What is vb6 used for

It was created to cater for the development of the web as well as mobile applications. However, many developers still favor Visual Basic 6. In VB 6, you can create any program depending on your objective. If you are in business, you can also create business applications such as inventory management system , Amortization Calculator , investments calculator , point-of-sale system, payroll system, accounting program and more to help manage your business and increase productivity.

For those of you who like games , you can create programs such as slot machine , reversi , tic tac toe and more. Indeed, there is no limit to what program you can create! We offer many sample codes in our tutorial. Before you can write programs in VB 6, you need to install Visual Basic 6 compiler on your computer.

You can purchase a copy of Microsoft Visual Basic 6. Besides, you can also buy it from eBay at Microsoft Visual Basic 6. If you have already installed Microsoft Office in your PC or laptop, you can also use the built-in Visual Basic Application in Excel to start creating Visual Basic programs without having to spend extra cash to buy the VB6 compiler. You can also install VB6 on Windows 10 but you need to follow certain steps otherwise the installation will fail.

First, you need to run setup as administrator. Next, you need to use custom installation. Clear the checkbox for Data Access. If you don't, set up will hang at the end of the installation. There are s of millions lines of VBA code supporting very critical processes.

This issue has been discussed almost every year and outcome is that VBA will continue. Power Query is like a machine because once you have your query setup, the process can be repeated with the click of a button refresh every time your data changes. If you have used macros to transform your data, you can think of this as a much easier alternative to VBA that does NOT require coding.

Visual Basic VB. NET will continue to be supported by Microsoft. The language will no longer have new features added to it. So no, learning VBA is not useless. That being said, you can always learn another language. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Ben Davis June 2, What is Visual Basic used for? What is Visual Basic and its features? Is Visual Basic good for beginners? Is Visual Basic hard? What replaced Visual Basic?

How long will it take to learn Visual Basic? Is Visual Basic used anymore? How do I start learning Visual Basic? How can I learn Visual Basic in Excel? Should I learn VBA or python? Where is Visual Basic in Excel? Its a natural law. So is the case with Microsoft. They just did what they felt would be right, but really never bothered to put effort and really come up with a workable and viable solution that is acceptable to all.

Oracle as a corporate entity might be a bit arrogant but its absolutely fine if they compliment it with Quality Products. Oracle as a tech company is far better than Microsoft.

There was a time when Oracle went shopping for large number of acquisitions increasing their size considerably and also confusion amongst the programming community. However all that was done taking into consideration a very focused goal. Because the moves were acceptable to the community in general and they always stuck to their basics. Its only how they are put to use in different environments.

At the end of the day, the fact remains: Organizations are rarely altruist in their operation. Sometimes mean companies pay for it in the short term, and sometimes in the long term. What we have to do, as individual or corporate consumers, is recognize that these things are likely to happen and attempt to mitigate the risk to ourselves and our own organizations.

VB6 could be been sold to vendor that went under, or met some other calamity that puts its adherents in the same spot. But for maintaining legacy software that means c until Microsoft has the courtesy to answer the calls for d and e. Then if the answer to both d and e is no, it will speed up the adoption of b. Note, of course, that b can often include a migration away from the platform to say Linux, or Web browser, or Android not just away from the development tools.

Oracle never got the system to work. Access, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint continue to have huge numbers of users — far more than any programming language like. NET or Java. Microsoft is not abandoning Excel for Windows in the foreseeable future. That platform should remain substantial for quite some time. For those who want to support web, mobility, ATM, etc. Visual Basic 6 has just risen to 5th place in the Tiobe Index of programming language popularity for May NET solution many new users to VB.

NET when searched by the language name. While I primarily code in VB. Since I read and write C along with VB. A professional using VB6 can absolutely switch to any of these other languages maybe not immediately, and not without learning some new things, but it can be done.

I wrote VB6 for years, and now write VB. As a student, I think v. Net have even more value? Both VB6 and VB. There are free versions of both IDEs. Yes but why use 21st century learning tools to begin a career in the 21st century when 20th century tools are available to learn with?

If one starts with VB. Ones who start with VB6 can easily learn VB. Microsoft is still using 20th century parts in their latest Office products. You make an interesting point. I will recommend VB6 to those who want to specialize in VB. Otherwise, they should start with some other programming languages, definitely not VB. NET at all. I have been treating the VB6 as one of my old friends. I wish they all can live well and live longer than me. I understand that people need to maintain their existing solutions, but 19 years since actual VB6 support got shut off in is enough time to transition to another development platform.

