Visual Basic Petition and Mount St Helens
I know you are asking what do the two have to do with each other, however both seem to be growing more restless as time progresses.
My flight last night was diverted 15 minutes last night out of the direct route to Seattle due to the volcano...I'm sure on the way home this weekend it will be delayed due to failure to provide support for the airlines reservation system because it's running on legacy VB.
Just noticed that there's a new grass root effort to try to bring VB back to life Online Petition - First I have to admit this is a unique approach and have to give credit to whoever thought of the concept. Apparently this is driven by the fact that VB 6 is near the end of its mainstream support.
That being said, I think I have to disagree with it's intent and purpose. Not because I think VB or for that matter VB.NET is evil, I like many others did VB for years, and yes I did a bunch of Java too. I can neither confirm nor deny any IBM 370 assembly or Cobol usage and on the advice of counsel that's my final answer.
For a minute I thought I was ok with the concept of extending the time for expiration of the extended support to ensure users had time. Don't confuse that with the idea of adding VB 6 support to Visual Studio 2005 or beyond. Then, I started thinking about this in the context of my car. It comes with a warranty and set expectations for life. Expectations for VB have been clear for years, and progressive shops invested in new development. It is my belief that like your car after your warranty ends, there will be plenty of 3rd parties that will happily charge you for helping out with support issues.
I don't want my license fees I pay now to pay for support of old stuff that should be upgraded; I want it to go to R&D for future capabilities.
Just like Cars, some people lease every 3 years so they don't have after warranty issues, other people buy and drive them till they stop running and pay for non warranty repairs. Software applications are the same way. Some people keep them around and don't upgrade them - others progressively update them as technology evolves and their business changes. Progressive businesses need technology that provides progressive value and helps them sustain their competitive edge. VB6 is the old car that is no longer fuel efficient or economical for ownership and is polluting the air and requiring resource that would be better spent on progressive change and R&D for emerging capabilities. Businesses dependent on VB for their mission critical systems should evolve by making changes that not only re-platform, but look at changes that would increase the business value technology is providing for them. I struggle to think of a business who’s processes and capabilities did not change since VB was introduced. Take this opportunity to take the business value of the application up a level!
On a more bizarre note, if you are really intent on keeping VB alive, why not just ask MS to open source it or for that matter build your own compiler on top of the CLR
Regardless, please don't ask them to waste our license revenues on things beside innovation.
Who was it that said “Innovate or die?”