Newbie Question: learn vb6 or .net

[-XC-]

Hi folks,
I'm just a hack programmer, but have done quickbasic, quickc, ansi c/cvi and
would really like to poke around with vb6.
But *nobody* sells it anymore, short of looking for one of the less
expensive versions on ebay which I don't think I want to do.

Should I just go ahead and buy vb.net for under $100 and be done with it? I
just want to do desktop applications, not web apps. Be nice if I could do
COM port r/w too. Can't ask this question in a vb6 group, they say go here.

thanks,
John

 

[Ray Cassick]

I am a LONG time VB6 developer and I am telling you to not even bother
leaning it anymore. VB.NET is Soooo much nicer. Unless you plan on making
cash from legacy app maintenance I say just learn VB.NET.

It would be good for you to lean a bit of C# also. If for nothing else than
to know what the critical differences are between them (and there are
differences). I did not do this right away and built a function library that
was not able to be used under C# because I did not bother to check. I
thought that it was all the same and it was not.

 

[-XC-]

OK Ray, thanks very much for your wisdom, I appreciate it.
There aren't any legacy issues to worry about, so I'll heed your advice and
simply take the .net plunge.
thanks again,
John

 

[Ken Halter]

OK Ray, thanks very much for your wisdom, I appreciate it.
There aren't any legacy issues to worry about, so I'll heed your advice
and
simply take the .net plunge.
thanks again,
John

Hopefully, you realize (by now... 2 months after posting), that you're
surely going to get a biased opinion in a .Net group... right? That "so much
nicer" statement is entirely opinion based so your mileage may vary... fwiw,
I still haven't found a single reason to completely rewrite everything I
have in .Net.
The .Net IDE is slow, bloated, buggy and about as friendly as a pile of
broken glass imo. No decent immediate window (that's on my top 5 list of
gripes).... but, you're right, finding older versions is a pain... gotta
tell you that you'll be disappointed by the "stand alone" version of
VB.Net... unless something's changed recently, it's basically a crippled
version that's missing quite a few features that people expect (like that
thing called an "Upgrade Wizard" that isn't worth the disk space it occupies
anyway so... if possible, try a demo on someone elses PC before installing)
I won't even mention the framework distribution issues.

 

[barkerl]

I would agree with this. I have just started employment in a job using
Cache, but VB6 or VBA is also required in the job specification.

VBA won't change - heaven help us if VBA.NET emerges. But, for now VBA
and VB.NET will keep you top of the pile.



Regards.