Visual Basic developers who are being left behind with Microsoft’s discontinuing of “classic” VB have a short time to take advantage of an interesting offer. The makers of REALBasic will give registered VB6 users a free license to their software.
Visual Basic developers who are being left behind with Microsoft’s discontinuing of “classic” VB have a short time to take advantage of an interesting offer. The makers of REALBasic will give registered VB6 users a free license to their software.
In sence that programs made with it make people cry.
Otherwise it would be interesing offer. And possibility to summon more developers for macs.
for VB6-proggers interested in switching to linux there’s the gambas language (link below)..quite simmilar to VB6, though not 100% compatible (does not aim to be), if you’re alredy on .NET, even better, the solution is called mono – i think there’s a work on a quite compatible compiler..check out the mono page
Links
http://gambas.sourceforge.net/
http://go-mono.com
What the hell are you talking about ?
Visual Basic is ok for small gui programs. It’s used in business alot . Go to monster.com and find the VB jobs and then it will hit you like a tsunami. Theres a whole field of jobs that don’t require c/c++ and they pay well.
Even though I am one and haven’t bothered to learn anything new yet … not like they didn’t tell us this was coming
There is also kbasic
http://www.kbasic.de/
why don’t you switch to python; it’s easy to use and more powerful than VB6.
you can use it as scripting language
you can use it as object-oriented language
you can use it to build GUI
check out
http://www.python.org
http://www.wxpython.org
http://boa-constructor.sf.net
http://www.pygtk.org
http://glade.gnome.org
using wxpython, you can run python (source or compiled) code on windows, mac, and linux without changing your code
using GTK lib, you can run it on Linux and windows with GTK lib installed.
@ Moderators, any chance you can try moderating your own site? Or have this become another slashdot?
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RealBasic is a joke. The IDE makes people want to jump out and kill themselves. The speed of RB proggies vs VB proggies are very slow. And it DOES have runtimes, they package the whole complete runtime into the application, not bits and pieces as any decent language would do. But hey, it’s crossplatform on 3 different OSes.
a few person your python on the enterprise market…
search on job site… compagny don’t search python programmer… it search a lot java programmer
Either learn another language (python and ruby are good).
Or get Gambas or PureBasic
Free license details:
* Offer good for Visual Basic users only.
* Offer good for REALbasic 5.5 for Windows Standard Edition only.
* This license does not include an upgrade to REALbasic 2005, which may be
purchased separately.
* Limit one license per person; unique email address required.
* Limit three licenses per school, business or organization.
* License may not be sold or transferred.
* This offer expires on April 15, 2005.
* We will not share your information outside of REAL Software; view our privacy policy.
The world needs a programming language where you can hop in, code some stuff, and deploy it by copying a reasonably small EXE. So I welcome RealBasic and anybody else that wants to try to fill this niche. I myself enjoy PureBasic but the underlying language is a little weak, and the syntax is a little kludgy in places.
Somebody needs to rig up a programming language that lives on top of Mono/.net, is interpreted, has a small interpreter than can be compiled into an EXE with your program, and comes with a 1-file IDE/Interpreter/Debugger/Compiler with syntax highlighting and built in help.
Holler to me when somebody’s got that. Until then I will have to survive in Visual Studio.
How about Boo? (http://boo.codehaus.org)
The interactive interpretor has code completion, syntax highlighting, and you can use the boo compiler to make .exes.
Its not your wild, delusional mega-language, but it is pretty nice–and available right now.
Wild? Delusional? Dude I just want a single EXE that I can double-click, type in a textbox, see my syntax highlighted, maybe hit F1 and get context help, maybe hit F5 and run it, debug my program and see the variables and step through the statements, and finally when I get it right, compile it to an EXE. Is that wild? Is that delusional?
I’ll have to look again at Boo. I believe you have to rig up your already-existing development environment to make it work right?
