The VB Team has just announced the release of a VB.NET / VB6 Interop toolkit, complete with source. For those of us that work in shops that still maintain a fair number of legacy applications, this could be quite useful. Here’s the description straight from Microsoft:
The Interop Forms Toolkit 1.0 is a free add-in that simplifies the process of displaying .NET WinForms in a Visual Basic 6 application. Instead of upgrading the entire code base, these applications can now be extended one form at a time. The goal is a phased upgrade, with production releases at the end of each iteration containing both Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .NET forms running in the same Visual Basic 6 process.
My favorite thing about this release is the inclusion of the source code* – I always love taking a peek at how MS writes code. As a side note to all this, this is just one part of the new Visual Basic 2005 Power Pack, a collection of controls, components and add-ins – all free. This is one worth looking at.
Note: You’ll find the source if you take a look in this folder:
X:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Power Packs\Interop Forms Toolkit 1.0\SDK\Source
To celebrate 15 years of Visual Basic, a quick glance to the past:
Microsoft Announces Visual Basic at Windows World ‘91 General-Purpose, High-Productivity Programming System for Microsoft Windows
ATLANTA — May 20, 1991 — Microsoft today announced MicrosoftR Visual BasicTM programming system at the Windows World ‘91 industry trade show. Visual Basic is a graphical application development system for Microsoft WindowsTM graphical environment version 3.0 that combines visual design tools with a powerful, general-purpose programming language and Windows .
Visual Basic is at an interesting crossroads, it’s at a critical juncture between two paths. One path, it has followed since its earliest days, where simplicity and ease of use ruled over maintainability and solid design. The other, the longer, harder road, is that of design over ease. With the release of Visual Basic .NET, a major shift occurred in the direction the language is taking, though looking back now, nearly 5 years later, I’m finding myself concerned for the future of the language.
This is part of the Insane Ideas series. A group of blog posts that detail ideas, possible projects, or concepts that may be of interest. These are ideas that I don’t plan to pursue, and are thus available to any and all that would like to do something with them. I hope you find some inspiration – or at least some amusement in this.
NFTs are drawing in vast amounts of money; the cryptocurrency community couldn’t be more excited unless Elon sold himself as an NFT.
I love what I do, and I work with a great team. While it’s still far from perfect; I can say that I do love my job. For the last couple weeks though, I’ve had to remind myself of this several times. I’m sure we’ve all done it, in this industry it’s hard to avoid. You read an email or receive a phone call and repeat the mantra “I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.
