Comments on: How I Got VB for Fifty Cents

By: Geekycoder

Geekycoder — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:33:51 +0000

Congratulation for owning a piece of history ! Visual Basic 1.0 is the grand-daddy of GUI RAD system that revolutionizes the world. It is the killer-app for Windows, and the NextBigThing then in the world of GUI programming. There is nothing like it in those day. Thank for bringing back the nostalgic memory.

By: JS

JS — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:32:15 +0000

alpha bravo: do I need to quote Dijkstra on VB at you?

By: Mehfuz Hossain

Mehfuz Hossain — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:26:27 +0000

it’s surely a gem, i wish i had one too

By: pjm

pjm — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:06:02 +0000

Cool story, thanks. On the corporate side (and a little later): PowerBuilder and ODBC. Was thinking today how getting ODBC to work was a little bit like witchcraft: wave your hands a little, and hope for the best. It sort of mostly worked.

By: Bernard

Bernard — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:51:45 +0000

I recently found a shrink wrapped copy of Office 97 Professional sitting by the side of the road for inorganics day.

Nice story.

By: evrim

evrim — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:29:40 +0000

microsoft licences can’t be transferred. so, you’r breaking laws. read EULA.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:24:11 +0000

When we upgraded our original IBM PC in 1991 to a Gateway 486DX2-50 w/8MB RAM (man was that thing fast!), we were able to get “packs” from Gateway. My dad got the office pack (basically Word), and I got the “programming” pack, which had VB 1.0 and a Macromedia program that was the precursor to flash (a very, very early precursor). VB 1.0 was cool, and I used it quite a bit, but I still used QBasic more, because VB 1.0 had a lot of limitations.

VB didn’t really come into its own until 3.0, and 4, 5, and 6 were fairly professional, but could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Nice find! I wish I knew where mine was, but I have 3, 4, & 6, which are much more capable.

By: dc

dc — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:00:38 +0000

Cool, my first VB was 4.0. I remember when they came with those big white books.

VB and Borland. Brings back memories.

By: jon

jon — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:53:07 +0000

This reminds me, one time a company that was in a building next door to a company i worked at went under and did a big sale of all their equipment. I managed to purchase a copy of OS/2 still sealed in its original box on floppy disks!

By: Marty Lewis

Marty Lewis — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:37:37 +0000

You lucky dog. I would do the same thing and it would sit up next to the other classic pieces of software in my collection.

By: bv

bv — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:01:20 +0000

>I can’t imagine why anyone would even want
>to use the more complicated languages

that’s so naive i dont believe it has been said

By: Warren

Warren — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:54:51 +0000

Ever one to be contrarian, let me ask, does anyone remember CA-Realizer? It was a competitor to Visual Basic. The key weakness of CA-Realizer was lack of support for VBX controls, although I think they added that later, when it was too late to matter. The built-in control set was very rich, all the usual suspects for GUI controls, plus nice extras like charting and a spreadsheet, and built-in printing capabilities.

I wrote a lot of code in CA-Realizer 3.0.
Oh and it was “cross-platform” for its day; Windows 3.1 and OS/2! Anyone remember OS/2?

Warren

By: alpha bravo

alpha bravo — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:53:46 +0000

Neat! For those who aren’t believers, go to http://www.karenware.com/ and take a look at what she has done with VB. It is amazing how capable that language is. I can’t imagine why anyone would even want to use the more complicated languages.