Microsoft Visual Basic Developers Revolt Over MS' Decision to Kill VB

Microsoft, which has actively been courting increased developer interest in the Windows platforms has decided to end it's support for Visual Basic, probably the most widely used language for coding Windows applications, in favor of Visual Basic .Net, a fundamentally different language. Some developers are protesting and would like VB maintained and developed alongside VB.Net.

This may be a cautionary tale about investing one's programming career based upon a proprietary language. Then again; it might just be that folks don't want to transition to the future when the tools they are currently using are apparently still viable. You be the judge. I surely don't know how to call it. But when I code, I code in languages that are not the property of one company, such as Python. Though I only program in the smallest of ways, the cross-platform capabilities of Python and Java are attractive to me. Okay, Java is proprietary (though perhaps Sun will heed calls to open it up) but Java runs everywhere, which makes it special. And Sun doesn't demand a license to use it, which makes it different in my eyes and those of many others.

Many programmers are moving to languages which run on many platforms, not just Windows or another one (Intel's Itanium?). VB had coders locked into the Windows platform, was and is a viable language, and MS should probably keep supporting it, lest they lose the support of programmers completely within their fold. There is no effective way, short of a complete re-write, to move VB applications over to VB.Net. This effectively strands the VB developers as MS will no longer be updating VB6 (the most current version) for security or other important shortcomings.

Jack