VB Petition
you surely heard of http://classicvb.org/petition/, the quest of making VB immortal and force MS into concessions like integration into VS.NET,
further development et.
While at this point in time going forward VB does not make sense at all in system, web, mobile and business software it still is THE
development language for:
Office
freeware
plugins for MS software (with Activex,COM)
simple CRUD (think Access forms)
VS.NET will bring some relieve with VS.NET/.NET 2.0 providing better programming APIs for:
Office (with XML data detached from document file itself)
Forms - better drag and drop support
My. namespaces
But many programs still do not have .NET APIs e.g.
Access
Outlook (well sort of)
I believe that MS needs to put in a better effort in order to fend of these critics.
1) to wrap more Win32 APIs into .NET to make it more erm...VB-like accessible
2) to make it easier to write plugins for MS software like OutLook, Access, even IE
3) better RAD (especially for CRUD stuff)
4) giveway/bundle some basic IDE tools to write the hobbyst stuff
5) provide a better/free obscuring tool for freeware writers
6) provide better migration path and tools for VB and its dialects
read on
http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2005/03/11/394305.aspx
http://msmvps.com/bill/archive/2005/03/13/38319.aspx
http://msmvps.com/bill/archive/2005/03/13/38347.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/dbrowning/archive/2005/03/10/392392.aspx
http://swigartconsulting.blogs.com/tech_blender/2005/03/just_plain_wron.html
http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2005/03/10/7951.aspx
http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/stefandemetz/archive/2004/06/23/17474.aspx
http://www.eweek.com/print_article2/0,2533,a=147391,00.asp
http://codebetter.com/blogs/geoff.appleby/archive/2005/03/09/59457.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/dbrowning/archive/2005/03/09/391363.aspx
http://donxml.com/allthingstechie/archive/2005/03/10/1829.aspx
http://msmvps.com/windsor/archive/2005/03/10/38097.aspx
http://geekswithblogs.net/dtotzke/archive/2005/03/10/25916.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/archive/2005/03/10/393239.aspx
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/YouHaveGOTToBeKiddingMe.aspx
http://geekswithblogs.net/sbellware/archive/2005/03/09/25880.aspx
http://www.danappleman.com/index.php?p=35
http://gendotnet.com/Blog/archive/2005/03/09/779.aspx
http://msmvps.com/bill/archive/2005/03/13/38316.aspx