Don’t want to sound redundant, but if people is looking for an alternative to VB, or BASIC in general, you should keep an eye on the FreeBASIC project (http://fbc.sourceforge.net), an open-source Basic compiler that already works on DOS, Win32 and Linux, producing small native EXEs with no separated runtimes required. Easily interfaceable with real-world C libraries (there are bindings to OpenGL, Gtk, FMOD, MySQL, Lua, SDL, Allegro and more), it’s rapidly evolving…
Classes aren’t supported yet, but planned for the future. And with the rate at which the project is growing, I’d not be surprised to see them in one or two months…
I agree that gambas is a very good project and would be a lot easier for VB6 > Gambas than VB6 > VB.NET. But if you are going .NET, may as well go C# and develop on Windows and wait for mono to catch up because monodevelop is still in development and not too user friendly (compared to VS!).
We’re about to try using realBasic in some small projects, because:
It’s fast for prototyping cross-plaform Apps. We’d like to use Delphi but it’s only windows (Kylix is dead). We could use QT but it requires more expensive programmers.
A single exe reduces maintenance costs considerably, no lib hell on linux for example!
Not sure yet whether it’s good for large apps, for small simple apps it could be ideal, we’ll see.
All the other languages people mentioned are incomplete or require too many effort to use (we’re talking real money here). I would rather give someone 450 dollars for a complete working system than have to spend possibly days (80 dollars per hour = lots of money) trying to get some opensource not quite finished project working. Mono is a great example of an unfinished project, great promise but not yet there – we’ve tried.
RealBasic is GREAT for the same types of Apps we were creating under VB. People always says bad things about VB, but 3 million programmers can’t be wrong.
I say switch to RealBasic, and help make the community strong.
It sounds like the people who are dismissing REALbasic have not actually tried it. (For example the comment above: “I’ve heard that it is bad.”)
On the other hand, the editors of Software Development magazine took REALbasic 5.5 for Windows for an extensive test drive when it was nominated for a 2005 Jolt Award.
Last month, SD Magazine named REALbasic as a winner in the “Languages and Development Environments” category, beating out Delphi, CodeRush, JBoss AOP and Java Studio Enterprise.
REALbasic 5.5 for Windows beat out development tools from Borland and Sun!
Here are the details:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/st…
How “bad” does REALbasic sound now?
BTW… Gambas doesn’t address the problem of Visual Basic users being abandoned, since it doesn’t run on Windows.
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Matt
but 3 million programmers can’t be wrong.
I don’t know about right or wrong, but I think they shouldn’t be ignored, definitely. VB, like Delphi or Realbasic or Supercard, for example, all have a relatively low entry barrier, primarily due to the WYSIWYG drag and drop form designers. The closest thing we have to it in the open source world is QT Designer in my opinion, but unfortunately it’s not as enticing for many people due to licensing restrictions among other issues.
It sounds like the people who are dismissing REALbasic have not actually tried it.
I used it extensively for years when I had a mac, until I found a suitable alternative (to both Realbasic and to the mac). I’m no longer “locked in” to a development environment and forced to accept its bugs and lack of features. Even if you show a company how to fix a bug or add a feature, they can just completely ignore it for years. Whereas with open source this is not an issue. Trust me, people’s concerns about Realbasic should not be dismissed. It is a nice product, but it does have problems that made it unacceptable for me. I’m not going into specifics, but I’d generally describe the majority of the problems as a “lowest common denominator” issue, similar to issues some people have with java. I mean if I visit Uncle Linux who has oranges and Uncle Windows who has apples, I can accept that. I’ll adapt. I don’t want someone telling me – ‘no, you can’t have apples or oranges then, but here’s a prune they both share.’
Being a VB programmer, you are probably like me and wouldn’t like to be restricted from taking full advantage of the native features of the platform you are using. Some examples: using the native Windows forms toolkit (or GTK# on linux or Cocoa# on the mac), embedding a browser or pdf viewer for inline documentation, playing a video in a window, editing sound clips or video files, embedding graphics in text, using force feedback in a 3D opengl/directx game that needs to run fast, etc. I can do all of this in .NET and/or Mono with VB.NET or C# or boo or whatever, much faster than using Realbasic plus C++ coding or python plus C++ coding, etc. And it’s free and open source if you stick to options like Mono, SharpDevelop, etc.
BTW… Gambas doesn’t address the problem of Visual Basic users being abandoned, since it doesn’t run on Windows.