While I fully agree with all of your logic concerning the time-frame available to transition to …. But transfer to what? All the free-ish VisualStudios that appeared over the last few years have been hardly a resounding success. I personally had high hopes for ASP. NET, but then Java and Android apps came along….

How did you define that 19 years is enough time for support? Is there some rule that says you can maintain software for 18 years but not for 20? I must have missed that. But popular languages last longer. Some recommend migration of VB6 to VBdotNet, that may have been reasonable advice 10 years ago but who would recommend that today? VBdotNet is a sinking ship too.

Meanwhile VB6 applications continue in use and will probably do so as long as Windows continues. Yet would it hurt Microsoft to tell us now whether Windows 9 will support VB6 programming?

How long then after the move to 64 bit do you think is appropriate for Microsoft shareholders should have to pay out of dividends etc to support vb6 just because YOU do not want to join the 21st century? I know prob somewhat a little one sided the above, but over the years 20 or so , Ive seen Microsoft pull some real dumb stunts, and to them its about making sure they continue the cash cow.

Then again, I felt that way about the Amiga, too a long time ago. You can quickly crank out simple programs with PowerBasic or LibertyBasic. More substantial stuff can be written in VB. NET, C , or Java. I really think that if the first version of VB. NET was what we currently have, as opposed to what it was in , most holdouts would have converted long ago. For me, VB6 was always underpowered.

The lack of a complete Unicode implementation is really what doomed VB6, as it pretty much relegated it to a Windows 98 level of internationalization with code pages. In my professional life, I have created and maintain a complete programming language, for use by our customer base. Adding proper Unicode and free threading support to that language required a complete rewrite. I guess I just expected that after VB. NET and C are, after all. I guess everybody was just too busy with petitions.

I still think if the initial VB. I mostly use C and VB. NET now. My biggest complaint is ADO. Everything that starts, also has to end at some point.

Is it really in the best interests of end-users to provide such a technology-limited product? Question though, why should MS be different and why should it not cater to its real customer base, industry? I am endlessly amazed at people who think MS should not be about profits or any other company.

Do you really think the employees of MS do not have kids to buy shoes for and mortgages to pay? I made a career of working with VS; the programmers with whom I worked found VS the best development environment they had used. The job boards seem to have just as many jobs requiring VS experience and VB. To assert that VB. While there may be work-arounds to get VB6 to create applications that work with modern operating systems and — more to the point — modern technologies may be possible.

But when you compare the work involved to the ease of using the. Net namespaces available to any programmer, using any version of VS including the absolutely free VS Express , I am continually amazed that anybody still wants to do all that extra work.

Converting VB6 code to VB. Net code may require a learning curve. I understand that programmers are lazy. We borrow well-designed code instead. We copy code rather than reentering it. But being too lazy to learn, and use, a better technology is not a good idea. As a career move, it means locking yourself into a decreasing segment of the industry.

For a good discussion of the difference between VB6 programmers and those of us who have found VB. It should reinforce my career warnings. No problem at all with that, I charge out at? I remember Microsoft charging?

If they charged? But telling someone they have to pay out another? If I typed a letter on a word programme five years ago, then I type the letter today, why should I have to pay out over and over again just because Microsoft are forcing us to buy newer hardware, newer copies of software? Microsoft could re-establish visual basic 6, could release newer version of it, could provide support. I take the point, if the first release of vb.

They are not working for nothing. They are not giving away their windows operating system. VB6 should be considered an integral part of the MS windows operating system. Most of us that are requesting continued VB6 support are requesting it due to continuing support of our existing VB6 programs.

If we need something more we will use some other language. And if so do you expect the programmer to work for free to do this? Yet Microsoft seem to think this — they suggest migrating to dotNet yet they fail to maintain backwards compatibility or provide an acceptable migration tool not because of any user requirement but because they have newer development tools to sell.

Does your endless amazement include amazement at MS expecting developers to rewrite working code? The reality is there is a huge amount of legacy VB6 programming.

VB6 is not, and never has been, an integral part of any operating system. Current versions of VB have their runtime included with current versions of the OS 4. VB7 was awful, IMO. However VB8 was pretty good, and every version from VB9 has been outstanding. Corporations that were unwilling to take on the licensing and hardware upgrades were what made XP stay around forever, though.

Cobol developers are lucky to have a company like MicroFocus who are committed to updating and extending Cobol. Do you really believe end-users know or care about memory models or multi-threading?

