What did you love about VB6?

orionblastar

I loved how you can 'paint' controls, and it generates functions for you to fill in based on events. I also liked the Wizard for creating apps. They did a Java BASIC language Jabaco to work like VB6 and compile to Java files. https://www.jabaco.org/ I think someone should take it over and remove the technical debt.

latenightcoding

building a UI was so easy.

crawshaw

I could type ~four lines and an alert box response from a visual form. For years I have lamented the amount of paperwork necessary in most of modern programming to get things done. I don't know how important that is now that I have a machine fill out the paperwork. It would still be better if there was less fuss.

jared0x90

i loved making AOL 'hacking' tools as a kid in VB3/5/6. faders, stuff to scroll ascii art to chat rooms, etc.

kemiller2002

In the windows of ecosystem for basic business apps, it was so way to build things. I know Microsoft made it, so it has an unfair advantage vs languages like Delphi, but compared to C++ it was so easy and fast to build basic working apps. My favorite thing was to watch a guy who was in tech support and frustrated with our overly complicated process build something on his own that solved a major problem we had. This was by himself. It was amazing. Low barrier to entry, and he taught himself enough to fix his issue. The vp called me in to look at it and make sure it was ok, and I was like “a couple things here or there but it was more than good enough to function day to day.” Never would have happened with lower level languages.

conz

Obligatory: if using Linux and want the open source equivalent: https://gambaswiki.org/website/ GAMBAS is a free development environment and a full powerful object-oriented language and development platform based on a Basic interpreter with optional just-in-time compilation, as easy as Visual Basic™ was.

Mister_Snuggles

It was amazingly easy to interact with other apps via OLE Automation (aka, COM Automation). About 25 years ago I wrote a program that would look for requests (in the form of XML files) from the custom software on our Solaris system, then based on the contents of the request it would fire up Word, load up the appropriate letterhead and body template, fill in the required information (e.g., client name/address, caseworker name, etc), print two copies (one for the file, one with an envelope to send out), and store the completed document in the client's folder on the fileserver. This program saved an incredible amount of time and let the office typing pool concentrate on typing dictated letters instead of filling out templates. Without the magic of OLE Automation letting me use Word programmatically from my application, creating this would have been basically impossible.

jere

Nostalgia, not an answer: my proudest moment from high school was coding a very primitive raycasting "engine" in VB6 (that's what we had in our programming class). I had no idea what I was doing and I used some sort of layout object to draw vertical columns.

bottlepalm

Making real, complex components, and drag dropping them into other components. Designing a UI with all your components and zero layout code, just positioning them visually. To anyone who grew up with VB6, web development feels like a serious regression.

mmorrell0

drag-and-drop gui builder sean greasley's video tutorials

throwatdem12311

VB6 was what sparked my interest in programming. My final project in my programming class was a menu based dungeon crawling game with turn based combat. I was obsessed with Diablo on PC at the time and I just wanted to make anything that remotely resembled it. So you had a town where you could buy equipment and magic spells and then you would go into the “dungeon” and you would fight a selection of random monsters until you got to the boss. I’m sure I would recoil in terror at the code I wrote but I owe a lot to VB6.

throwup238

Code-behind was the bee’s knees. You open up the GUI editor, drag a button onto the screen from the toolbox, give it a name/id, and double click on it which takes you to the source code file where a “buttonId_click” handler is auto created for you. Super easy to create simple GUIs without much work while still wiring together the bits that need code. There was certainly some rough edges and I don’t know how well the workflow would have adapted to responsive design but line of business apps in controlled environments it was so powerful. VB6 and Delphi were like nothing else we have today (at least that I’ve seen).

sieve

Building the UI was superfast. Wiring the logic was somewhat painful but manageable. But you did not really need more than that to build CRUD apps. For everything else, you had C/C++ and the Win32 API. I am a huge fan of keyboard-only navigation and you could achieve a large part of the extremely rapid data entry methodology of DOS UIs of the 80s and early 90s with considered key-handing. You never even had to look at the screen for the most part; only at the document in front of you. Microsoft killed it with the move to DOTNET. VB.NET was a different beast, and C# was a superior language. But it was never the same. I moved to web-uis in the late 2000s. Painfully slow way of writing business apps, but the complexity can be managed if you can reuse templates/components.

recursivedoubts

The debugger. Still the best debugger I have ever used. You could grab the program counter/execution pointer and drag it literally anywhere, rewrite the code and keep on stepping. I would get into a loop, realize I made a mistake, drag the PC back up above it, make a change and step back into the loop without breaking flow to compile or some other such nonsense. Alien technology compared to most development environments even today.

regexorcist

Indirectly introduced me to programming as my dad was obsessed with it growing up. He was a hobbyist with zero formal training, working a completely unrelated job, and still made a ton of money selling tailor made admin software to all kinds of small businesses. Really a testament to how good VB6 was.

kushalpandya

The thriving ecosystem of dynamic libraries that you could just link and create a Windows Vista-esque UI (AKA Aero) in an IDE built in 1998, thanks to Win32 API.

m463

the original visual basic (probably VB1.0) demonstrated and organized event-driven programming in my mind. I just "got" it. The first version wasn't that deep, but it had a noticeable impact on me. In comparison, I remember using one of the not-so-early apple xcode versions, and it sucked. it was a disorganized mess and I don't think it has ever gotten much better. Note - I might be comparing a "sort-of-pure" first version of something to a watered-down-corporate 5th version. It might also be like memorable 80's movies, where if I go back and actually watch it decades later, my glowing memories might be ruined by the reality check of slow pacing, overacting and bad hair. lol.

kylecazar

It was my first IDE and provided simplified abstractions that made me (somewhat) understand what software developers actually do. And then curiosity took over and I caught the bug... So it will forever hold a special place.

bryanlarsen

I never used it. VB1.0 was buggy and incomplete, which soured me on Visual Basic and Microsoft. Then they had the gall to charge $60 for the update to VB1.1 despite VB1.0 being completely unusable. Switched to Linux and open source languages and haven't looked back. Of course these days I would never trust a 1.0, but at the time I was young and naive.

girvo

That it made it so easy to whip up UIs and access Windows APIs, having never done it before as a 10-11 year old playing with VB6... ...which I think promptly used as a younger teen to write a custom keylogger for a friend to try and steal RuneScape accounts. Good news is I didn't know how to send emails from it, so even though it worked, it couldn't hurt anyone in the end! It taught me what "double buffering" was, because I was (ab)using it to try and build games, but didn't understand why I was getting this horrible white flash when I cleared everything! I learned so much with VB6 haha