Question

VB6 had a reputation for being too forgiving (and thereby allowing bad practices) and hiding complexities that perhaps developers would be better off needing to know. But I found that, say, 90% of applications could be done in VB6.

But I’d like to see more examples of pushing-the-envelope to work round VB6’s limitations. For example, I once found some code for using pointers in VB6 by making calls to the Windows OS. The result was that some string manipulation on largish documents (about 2MB) was brought down from 30 minutes to just over 3 seconds. Does anyone have other examples of going past the limits of VB6?

N.B. not VB.Net.

Answer 1

Joel said some good stuff about VB6 back in 2001.

Many VB6 programs are spaghetti,
either because they’re done as quick
and dirty one-offs, or because they’re
written by hack programmers without
training in object oriented
programming, or even structured
programming.

What I wondered was, what happens if
you take top-notch C++ programmers who
dream in pointers, and let them code
in VB6. What I discovered at Fog Creek
was that they become super-efficient
coding machines. The code looks pretty
good, it’s object-oriented and robust,
but you don’t waste time using tools
that are at a level lower than you
need. I’ve spent years writing code
for C++/MFC and years writing code in
Visual Basic, and let me tell you, VB6
is just much, much more productive…

One of the things about Visual Basic 6
is that it doesn’t always give you
access to the full repertoire of
Windows goodies that you need to make
a polished application. But what it
does do, better than almost any other
programming environment, is let you
drop into C++ code (or call C APIs)
when you’re desperate or when you need
that extra speed.

That was written in 2001: when creating a new Windows program today, IMHO the obvious choice for best productivity is VB.Net or C#. (JOKE: C# is just Visual Basic with semicolons.)

Getting back to VB6: there are many good examples of how to call C APIs to do something special or just to run faster. Here’s some of my favourite links:

• Karl E Peterson’s One Stop VB Shop – his StringBuilder sounds like your example, although it doesn’t use API calls
• Steve McMahon’s VBAccelerator
• And I give +10 for OneDayWhen for listing Matthew Curland’s Advanced Visual Basic 6. Probably pushed the envelope further than anyone (and didn’t quite burst it).