In the last 3-5 years I have been renewing an insurance application and a commmercial integration toolkit based on Visual Basic 6.0.
According to Microsoft’s "It just works policy" the IDE is no longer supported after april 8th 2008.
It still works to develop and deploy Visual Basic 6.0 applications.
When will it be impossible to support Visual Basic 6.0 applications, or will they live forever like Cobol applications do?
Update: Microsoft statement march 2010: The Visual Basic team is committed to “It Just Works” compatibility for Visual Basic 6.0 applications on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 including R2, and Windows 7.
Update may 2011:
Happy 20th Birthday Visual Basic!
I’d say they’re at risk, because the OS and hardware will evolve out from under them.
You can run Visual Basic 6.0 on Windows XP, but even that’s close to the end of its life (it keeps being revived on its death bed).
Those Cobol applications still live because the mainframes they run on aren’t going anywhere. ‘Big iron’ was built during a time when computers were expensive and rare and had to run for 20-30 years. Not true with applications based on PCs and Windows, which are viewed as more disposable.