Show HN: Visual Basic 6 reimagined in JavaScript | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Visual Basic 6 reimagined in JavaScript

github.com

7 pointszubairq14 comments

The marketing is all wrong. I've used vb6 for 20+ years. The advantage is that you can get a Windows app running in seconds. But vb6 is tainted by opinions (some right, but mostly wrong). Forget VB. Focus on RAD. Show how easy it is to build a UI. The vb6 ide is unparalleled in modern software. It's shocking how bad things are.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, you are probably right, to focus on the RAD part. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or GitHub and we can continue the conversation. Would love to chat

You just have to get rid of the words "visual basic". It has a terrible reputation by the thousands of people who have never used it but like to parrot things they have read online.

Ok, testing with a different headline now to see the response:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18975316

I tried it but the hacker news crowd seems to respond more to Visual Basic 6 (see the link I attached). I guess outside of Hacker News people think more of RAD. Thanks for your input :)

I'm sure the hacker news crowd leans more to web apps and mac/*nix. The first headline never mentions "windows".

Ok, thanks, that makes sense as I am a Mac and Linux user myself. I only use Windows as Mac and Linux is virtually non existent in the desktop corporate world in Europe

Wait, what about Lazarus? https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

It's Pascal rather than Basic but otherwise, wouldn't that qualify as a parallel?

Yes, Lazarus is totally awesome, I love it! I have tried to get people in companies to use Lazarus but they wont go near it because it is Pascal. The other problem with Lazarus is that they need to make a one click installer, I saw that put alot of people off

Still very early, but we are trying to recreate the Visual Basic 6 experience in Javascript.

Why? Who is the target market?

The target market is people such as myself who need automation tools within an intranet, tools that work with the simplicity of VB6, and are not cloud based

  Made with:
  
  Electron
  VueJS
  Sqlite
  Javascript
  NodeJS

I take it the above is for the Visual Basic like editing.

What is the runtime environment? Is it also packaged as stand-alone Electron desktop app with it's own database? I didn't understand the 'share the url' part of the description which seems to imply that it's a web app.

I could have used a different stack than shown to get the Visual Basic like editing.

The runtime environment is NodeJS/Electron, and the same code that runs the website also runs the desktop app

Yes, it also has a built in Sqlite database, so that when you make a database app you can download the entire app, including the the database as a single HTML file that can be emailed/distributed to anyone and run using just a web browser

The Share URL part means that if you build an app within your intranet that you can then send a URL link to a colleague so that they can use the app as well

Reply on news.ycombinator.com