They simply want applications that do what is required. MicroFocus has a product line, and two of the items on it are. NET only. With VB6, you have a product that will be supported through The reason is simple… your users are using other applications that are not limited in the same ways that your ancient development tool intrinsically is. Multi-threading had limited applications when you were using a single-core machine on an OS with an antiquated thread scheduler. Users also have increased expectations due to UI improvements that you are not likely going to be able to cost-effectively implement in a VB6 program.

No, of course not. You are demanding that Microsoft continue to provide tools to continue development of programs in a language that has been obsolete for years. VB6 has not kept up with the times.

One of the major reasons that existing programs need maintenance is that requirements change. Users want to be able to work with new hardware, or new ways to link to new on-line services, or support new user interfaces that have become standard.

As several posts have pointed out, some of these changes can be achieved in VB6, but only with a huge amount of effort; while they are very well supported in the. Net environment that succeeded Classic VB. The first release of Visual Basic, VB 1. Did you find that a truly usable tool?

Visual Basic 4. Incompatibilities between different releases of VB4 caused installation and operation problems. Was that the quality of tool you wanted? It would appear that VB6 is the only version of classic Visual Basic that has gained real popularity among programmers, and it was released seven years after the first version of VB. Microsoft started development of.

By late , the first beta versions of. NET 1. The first full not beta release was in February of Version 2.

The combination was a powerful and highly usable development environment that supported Visual Basic VB. Net , C , and an increasing number of other languages. The key point here is that VB. Net was released ony three years after the first version. Perhaps people including you should face the facts and learn to use a vastly more powerful development environment.

Stop living in a past that never was. Just as a reminder, Microsoft has committed to ensuring that existing applications created with VB6 will continue to be usable on Microsoft systems until 20??. However, support for the VB6 development environment officially ended in So far, the VB6 development environment is still working on the more recent Windows operating systems Windows 7 and Windows 8. But Microsoft has made no guarantees that it will continue to work on successor operating systems.

But I lived in code or on a SQL prompt back then. And the huge contribution was networking and the Web etc. Where I was at the time when VS 1. I guess you are the guy who spends 2 years rewriting a , line application rather than 2 seconds adding a manifest.

Net was hardly that. More importantly classic VB maintained backwards compatibility. You could take your 16 bit VB3 application into VB4 and upgrade it to 32 bit. Then you could upgrade that to VB5 and then to VB6. All with little or no effort. Others have mentioned that had the early versions of VBdotNet were abysmal and suggested that had they been better more VB6 applications may have been migrated.

Just because a programmer has spent ten years writing, modifying, adding new features and functions — you think an app that is in or so locations, on over a pcs can be changed in half a day. Migrating a VB6 application to VB12 is a big deal. Even Microsoft have abandoned their next- to-useless migration tool.

VBdotNet is a different language. When I migrated VB6 apps to dotNet I found using any of the migration tools you still had a lot of work to do to get a usable application and then it would typically be a lot slower than the original VB6 application.

With more effort spent on refactoring you could get performance to be something like that of VB6. But what justification is there for spending a lot of time and effort to achieve something that might be as good as what you started with? And who pays? I soon decided that, if you had to upgrade a VB6 app, rather than using migration tools it was better to completely rewrite the application.

One of the good things about the lack of compatibility between VB6 and dotNet is that if you have to rewrite you can choose the best language for the job.

You are no longer tied to an upgrade path. It is difficult to think of any scenario where VB. Net is the best solution. Who today as opposed to 10 years ago would recommend developers start to use VB. Yet Microsoft have put themselves into an illogical position. So the best answer to upgrading to the newer version is start over? Scrap 14 years worth of development?

Then the time it will take testing each module, dry running the data, test proving, years not weeks. The system creates invoices, reports, stock movement, stock into vans, stock control, data capture, digital signature captures, self generating pdfs, controls for display VFD poles, opening cash drawers, different receipt printers, touch screen devices, barcode scanners.

Self generating bar code labels, ticket editors, ticket designer applications, ebay plugs ins, amazon plug ins, ecommerce plugs in. I accept the methods, working applications, input devices, all of these change.

I remember writing our own coding to produce images for receipt printers, now you simply upload a header to the receipt printers internal memory, send a simply command and the image is automatically printed without sending the image over and over. At a hospital site we even have our own bio-metric fingerprint system in place, simply using a plug in stream.

But, and certainly for me, I always put my customers first — why would I want them to change all their hardware, update their operating systems, spend thousands of pounds out, sell them a new version, new training, new user guides, new everything. We have data centre capabilities, off site back up solutions, web servers, ftp servers, mail servers, a whole host of government compliance crap, we know a little bit.

