Microsoft Said It Will Open Source VB6 (Rumor) | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Said It Will Open Source VB6 (Rumor)

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33 pointsmsredmond25 comments

Apparently it's a false rumor. Tweets from Doug Seven (http://twitter.com/#!/dseven):

"The rumors of VB6 going open source are simply not true."

"@beckynagel I'm the Director of Product Management for Visual Studio Tools & Languages. There's no more solid source than me. Its not true."

Apparently Roy Osherove who started this rumor intentionally misquoted MS. Moral of the story... a rumor is not "confirmed" by a tweet from a 3rd party.

Here's to hoping their version control is secure!

(Disclaimer: MS Employee) I really like this trend of MS open-sourcing larger codebases when it's reasonable and would help folks. No reason to leave it sitting on a shelf hidden.

[Snark] If only Microsoft would Open Source IE6.[/Snark]

As much as VB6 sucks as a programming language, this will honestly be useful to a lot of people out there. Because whether it sucks or not, if you've inherited a VB6 codebase then that's what you have to work with.

VB6 is one of those languages that sucks in many ways, but is also very attractive in other ways. Easy to abuse, but if used correctly can be quite nice. It really needed a "VB6, the Good Parts" book -- and yes, the book wouldn't be empty.

In any case, kudos to MS for this. I'd love to see them take on a general position that when they EOL support, they open source the code.

So does many other languages. The VB support of COM is so sweet, although they put a little bit too much magic into binary compatibility.

True. I wouldn't claim it's any suckier than PHP, for example. Both "suck", but both have their uses.

I started my development career on VB (Don't judge me. I was young, I needed the money, etc).

I still have nightmares about "Method ~ of object ~ failed" error messages with no line number, backtrace, or anything remotely useful.

We got it wrong -- our source who confirmed it retracted after hearing Doug's denial. We have since corrected the story. Our source was not as solid as we thought -- looks like it was a practical joke a group level. But whatever it was, we F'd up, and we've since taken it down. We are very, very sorry. Huge fail on our part.

This is really neat, definitely going to take a peek.

My first application was written in VB6, was free, but downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and made it into PCmag magazine (6+ years ago now).

VB6 got me started in programming and would be cool to see how it worked internally.

Just to reiterate - we retracted story. Our source retracted so we retracted story. Be great if someone at ycombinator can change headline to reflect this (I also started a new "We f'd up" thread to make it clear there. We are SO sorry)

I took my application programming baby steps in VB6, even though I knew C at that time, but for windows programming it was a lot easier to start in VB than the horrifying C windows sdk(this was before the (CLR and C#). I was amazed at the rapidity of development. I have come to learn many more languages and many more paradigms since then, and as much as I would like to hate it, there are certain quirky yet fond memories associated with it. Not to mention all the VBA hacks I did with it in the past.

Visual Basic was first announced on May 20th, 1991, meaning tomorrow is the 20th anniversary. VB6 itself is already 13 years old and many of its spin-offs and clones are still going strong like VBA in excel, Realbasic on the mac, of course VB.NET, and most recently NS Basic that runs on top of javascript (but it's commercial).

Relevant: You Just Can't Kill Visual Basic http://www.devx.com/vb/Article/16562/1954

I believe VBA for Excel predated its use within visual studio, if I'm correctly understanding Spolsky's telling of VBA's beginnings.

I cut my teeth on VBA in Excel, and for all of its weaknesses (and the fact that it just. won't. die), it was still a very powerful platform.

What really surprised me is that VB was only really being actively developed for 7 years - introduced in 1991, VB6 released in 1998. That's pretty incredible considering how widely adopted it was.

Service Pack 6 for VB6 was release in 2004. Not exactly active development, but it wasn't abandoned until around then.

Having coded in VB6 in my past life, I was very happy to get away from the 'dll hell' of VB6/COM. Next up, Java. The more you deal with it, you realize the 'jar hell' is the same as before, just in a different form. Now, I get to deal with ruby gem nonsense.

I wish they open sourced VB6 15 years back. Too little too late (at least for me), even if the news is true.

This is the first link on Hacker News in my year or two of reading that caused me to involuntarily gasp with surprise and teary joy, such a shame it's so probably false.

I'd also prefer to see the VB3 source anyway. Ah sweet halcyon 1995, sneaking into the school computer room at 7am. I miss being 12, and I miss IPX networks :)

> "will give those companies some piece of mind until the VB6 applications can be rewritten in .NET"

Piece? Am I failing to understand the phrase (is this valid, like maybe 'pieces of information') or is that 'peace' and they are talking about people being able to keep VB6 around for virtually ever now?

Invalid. The correct usage is "peace of mind."

This, if it was true, would have been a good move for information and software preservation efforts.

It would have been cool to see someone create a VB6 web framework

Let's pray it's April...

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