Re:Bill Gates demonstrates Visual Basic (1991)
by apostacy on Thursday September 10, 2020 @06:15PM
(#24437110)
Visual Basic was one of the first languages I learned, and I was able to quickly make complex graphical applications.
I feel like we have regressed in a lot of ways.
Contrast building a GUI app in 1990 vs 2020.
Compare Visual Basic to something like React Native.
How much code would you have to write for some basic business application, like having a few screens that share a state, and interface with a database? How big would the executable be?
Visual Basic had some big flaws, but you could work around those flaws. And I can also explain the logic of a Visual Basic program fairly easily to someone inexperienced. And there is just so much less cognitive load involved. I feel like 90% of the actual code that I wrote was for actually processing data. Sure, asynchronous stuff could get difficult in VB, but that was the exception. And I wish that VB had had reducers.
I am certain that virtualizing the x86 Visual Basic 6 runtime in Javascript would easier to develop for and outperform many modern GUI frameworks today.
I feel like we have regressed in a lot of ways.
Contrast building a GUI app in 1990 vs 2020.
Compare Visual Basic to something like React Native.
How much code would you have to write for some basic business application, like having a few screens that share a state, and interface with a database? How big would the executable be?
Visual Basic had some big flaws, but you could work around those flaws. And I can also explain the logic of a Visual Basic program fairly easily to someone inexperienced. And there is just so much less cognitive load involved. I feel like 90% of the actual code that I wrote was for actually processing data. Sure, asynchronous stuff could get difficult in VB, but that was the exception. And I wish that VB had had reducers.
I am certain that virtualizing the x86 Visual Basic 6 runtime in Javascript would easier to develop for and outperform many modern GUI frameworks today.