We only ever have so much time, when vb7 hit and it was such a poor effort, no one including myself had faith in the next come along and start again. Now just to prove Im not stuck in my ways, were gonna set up a new 7 machine, install the latest offering from Microsoft in the vb range and try to convert it, just for giggle, lets see how many things just stop.

They have refused to do either. And why do you say the language is obsolete? How do you support applications that will be usable until 20?? I know there are ways around this, but it would make more sense to me to be able to support the applications until 20?? NET COM components so that over time you are in fact ready for 64 bit platforms and by the last date MS has said so far that VB will be fully supported and bit platforms your code will be ready to enter a new era.

But hey that is just me looking for solutions to potential problems rather than whining about them, cheese anyone?

This gives you lots of time to learn how to run VirtualBox. My company migrated or rewrote about a million lines of VB6 code into VB. The UI improvements and real multi-threading make it possible to use VB. NET Native will be along soon, so at least developers will have choices on speed vs. As for developing with VB. Many people still actively use VB6 one of the reasons why I continue to assist on this list , but lots of people have moved on, too.

If VB. Getting up to speed in VB. NET is pretty easy. A VB6 expert with some knowledge of real OOP should be up to speed in somewhere from an afternoon to a few days. Converting just under 1. None of them had previously programmed professionally in C or VB. That whole time we were still quoting, writing custom software, and servicing our existing product the whole time. When we finished, our codebase dropped to about , lines of code, despite adding lots of functionality, and improving the user interface dramatically.

It sucked every time, primarily because you have to spend time, effort, and money just getting your programs to cope with the technology, while not necessarily adding any tangible benefit for the customer. Microsoft has agreed that if you buy additional subscriptions from them of a min of 10, units then you can request support. Microsoft even extends the XP life cycle to the UK for 5. Users do notice that kind of thing. Net, and integrate that with your existing classic VB code.

Net code. There are tools that work in both directions. You can continue to use your classic VB code as you incrementally replace modules with code using a programming environment that will continue to evolve and be supported for quite some time to come. Once again: VB6 is waaay behind the times. It does not support a lot of new hardware. It does not support new User Interfaces. It does not support programming techniques that have become standard, such as threading, exception handling, hooking, or sub-classing.

Microsoft has developed far better tools that enable programmers to create far better applications. Would you ask an automobile manufacturer to continue manufacturing their model in ?

How about in ? Would you expect an automobile manufacture to continue making, and selling, parts for their model in ? Does it support store returns of on-line purchases? Does it support NFC? The exact same binary executable will continue to run perfectly well in the exact same operating environment. They will want to upgrade to support industry-mandated protocols.

They will want to upgrade to support new hardware such as NFC. They will want to be able to migrate to new hardware, with new drivers for the new disk drives, graphics cards, touch screens, etc. I have seen all too many software developers who have gone out of business due to their failure to deal with software rot. What I am recommending is that you identify modules that can be replaced one at a time, and recode them in a current development system — and yes, I do mean VB.

As your replace individual modules, your programming staff will become proficient in. Net, and will find it easier and more efficient to expand the replacement efforts to additional modules. Will this take years? Of course. If you start now, and allocate a fraction of your programming resources to the migration, you should be able to complete it before that happens. Just buy a new car. They stopped making the car in But if they stopped providing parts at the same time, they would be sued by everybody from the car owners to the government.

In addition, after years and years of working in big massive corporates with 60 or so staff at my disposal, I now work for myself and have done quite happily for ten years or more. I cant justify spending six months re-writing one main app, even when I have the client base I do, my only realistic option is to employ a new member of staff already working in the latest vb.

They then spend 12 months working on a new version, maintaining the old data structures, even then I once had a young lad working on a new accounts module for six months, at that point he just left.

I do realize that regardless of the moaning and griping there is in realty nothing and I mean NOTHING I or anyone else can do as Microsoft will simply ignore us and go their own sweet way. To this end, I have asked one of my lads to setup a new machine, installed windows 7 on it I know windows 7 is dead already and then install vb Its always a learning curve without a doubt, and that is what makes programming a joy in my case — its never the same twice.

It will be very interesting to see the end results of this test, I know its going to take the best part of the week to do. Bet you can get a deal on the license fee when you buy as many as Dell does. Try it, the higher the volume the better the deal. This BTW works with a lot of products. The Microsoft tool was dropped after VB though there are a couple of other decent tools if you wish to try them.

