Hi Guys,

Yes, I know this is off-topic, but it was one of those "What the F*ck?" moments.

I had to modify one of our older VB6 applications this morning. A simple task, just add a few more menu items for easy access to PDF documents. Sounds easy enough?

Yeah, Microsoft didn't think it should be. I loaded the menu editor, added the new menu items, and when I clicked Save, I got this:

"Reached limit: cannot create any more controls for this form"

I had to start laughing. Reading the help regarding that error - it seems VB6 forms are limited to 256 controls! I guess now we know why Microsoft never wrote MS Office or Visual Studio in VB6 - they would reach the 256 limit in no time! :-D

This just confirms my thoughts that Visual Basic is such a "toy language", you can't do any real work in it! Lets rather stick to a real programming language like Object Pascal.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

Hi Guys,

[...]

[...]

Regards, - Graeme -

Not familiar with VB IDE or the way they were distributing it - was that a 'paid for' or 'free' version ?

L.

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

Hi Guys,

[snip...]

I had to start laughing. Reading the help regarding that error - it seems VB6 forms are limited to 256 controls! I guess now we know why Microsoft never wrote MS Office or Visual Studio in VB6 - they would reach the 256 limit in no time! :-D

In case you need more laughs, reading stories from http://thedailywtf.com/ is always a good way to start the day... :)

Regards,
Torsten.

This just confirms my thoughts that Visual Basic is such a "toy language", you can't do any real work in it! Lets rather stick to a real programming language like Object Pascal.

Visual Basic was and is an OLE wrapper, allowing to provide or make use of OLE (COM, ActiveX) components without much coding. The same will be much more complicated in other languages.

When VB3 came out, it nearly stopped Windows developement in any other language, because it made everything so easy. Microsoft had to buy the product (ThunderBasic IIRC) from its inventor, and crippled it with every new version, just to encourage the use of their other languages.

I wrote many applications in VB3 myself, including the famous VB3 decompiler. On my Atari ST I also had written an C decompiler, in GfA-Basic, what had been much more complicated with a compiled language.

IMO Basic still is a fine language, for certain tasks.

DoDi

Lukasz Sokol wrote

> Not familiar with VB IDE or the way they were distributing it - was that a 'paid for' or 'free' version ?

A legally purchased copy of Visual Studio that included Visual Basic 6. I didn't even know there was something like a "free" version.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote

When VB3 came out, it nearly stopped Windows developement in any other language, because it made everything so easy.

Maybe too easy, because every Tom, Dick and Harry suddenly called themselves "programmers". This VB6 app I am maintaining just doesn't want to die, but it's a royal pain to maintain. It's been through about 10 programmers over the years - spaghetti code galore, held together by pure luck! Also no easy way to navigate the code to find things. More modern IDE's sure have come a long way. :-)

IMO Basic still is a fine language, for certain tasks.

It sure was popular in its day.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Graeme,

This just confirms my thoughts that Visual Basic is such a "toy language", you can't do any real work in it! Lets rather stick to a real programming language like Object Pascal.

Simply just not true ...
<shakes head and wanders off>.