Microsoft wants to give VB6 more than a nip and tuck to bring it
into the 21st century.
What is it?
When Bill Gates called Visual Basic "the
programming language for the 1990s", he unintentionally gave it a
use-by date. With the successor to VB6, it's clear that Microsoft
has a rather different programming language in mind for the new
century.
The change is signalled by new nomenclature: instead of VB7, we are
to have VB.net. "Ultimately, we decided to make a series of changes
to the VB language to modernise it and make it more capable,"
explained Microsoft spokesman Paul Vick. "As part of this decision
we decided to drop the VB lifetime compatibility requirements."
There were widespread protests when Microsoft revealed the extent
of its proposed changes, and the company has backtracked on many of
them. But it's still clear that the move to VB.net is more than an
upgrade.
Where did it originate?
Visual Basic was launched in
1991, providing a relatively simple alternative to C++ for Windows
application development. It offered an intuitive, graphical
development environment which enabled programmers of all skill
levels to produce applications by dragging and dropping controls
onto a form.
What's it for?
VB.net will continue to be used for
Windows developments, but also for Web services and wireless
applications.
What makes it special?
VB now has true
object-orientated characteristics like inheritance and
polymorphism, which brings it closer in power and flexibility to
languages like C++. VB.net objects can be reused - or inherited -
from one application to the next, eliminating the need to rewrite
code for each individual application.
How difficult is it to master?
"Microsoft Visual
Basic.net takes a little time to learn, and you will experience
success more quickly by starting small," Microsoft warns on its
VB.net upgrade site. "Visual Basic.net is not 100% compatible with
Visual Basic 6.0. The upgrade tool will typically upgrade about 95%
of your application to Visual Basic.net. This leaves about 5% of
the application that you must manually modify after the
upgrade."
Where is it used?
VB7 isn't out yet, although there are
plenty of users of pre-release versions. VB itself started as a
small-scale development environment for casual programmers, and is
now used on some big corporate developments - there are a lot of
users in the City, for example.
Not to be confused with
Netscape.
What systems does it run on?
Windows.
Not many people know that
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is retraining as a VB
developer.
What's coming up?
"Should developers using Visual Basic
6.0 simply upgrade to Visual Basic.net, or are there compelling
reasons to consider learning the C# language from scratch?" asks
Microsoft's VB.net product manager, Ari Bixhorn, before replying
soothingly, "In the vast majority of cases, the answer is to
upgrade to Visual Basic.net."
Rates of pay
Junior developers start at about £20,000.
The more experienced can look for between £25,000 and £40,000. VB
can be used with databases other than Microsoft's own, and rates
are particularly good with Oracle.
Training
Microsoft training is delivered through the
network of Authorised Technical Education Centres (ATECs - you can
locate the nearest one using Microsoft's Web site), over the Web,
or using CD-based courses. But it's worthwhile searching for
independent classroom training and free online resources. Try, for
example,
www.mvps.org/vbnet/dev/vb7