Visual Basic 2005

[keithdoxey]

Hi All,

as you can probably guess by my presence on the PicBasic forum, I am a "Basic" type of guy and for several years have been using VB6 for windows applications and ASP for my intranet application.

Today I started work on a new VB6 application similar to one I developed about 3 or 4 years and discovered that Microsoft have stuffed up VB6 by updating the webbrowser controls during the IE7 update.

After much googling I found a resolution to the missing control but also found that lots of people were getting runtime errors whilst developing. Sure enough, I got the same errors but if I compile the project the executable works OK but it is a real pain having to keep recompiling after every change of code

This has set me thinking that maybe I should be moving to Visual Basic 2005 and ASP.net as Microsoft seem to be making life difficult for their older programs. I did "try" to use VB.net when it first came out but as most of my VB program include com ports I didnt have any success.

Likewise, someone at work decided that a new intranet project should be done in ASP.net despite the fact that none of the developers had done any courses. I knocked up a proof of concept design for the look and feel using ASP in about a day but after several weeks and everyone trying to solve the problems there was one bit we could not get to work in ASP.net !!!

Obviously there is a lot more help available a few years down the line so that should make learning the new structure and methods easier so I am thinking of taking the plunge.

The big question is....

Can Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic 2005 happily co-exist on the same machine or is installing VB2005 going to break my existing VB6 install?

[T.Jackson]

I don't think you'll have too many problems, VB 2005 is an entirely new breed of beast, Microsoft normally provide good backwards compatibility for dependencies. (No quotes, no bets, no warranty expressed nor implied - I've never installed or used VB 2005)

[Bruce]

I've had VB5, VB6, and VB 2005 on the same machine for a long time. No
problems.

[keithdoxey]

Thanks Bruce,

Thats what I wanted to hear

Time to take the plunge then.

I don't think you'll have too many problems, VB 2005 is an entirely new breed of beast

Thats the bit that is worrying me. EVERYTHING about it looks different so a whole new language to learn !!!!

[T.Jackson]

Full on Object Orientated Programming from what I've heard. Inheritance, polymorphism (the ability to process an object by its type rather than its reference), no longer a procedural language where the user controls the program, instead now like the rest where the program controls the user. Have fun!