One exception to this though, I assume from what you have said you are using a database — if this does the job for you now and assuming it is SQL not Access I would keep this as it is — so that your old and new software can function alongside each other.

You are certainly right to attempt this with a simple project first. The effort required tends to increase geometrically with the size and complexity of the project.

Back in the day Microsoft estimated that once you were experienced you could convert VB6 code to VBdotNet at a rate of 7, to 10, lines per week. Though this will depend a lot on your existing code. You could also consider using C rather than VBdotNet — they are pretty much the same language so it is just personal preference really — but Microsoft tends to give coding examples in C and therefore maybe C may have a longer lifespan.

Best of luck with your endeavors and please keep us informed of your progress. That may blunt the sting of conversion a bit.

There are a number of guides that give coders a heads-up on the biggest differences between VB6 and VB. Where did you find the date ?

That is ridiculuous. Even recommending rewriting part of a VB6 program to use dotNet do do a minor amendment is ridiculous. This application simply connects to a mysql server, checks to see if any text messages need sending, if so send them..

To port from VB6 to visual studio — do I first have to port to visual studio and then port again to visual studio If you want to upgrade your project from Visual Basic 6.

Application works on XP, Vista, 7, 8 and all the other flavours without an issue. But because its such as small application I thought lets give it a go. The replacement is, which has to be typed in manually not changed by the system itself during update;. OnLoadCompleted Int32 fReload. And you think I can do what with this? I actually do want to take advantage of the newer controls, newer looks and slicker applications but at what cost I ask!

The VB6 importer was dropped from the last two version of VS. There are better converters available online, but several of them have a cost associated with them. The fact is that someone on this forum gave you a possible method of transitioning off of a dead development platform. Nobody said that you have to use his suggestion. You have had plenty of time to go through your stages of grief, and move on. VB6 was an odd collection of some entities that behaved like objects, and some entities that did not.

The system. You can also use the Imports command to bring in any other namespaces that you are frequently using. The importer was dropped after VB Virtualize, get a grip here. If you have to continue to live in the distant past then you need to learn VMWare or some other virtualization tools. BTW if you look around you can still get buggy whips for your car.

I love vb6 because it helps you think wider. In vb6, you do not just create an application. You will need to think of how the system is going to communicate within itself and other systems outside it.

VB6 apps will behave whichever way you want them to behave. You can manipulate data as you want easily. I am good in. Net but I still like VB6. While it is good to move on, lets not bury vb6 just because we want to move on. Lets not discourage those who still use vb6 because I still do myself. And it works fine on Windows 7 and Windows 8. There is no need to migrate or find any other solution until either VB6 stops working or until you see a business case for doing so.

Only then should you migrate, and only at that point should you decide what language to migrate to. Time is money. For me , i would not waste my time and money converting the applications i wrote in the past to VBDotNet if this does not justify the cost. More or less the customer would not give a damn about that. He just wants his application to work. Simple as that. And no amount of postings about OOP, multi-threading, buggy whips or joining the 21st century will ever change that.

I like the fact that the code between the 2 is mostly identical. We have to wait for the final release to be sure, but the future for VB6 programming is looking good. We all need to just move on. Base compatibility may be there but most thirdpart sfuff wont.

Get your feet wet and jump in. VB6 programming is fine on the Windows 10 technical preview, but we need to wait for the final release of Windows 10 to be certain. But seriously it is well past time to start moving that code base off the 20 year old Win32 API. There is no need to use a VM or XP. Download VB. Net express and start working the various online tutorials.

I would say that your best bet would be to get Visual Studio Express Visual Studio Community Edition may be a better bet. And of course Visual Studio is out later this month. They are all free downloads. Net and VB6 are completely different languages.

It is a matter of personal preference, but some developers find it easier to move from VB6 to C because they are completely different rather than from VB6 to VB. Net which are completely different with some, possibly confusing, superficial similarities. I work for a software house developing mainly for multi-national corporates, government and defense. So the principle product of the company is software? Just as a reference there are other industries that will not be moving off the Windows platform for decades to come.

OPC is almost totally dependent on Windows in its current form for example. But for anything other than pure Windows desktop applications JavaScript seems to be the current favorite. And JS is even straying into the desktop. In the past we found some users wanted to migrate from VB6 to VB. Certainly many users will be pleased to hear that VB6 programming will run on Windows Net the end-result was rarely never?

A CRUD app is pretty much the same in any language. Sten it is pointless arguing this, if you like VB6, fine, continue to do new development in it.