25 years ago, I was slinging apps together super fast using VB6. It was awesome. It was a level of productivity few modern stacks can approach.

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ipdashc 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm too young to have used VB in the workforce, but I did use it in school, and honestly off that alone I'm inclined to agree.

I've seen VB namedropped frequently, but I feel like I've yet to see a proper discussion of why it seems like nothing can match its productivity and ease of use for simple desktop apps. Like, what even is the modern approach for a simple GUI program? Is Electron really the best we can do?

MS Access is another retro classic of sorts that, despite having a lot of flaws, it seems like nothing has risen to fill its niche other than SaaS webapps like airtable.

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simonw 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can add Macromedia Flash to that list - nothing has really replaced it, and as a result the world no longer has an approachable tool for building interactive animations.

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whateverboat 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnaGZHe8wws

This is a nice video on why Electron is the best you might be able to do.

	▲	ipdashc 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for the link - this is a cool video. Though it seems like it's mostly focusing on the performance/"bloat" side of things. I do agree that's an annoying aspect of Electron, and I do think his justifications for it are totally fair, but I was more so thinking about ease of use, especially for nontechnical people / beginners. My memory of it is very fuzzy, but I recall VB being literally drag-and-drop, and yet still being able to make... well, acceptable UIs. I was able to figure it out just fine in middle school. In comparison, here's Electron's getting started page: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/ The "quick start" is two different languages across three different files. The amount of technologies and buzzwords flying around is crazy, HTML, JS, CSS, Electron, Node, DOM, Chromium, random `charset` and `http-equiv` boilerplate... I have to imagine it'd be rather demoralizing as a beginner. I think there's a large group of "nontechnical" users out there (usually derided by us tech bros as "Excel programmers" or such) that can perfectly understand the actual logic of programming, but are put off by the amount of buzzwords and moving parts involved, and I don't blame them at all. (And sure, don't want to go in too hard on the nostalgia. 2000s software was full of buzzwords and insane syntax too, we've improved a lot. But it had some upsides.) It just feels like we lost the plot at some point when we're all using GUI-based computers, but there's no simple, singular, default path to making a desktop GUI app anymore on... any, I think, of the popular desktop OSes?

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cheema33 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 25 years ago, I was slinging apps together super fast using VB6. It was awesome. It was a level of productivity few modern stacks can approach.

If that were too, wouldn't we all be using VB today?

	▲	majormajor 10 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Ever try to maintain a bunch of specialized one-off thrown-together things like that? I inherited a bunch of MS Access apps once ... everything old is new again
	▲	cuu508 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Excel (and spreadsheets in general) is not quite the same as VB but is similar in that it solves practical problems and normal people can work with it.

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zqna 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agentic coding is just another rhyme of 25 y/o frenzy of "let's outsource everything to India." The new generation thinks this time is really special with us. Let's check again in 25 years

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xpe 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How are you measuring productivity?

What one can make with VB6 (final release in 1998) is very far from what can make with modern stacks. (My efficiency at building LEGO structures is unbelievable! I put the real civil engineers to shame.)

Perhaps you mean that you can go from idea to working (in the world and expectations of 1998) very quickly. If so, that probably felt awesome. But we live in 2025. Would you reach for VB6 now? How much credit does VB6 deserve? Also think about how 1998 was a simpler time, with lower expectations in many ways.

Will I grant advantages to certain aspects of VB6? Sure. Could some lessons be applicable today? Probably. But just like historians say, don't make the mistake of ignoring context when you compare things from different eras.