A lot of different types of people see the About Visual Basic web site. Some are experts but others may not really know what a programming language is, let alone Visual Basic, and they're just trying to figure it out.
We welcome all of you!
And to show that we're not just for expert programmers, we're featuring a page that answers the fundamental questions that some of you might have starting with the most fundamental of all, What Is Visual Basic?
A very nice article, that puts VB.NET in a reasonable perspective as a language, compared with VB6.
But there are some areas in the VB.NET (possibly only the VBE) interface that are quite a bit harder to deal with than the equivalents in VB6. In particular, the consequences of pressing F1 for help are nowhere as meaningful as they were in VB6.
I agree that this has nothing to do with the language, but it does make it harder for the neophyte or novice to figure out how to do something.
As an example, in the VB6 IDE, if the user highlighted a property of a control and pressed F1, the response was to display help on that property. In VBE this doesn’t happen … one gets sent to kind of a generic (and not very helpful) discussion of control properties.
So while the language is an improvement, and the NET Framework is an improvement, there’s quite a bit of work that would be helpful if done with respect to the IDE.
Will Microsoft do anything? My confidence that they might would be immensely improved if there were some easily-accessible way for us to send issues and comments to Microsoft with some assurance that they’d be read!
That’s a big, “A-Men” there, brother.
I’ve come to believe that it would have been easier to have a conversation with Stalin in the Kremlin than somebody at Microsoft.
You can, in fact, have conversations with people who are, in fact, employed at Microsoft in several ways.
What do all of these venue’s have in common?
They’re under the control of Microsoft while they occur. As as example of the opposite, a Microsoft employee has NEVER responded in the About Visual Basic Forum or in this comment facility. (And I have specifically invited people to do so in person on a number of occasions.) One key element in “thought control” is to make sure that you control the venue so you can avoid answering if necessary. It’s something every good politician learns very early.
So, like you, I don’t have much confidence that any or your concerns will ever be answered.
HOWEVER …
In the article, I was pretty clear that VB.NET was more difficult to learn and use than VB 6. Nothing good comes without a price. And VB.NET is good! (I suspect that you’re starting to see this as you work with VBE. Just a suspicion – I don’t want to speak for you.)
And … It has always been so. I remember that when IBM ruled the anthill, they were just as bad. Actually worse. And, in my opinion, companies like Sun and Oracle have even lower standards of corporate governance.
So … we do what we can do and take the good with the bad. VB.NET is still one amazing product.