Posted by: Paul Lefebvre
You’ve all heard the news: Visual Basic is dead. Support for Microsoft Visual Basic 6 has pretty much ended and you will soon be completely on your own. Microsoft wants you to move to their powerful, but extremely complex .NET platform.
I can hear you all screaming “No!!!, say it isn’t so”. But it is so. So what are your options?
Tough It Out with Visual Basic 6
You can certainly choose to just stick with the status quo and use Visual Basic as you have been for years. It’s worked this far, why not keep using it? Well, the world has not been standing still in this time. Vista is out now and VB6 does not have any Vista support, although app seems to work fine with it. For now.
The IDE UI for VB6 is also a bit dated. It’s an MDI application with a bunch of Windows which, frankly, is a bit ugly to look at.
And the VB6 language, although easy to learn, is also not all that powerful either. It’s object-oriented capabilities leave much to be desired.
I don’t think that burying your head in the stand and continuing with VB6 is a good idea.
Switch to .NET
This is what Microsoft recommends, so it must be the way to go, right? Don’t be too sure! If you have never worked with .NET, switching from VB will be a daunting task. The framework documentation is immense, so you’ll have a lot to learn. VB.NET has almost nothing in common with VB6. The language features and object model are completely different. Although it still has “Visual Basic” in the name, it is really an entirely new language.
And what about cost? Sure, Visual Studio 2005 Express is free, but it has a lot of limitations. You’ll probably want to shell out for at least the Standard edition, but probably the Professional edition.
Migrate to REALbasic
Now this just might make more sense! The REALbasic language looks very familiar to VB programmers. It is a different, though fully object-oriented, language, of course, but it is very easy to see how things are connected. The REALbasic framework is also very easy to understand.
The IDE works great with multiple tabs as you would expect any modern development IDE to do. Additionally, REALbasic is updated regularly (every 90 days, in fact).
And I saved the best for last: REALbasic is cross-platform! REALbasic itself runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and can create applications that run on Windows, Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 and Liinux. You can do your development on whatever platform you prefer but deploy to the platforms your customers use. And you can also grow your customer base by branching out beyond Windows, which depending on your application might be significant.
How to Get Started?
Hopefully, you have now realized that REALbasic is worth a look. If you haven’t already, download the REALbasic trial for your platform. REAL Software also makes the Linux Standard Edition available for free, so if you want to use REALbasic longer than the trial, just install a Linux distro in a virtual machine and load REALbasic on it.
Eventually you’ll want the Professional edition, though, since it has advanced features such as Container Controls and Cross-Compiling.
Have you switched from Visual Basic to REALbasic? If so, how did it go for you?
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I am thinking about migrating to realbasic, but I have loads of existing applications on VB6 that I need to port over. Is there a utility that will help me do so?
Hello Corey,
There are two utilities that can help with porting to REALbasic. The first one is the VB Project Converter from REAL Software. It is not highly regarded, but you can download it here:
http://www.realsoftware.com/download/individual/
A new product is called VB Convert! and can by downloaded here:
http://www.aybcomputers.com/vbconvert/
I haven’t used it.
I don’t think either of these will do everything for you, but they may provide some guidance.
@Corey:
You’ll first have to decide on what it’s going to look like after the conversion. Do you want a cross-platform application or do you want to stick with Windows-only for now?
The answer changes how I’d answer your original question. If you’re going for cross-platform then you might be in for a tough time if your VB6 project uses a lot of 3rd party ActiveX controls or libraries. These will, with 100% absoluteness, not convert over to RB with any of the tools listed. It’s just too tough.
If you don’t use much in the way of 3rd party stuff, it’ll be easier but still plan on doing a lot of work. There is no magic converter for you.
If you want to stick with Windows then then *might* get lucky and have some of your controls still work in RB. But even then you’ll do a lot of work getting them working in RB.
As far as the two tools available, the only one that I can honestly recommend is VB Convert! from AYB Computers. The VB Project Converter from REAL Software is just plain horrible and creates more work than it solves. VB Convert is far from a perfect tool, but it’s faster for form conversion than doing it by hand.