If your primary target platform is Windows, it really might be best to stick with .NET and Mono. You just need to switch to a different language, period, unless someone creates a clone of VB classic for .NET (which doesn’t appear likely). I don’t think there is any way around it, VB programmers need to learn one of the more fully OOP languages out now like C#, VB.NET, Java or ruby or boo or whatever. In programming you have to be a lifelong student.
Apple should buy them out! Visual Basic is used in a lot in buisness for database front ends. I have Realbasic and it is betting pretty solid, the only time where porting is hard is when the programmer got lazy in VB and used a bunch of cheap third party pluggins, instead of writting some code. I think it can help buisness “switch” their applications to another platforms. It is also cool in that you can create Linux apps as well.
I think RealBasic fits into two main different categories:
1) it allows VB developers to (more or less) leverage their existing experience to switch to a more modern (and supported) framework, which is also cross-platform. Do not underestimate the “cross-platform” attribute…
2) it is a READY now. So, beside being cross-platform, it is just READY. I agree that MONO would probably be a better choice but MONO is not READY yet. WinForms support is still underdevelopment and, most of all, there are no real tools for it (beside MonoDevelop which clearly isn’t nowhere near a decent IDE). Since some of us doesn’t like to use Notepad to code, a decent IDE is badly needed.
I don’t think most VB programmers would find switching to VB.NET very difficult, actually. However, converting code won’t be easy expecially when dealing with large projects. If I can give a suggestion that would be: if your market is Windows-based only, stick with VB6 and start porting the whole stuff to VB.NET. In the long period, that would also mean achieving cross-platform compatibility through MONO.
If you’re interested in expanding your market towards Linux / OS X market NOW (please, notice the “NOW” word), try RealBasic. .NET is a big thing and you will probably be forced to switch to it sooner or later,but at least you can do that in a more relaxed way.
Until MONO is ready, RealBasic could be a good choice for desktop applications, expecially because 99$ (std. ed.) is very cheap.
I quite don’t understand why VB coders are complaining. VB itself won’t die for many more years. If they need to stick with VB, there’s nothing which will prevent them from doing that. MS just set VB.NET as next generation Basic line of evolution, which is something very easy to understand. Technologies which are foundation of VB will be still supported. So it’s just a matter of choice: if you want to switch to latest technologies, start coding with VB.NET; if not, just stick to VB6. Easy! 🙂
Windows apps generated with this “free” version seem to work fine, but when I generated a GTK Linux app and ran it, a message was displayed to the effect of “This application was generated with a demo version of RealBasic and will expire in 30 days. Application will also automatically exit in 5 minutes.” Not very useful for cross-platform development.
I just noticed the following blurb in their press release: “REALbasic Professional Edition, required for cross-platform deployment, starts at $399.95 and includes extended functionality for database and team development.”
Until MONO is ready, RealBasic could be a good choice for desktop applications, expecially because 99$ (std. ed.) is very cheap
When MONO is ready, MS will unleash a CLR for Linux and render the effort moot. Wait and see.
Uh… you’re right! I didn’t notice that since I didn’t try it yet. While 400$ is not that much, however that’s not very well mentioned… plus 400$ is different than 99$…
Thank you for pointing this out!
> Windows apps generated with this “free” version seem to work fine, but
> when I generated a GTK Linux app and ran it, a message was displayed to
> the effect of “This application was generated with a demo version of
> RealBasic and will expire in 30 days. Application will also automatically exit
> in 5 minutes.” Not very useful for cross-platform development.
That seems reasonable, since Visual Basic 6 (which REALbasic is trying to replace) doesn’t create Linux applications.
If you only want to develop for Windows, you can get REALbasic Standard Edition for free. If you also want to cross-complile for Linux and Mac OS (which VB can’t do) you have to buy an upgrade to the Professional Edition.
BTW… once you get the free Standard Edition, you can buy an upgrade to Pro for $299.
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Matt
MS will not release a CLR for linux because this’d be bad for their image (-> acknoledging that linux is good enough for their product, they’ll make it easier to move away from windows which is definitely not in their interest) and even if they’d release a CLR that wouldn’t change a lot because mono is GPL’ed and MS’ CLR probably wouldn’t (you also won’t have access to it’s source i guess)
The only real choice is Delphi,
It’s easy tor port win32 VB code to win32 Delphi that it is to port it to .net.