From my first post on this group this morning I was impressed by the quality
and professional responses I received. I feel the knowledge is here to get
a good handle on this, a question on Visual Basic Versions and what
direction I should take. Some background is in order.

As an old IBM 360 o/s BAL programmer, and also a EXCP channel programmer
dealing with interrupt routines, my first experience with BASIC was on DEC
PDP 11/40 & 11/70 RSTS time sharing systems. I really liked what you could
do with the DEC BASIC and wrote a number of programs and developed video
support macros for the application programmers. Later in life, on Windows
based PC's, I got somewhat into writing a few M/S Word and Excel macros. I
really enjoyed Excel macros and wrote some fairly complex ones, however, I
never spent enough time to become really good at it. When Excel moved from
their macros to VBA I did a little conversion but not much.

One day I decided to spend money and bought M/S VB 4.0 and the manuals.
Wrote a couple of small test programs but not as much as I would have liked
to do. Then came along VB 6.0 SP6 Professional Edition which I purchased.
Again not much time to spend and before I knew it VB 2008 Express Edition
was available which I installed.

As you may imagine I have a few VB versions and manuals. I also have Office
2007, so considering Word & Excel support of VB, plus what is available at
present what should I be moving towards? I'm wondering if I should rat hole
everything except VB 2008 Express? How does this relate to Visual Studio?
Small Basic? I hope to spend more time on VB and would like to be able to
grow in VB capability in Word, Excel, and stand alone VB applications I may
write.

Hopeful someone can clear this up for me. Thanks in advance.

Dave

It all depends what your ultimate aim is.
My impression from what you posted there is that you are best of to stick to
VB6.

RBS


"Dave" wrote in message
...
From my first post on this group this morning I was impressed by the
quality and professional responses I received. I feel the knowledge is
here to get a good handle on this, a question on Visual Basic Versions and
what direction I should take. Some background is in order.

As an old IBM 360 o/s BAL programmer, and also a EXCP channel programmer
dealing with interrupt routines, my first experience with BASIC was on DEC
PDP 11/40 & 11/70 RSTS time sharing systems. I really liked what you
could do with the DEC BASIC and wrote a number of programs and developed
video support macros for the application programmers. Later in life, on
Windows based PC's, I got somewhat into writing a few M/S Word and Excel
macros. I really enjoyed Excel macros and wrote some fairly complex ones,
however, I never spent enough time to become really good at it. When
Excel moved from their macros to VBA I did a little conversion but not
much.

One day I decided to spend money and bought M/S VB 4.0 and the manuals.
Wrote a couple of small test programs but not as much as I would have
liked to do. Then came along VB 6.0 SP6 Professional Edition which I
purchased. Again not much time to spend and before I knew it VB 2008
Express Edition was available which I installed.

As you may imagine I have a few VB versions and manuals. I also have
Office 2007, so considering Word & Excel support of VB, plus what is
available at present what should I be moving towards? I'm wondering if I
should rat hole everything except VB 2008 Express? How does this relate
to Visual Studio? Small Basic? I hope to spend more time on VB and would
like to be able to grow in VB capability in Word, Excel, and stand alone
VB applications I may write.

Hopeful someone can clear this up for me. Thanks in advance.

Dave

RB: Why would you use VB6 that is old and no longer supported? Most
people are going with VB.Net.


--
joel
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As I said, it all depends on the OP's ultimate aim.
If he is a hobby programmer and not aiming for a long career in programming
and if he is familiar already with VBA/VB6 then I think sticking with VB6
makes sense.

RBS


"joel" wrote in message
...

RB: Why would you use VB6 that is old and no longer supported? Most
people are going with VB.Net.


--
joel
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I might question the "most people" part of your last sentence... it is my
understanding that there were far, far, far more VB programmers (upwards of
six million was the estimates that I had heard) than there currently are
VB.NET programmers. I'm not sure where they went (assuming they left in the
first place), but it appears VB.NET was not there final destination.

--
Rick (MVP - Excel)


"joel" wrote in message
...

RB: Why would you use VB6 that is old and no longer supported? Most
people are going with VB.Net.


--
joel
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Maybe they moved from B to C. I don't think there is a single answer
why people move from one programming language to another programming
language and to which programming language they go to.

There is a large group of preple who where using VB6 to control test
equipment who moved onto Lab View. There are another group of people
who moved to the went version VB8 and then to VB8 replacement VB.net or
took a side step to C Language.

My preference is C languages (C++, or C#). The libraries in C have
developed a lot and now have a lot of the string manipulation features
that gave Basic some advantages. It is much easier in C Language with
its points to do a lot of tasks that you can't do it basic. An it is
easier in C to interface to the Windows Environment.


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joel
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And it is
easier in C to interface to the Windows Environment.

I agree VBA is not best suited to working with Windows where some sort of a
hook or sub-classing is required. However for interest, in which way would
you say C is "easier" to interface with the Windows Environment than VB6.

Regards,
Peter T


"joel" wrote in message
...

Maybe they moved from B to C. I don't think there is a single answer
why people move from one programming language to another programming
language and to which programming language they go to.

There is a large group of preple who where using VB6 to control test
equipment who moved onto Lab View. There are another group of people
who moved to the went version VB8 and then to VB8 replacement VB.net or
took a side step to C Language.

My preference is C languages (C++, or C#). The libraries in C have
developed a lot and now have a lot of the string manipulation features
that gave Basic some advantages. It is much easier in C Language with
its points to do a lot of tasks that you can't do it basic. An it is
easier in C to interface to the Windows Environment.


--
joel
------------------------------------------------------------------------
joel's Profile: 229
View this thread:
http://www.thecodecage.com/forumz/sh...d.php?t=166356

Microsoft Office Help