Some programmers here have been developing a project in VB6, and they say they now need to upgrade to vb.net if they want their apps to run on newer/future systems as vb6 is going to be history soon.
So there is this huge application they have been working on that they are going to have to rebuild from scratch (they tried to use the upgrade wizard but there were too many errors)
The owner of the company is not too thrilled about investing so many hours in a project just to have to turn around and redo it from scratch.
This isn’t my project and I don’t know anything about vb, I am a web programmer.
But what can these guys do, so that this doesn’t happen again, or what should they have done so that this wouldn’t be an issue now?
Is there some way to make sure your application is always scalable and wont become obsolete and need to be re-written?
Thanks!
Nope, there’s nothing around it really, although Windows 7 can still run DOS programs, so it’s not like their programs will be un-runnable. The biggest problem they will run into is no new support or new features, and a shrinking community of knowledge on the subject.
My company is currently running programs in Fortran, Clipper, VB6, and FoxPro to name a few, some of which have been around for over 20 years, and have survived all of the Windows upgrades unscathed. Usually the thing that renders an old program unusable is the inability to recompile the program to fix bugs.
It certainly helps though to break the functionality of your programs up so that if you do decide to migrate from VB6 to VB .Net it’s a lot easier to pick out the reusable code.