by W
Thursday, July 7, 2016
I am sorry to say, but B4J is not a real successor to VB6
I am sorry to say, but B4J is not a real successor to VB6. I have tested it, but it is much inferior in comparison with the VB6. After many years with VB6, B4J seems to be complicated with many uncomfortable and annoying features. Good for fun, but not for real work. Even a msgbox "Hello world!" is not so simple with it. In B4J: you must declare first in the Process_Globals: Private fx as JFX, and after this: fx.msgbox(Mainform, "Hello World", "Title") And if you don't fill all three items, it gives an error message, title is also important in all cases. But this is only a small example, the worst part is its "Internal designer" which is NOT an integrated part of the system. This is where you have to create the forms, this is a chaos, a totally failed concept. And finally, is it a "free tool"? The fast answer is yes, you can download, install and use it, but if you want to have a full community access in the forums, you have to pay yearly (but not too much!). And the B4J is a typical oneperson business, the developer is very dedicated, but if he disappears (remember: Jabaco, KBasic.....) your investment and time can also disappear.
by W
by W
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That is all true. But in all fairness, the trillion dollar behemeoth with thousands of developers on its payroll has abandoned VB programmers over night, and technically your investment in VB6 died 18 years ago when the incompatible VB.NET and C# were introduced. People are now stuck with a 22 years old product because only few wanted to - or could - upgrade to VB.NET, and even less wanted to migrate to a curly braces language.
ReplyDeleteSo - is it really that much riskier to bet on the product of a one person shop who is making his living with supporting his product? Erel Uziel has more riding on B4X than Microsoft cares for its VB users. No, he won't be around forever. But he's already supporting his tools longer than Microsoft properly supported VB6.
On Linux, I'd suggest using Gambas, by the way. This is by far the best (free and open source) development environment for a BASIC programming language that I've seen in ages. It does not pretend or even try to be compatible to Visual Basic, but it follows a similar philosophy and is extremely user friendly. Unfortunately, it's Linux/Unix-only, but very mature and great nonetheless.
http://gambas.sourceforge.net/en/main.html