The Web is full of articles about the differences between VB 6 and VB.NET. Most of these are long lists of differences ... additions, changes, deletions. Just browsing these lists is a real cure for insomnia.

But few of them take you completely through an actual conversion. That's what we're going to do in this article. We're going to migrate the TicTacToe program from a previous Spotlight article and move it to VB.NET. In the process, you'll see that Gary is pretty much right in his "humble" opinion.

There are good reasons why there aren't a lot of conversions of programs from VB 6 to VB.NET documented on the web:

• It's a long process for most programs. The conversion is often complex and detailed.

• Converting just one program fails to cover more than a fraction of the actual conversion problems you will run into. Documenting only the problems that come up in one case is like a tourist who thought he had been to Paris because he changed airplanes at the airport. So keep in mind that the goal of this article is really to show you an example that should help convince you that the Upgrade Wizard isn't so "wizardy."

• There are a lot of options that depend on local circumstances. For example, the standard version of VB.NET doesn't include the Upgrade Wizard. (To get it, Microsoft wants you to buy the whole Visual Studio suite! But there is a way around that which will work for a few projects if you're in a bind.)

But probably the best reason that there aren't a lot of articles about the conversion process is that converting VB 6 programs to VB.NET just isn't a very good idea. Gary Cornell goes on to say this in his book:

"You may be tempted to think that you can use the conversion tool and a little bit of fiddling to move your VB programs to VB.NET. Do not go down this path."

The bottom line is that VB 6 and VB.NET are so different that you will almost always benefit from simply starting over and creating a whole new program the VB.NET way. Let's see where a conversion gets us in the TicTacToe program.