it is fundamentally different to VB6!! (Nobody who knows anything about VB.Net would put a picture of Visual Studio with VB6 at the top of their article!!)"

      Do you see how Microsoft's constant trickery does work! You are now going to have middle management forcing their developers to use Microsoft shite because the lifespan is "oh so fantastic, even VB has been around and supported since the 90's. Microsoft technology is here to last!"

      Which of course is utter rubbish. Lifespan of most company led development tools are consistently poor.

      1. serendipity

        Sorry karlkarl, I don't get the point you're making.

        My point was that a lot of IT hacks have never understood the difference between VB6/VBA and VB.Net, which is why they often sprout nonsense about VB.Net being legacy code. Yes C# is more popular but they each have there place just as the other .Net languages do such as F# and Iron Python for example.

        I think today's middle managers are mostly in their late 20's, 30's and 40's and are too young to really remember the 90's. But having said that, if you look at the .Net Framework for example, MS have been supporting that since 2002 which is a pretty long time by any IT measure. I mean, for today's middle managers that's actually pre-iPhone, oh mon dieu!!

  9. steviebuk Silver badge

    Still needed Windows 98...

    ...recently to look at my old Lottery Program I wrote in Visual Basic 5 back in 1999-2000 - Released in 2000. Found my old CD from Uni. Looking back, the program was shit but I didn't know enough back then. And its taken 20 years for me to fix a bug in the code :) for the install. I can only assume I was being lazy back then cause it didn't take long to work out what the issue was.

    1. MJB7

      Re: Still needed Windows 98...

      "It;s taken 20 years for me to fix a bug in the code" - that's nothing. https://enigmaticcode.wordpress.com/tag/bernoulli-numbers/ was published in 2015 and contains a fix for a bug created 172 years earlier.

      (The bug was either created by the programmer, or the typesetter who published her work.)

      1. Steve K

        Re: Still needed Windows 98...

        Maybe it was still compiling.....;-)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BASIC

    It's like people have forgotten what BASIC stands for.

    Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

    1. serendipity

      Re: BASIC

      Nope we haven't but languages evolve look at Javascript (yuck!) or Python.

      And VB.Net is a world away from the original BASIC - thinks generics, lambda functions, LINQ, classes (obviously), inheritance, delegates, events, anonymous types, extension methods, Reflection, IEnumerable collections, DI support and that's just off the top of my head. Not so BASIC is it! ;))

      And actually C# has adopted features from VB. Optional parameters is one feature that comes to mind.

    2. Mage Silver badge

      Re: BASIC

      Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

      1) A cut down version of ForTran implemented by Dartmouth College. Gates and a friend ported the Dartmouth BASIC to 8080 and CP/M, stage one of launching their company. Later it was ported by them to the 6502 (I think inc. Apple & Pet?)

      2) Then they bought a reverse engineered version of CP/M-86 and sold that to IBM as PC-DOS.

      3) Windows on DOS was partly copied from Xerox Star (as was Lisa/Mac/Apple GS desktops) and partly out of IBM/MS OS/2 collaboration Display Manager.

      4) NT starts at 3.1 (1993) presumably because partly based on the MS version of OS/2 (1989) that included LAN Manager for Win3.x computer clients.

      5) Added Explorer Desktop and all 32 bit drivers etc to Win 3.11/Win32s to create win95. True OS had to be updated for free from NT 3.5 to NT 3.51 to allow Office 95 to run as had deliberately invented extra APIs to stop Office 95 on Win3.x. NT 4.0 got the Explorer Shell, only a preview to MSDN folk on NT3.51. NT4.0 got 64 bits for Alpha

      6) Disastrously ME based on Win9x and released too Quickly NT5.0 (Win2000). Fixed by NT5.1 (XP). Vista was botched, too much eyeCandy, The 1st 64 bit XP was for Itanium and and short lived. 2003-2004 was the start of MS decline, with many stupid decisions. Win7 should have been free to Vista users, it's only a Vista SP. NT security crippled by badly written Win9x applications needing user to be Admin.

      7) By now Office has evil Ribbon, VB6 is dead some years earlier and now they try to make desktop like a Phone with Windows 8.

      8) Final stage. Local office depreciated in favour of Cloud 365, Win10 entry version least customisable since win2.0 and up to 30% less productivity than XP. Comes with spyware, adverts, excessive monochrome & flat and applications you can't remove. TWO different program menus and multiple control panels. Entry level version needs command line to create local users.

  11. JDX Gold badge

    20 years!

    No way, that's the scary thing here. I still think of C# as new...

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Haven't cared about VB.net in years, at least not since Powershell became the new darling. Was looking at .NET Core and PS7 yesterday, and I'm incredibly under-impressed by Microsoft's "open source" efforts with .NET Core and PS7. Too many broken, sharp, pointy things in PS7 for me. Stuff that used to "just work" doesn't so much now. Good thing I don't use Powershell for Active Directory management. Oh, wait, I do... Documentation is still rather scattered and sparse, but the gushing Evangelists are loud and vocal. If PS7 is truly Microsoft's path forward, then they've lost the plot.

    It very much reminds me of when Novell bought SuSE, filled their forums with loud and brash Linux evangelists, moved all of their crown jewels from NLM to Linux, then told the Netware guys to adapt or die (or perhaps "get fucked" might be more accurate).

  13. DBJDBJ

    Put VB6 source on GitHub ! What's the big deal...

  14. rmullen0

    Now support ASP.NET Web Forms

    Now they just need to add support for ASP.NET Web Forms. They refused to do it though.

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