The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

VB6 + COM Sucks?

Vote:

[x] Yes
[ ] No

Argh...

VB6 should *force* you to write your own IDL, and have a way to manage it without having to use a seperate editor/compiler.

GuyIncognito
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

It is what it is. Like it or lump it. It sure ain't 1997 anymore.

Sassy
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Oh, darn... it's past 1997 and all of the worlds VB6 code didn't disappear?

I'll give you a lump on the noggin!

GuyIncognito
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

VB 6 sucks. And not just a little bit.

VB 6 sucks BIG TIME!!!

C++
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

And C++ sucks even more!

Lisp
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

C++ is a very powerful language.

LISP sucks because it never gained market share.

VB is a very crappy language and sucks a lot more than LISP.

C++
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Perhaps it is the implementor that sucks and not the implement.

c
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Whitespace
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

"And C++ sucks even more!"

What is this, Slashdot?

Craig
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Slashdot sucks more than all of them combined.

honest truth
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Thats not true, VB6+COM sucks more than anything in the entire universe.

Craig
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

"C++ is a very powerful language.

LISP sucks because it never gained market share.

VB is a very crappy language and sucks a lot more than LISP. "

Hold up a minute playboy!

1. VB is more powerful than C++ as it can accomplsih more things with fewer lines of code.

2. VB is more popular than C++!

so by your own definition VB is better than C++

the artist formerly known as prince
Thursday, March 18, 2004

Unless the 'thing' in question is a <<= b ^ reduce<int>(c % d);

Prolog
Thursday, March 18, 2004

you suck
i suck
we suck
now let's fuck

Thursday, March 18, 2004

Why do I get the feeling that this was all written by a schizophrenic having an argument with himself?

Nick
Thursday, March 18, 2004

High level languages are for girls.

Thursday, March 18, 2004

That's why they suck so well :)

Stephen Jones
Thursday, March 18, 2004

I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV

Yo
Thursday, March 18, 2004

is french a high level language?

Thursday, March 18, 2004

Oui.

Bill Murray
Thursday, March 18, 2004

all you people arguing over languages just goes to show what a big bunch of pussies you are

punch card user
Thursday, March 18, 2004

This discussion is silly.

In the pre .Net world, VB is much more productive for writing COM business logic than the same code in C++.

I suppose you like using ADO from C++... come on, lie to me.

Rick Watson
Thursday, March 18, 2004

Salad Cream

This has to stop
Thursday, March 18, 2004

"VB6 should *force* you to write your own IDL, and have a way to manage it without having to use a seperate editor/compiler."

Why should VB force you to write your own IDL? VB is aimed at people who don't want to do stuff like write their own IDL.

Perhaps C++ would be a better solution for you?

Mark Hoffman
Thursday, March 18, 2004

Yep but providing you use implements, whats the problem?
Create a project with just stub functions and classes called IMyObject. Compile your code, register it, decompile the IDL with OleView and recompile. Register the resulting TLB in VB and implement IMyObject in your CMyObject classes.

This means you can have code like

Dim MyObj as IMyObject
Set MyObj=CreateObject("MyServer.CMyObject")

and stop worrying about it.

NOTE: If you want to use VBScript this may not be a good idea, 'cos VBScript only lets you get at the default interface.
There's a program on the web that creates a shim object of the right interface type but it's hard work.

Peter Ibbotson
Thursday, March 18, 2004

GuyIncognitio,

<quote>
VB6 should *force* you to write your own IDL, and have a way to manage it without having to use a seperate editor/compiler.
</quote>

Why? The majority of VB 6 programmers would not even need to know what IDL is, let alone how to write it.

VB 6 hides alot of the complexity for you. Is that a good thing? Depends on whether you want to see that complexity or not.

I for one love the productivity that VB 6 allows. And for many in-house applications, the limitations of VB 6 (of which there are many) are not particularly limiting (lack of inheritance isn't that big a deal in many cases, for example).

Not having to worry about IDL is much the same - very rarely is that limitation of any real impact to the work I do, so it doesn't bother me.

Seeya
Matthew

Monday, March 22, 2004

...'cause that's from Microsuck!

malloc
Wednesday, May 26, 2004