[rbobby]

VB6... got so much hate but folks just don't seem to see how useful it's debug mode was.

Oh sure... VB6 and good OO design and modern practices (unit tests, dependency injection, etc) don't mix. But... if you need to sit down and "hack out" a bunch of working code quickly it was pretty hard to beat.

Python with the VB6 ide/debugger experience would likely take the scientific computing field by storm.

I miss it... especially since I've never been able to get "edit & continue" to work at all in Visual Studio.

[rikkus]

You can do 'proper' OO, unit tests, and dependency injection with VB6, it's just not as easy as it could be, and most developers didn't, partly because unit tests and dependency injection weren't as popular at the time, but (with 'proper' OO and dependency injection) many apps were simple enough that these things were perceived as of little importance.

When I last wrote some VB6, I was criticised by a colleague for 'over-engineering' because, to build a cancellable progress dialog, I used a (very simple) observer pattern. He didn't understand what it was or how it worked - and would have preferred to simply block the entire UI while a process ran (without the ability to cancel, even). To him, even basic OO ideas were pointless and dangerous over-'designing'.

If your application was crap, it could also remain incredibly simple in terms of design, though inevitably multi-thousand line methods and hacks upon hacks led to completely non-understandable, buggy, and brittle code, so I'm sticking to my 'enough design' principles!

One more aside: This developer complained that there was a bug in the VB6 IDE because it wouldn't let him add any more code to a file - he'd written such a huge code file that he'd actually hit the IDE's limit. I tried talking about modularisation, refactoring, etc... then just gave up.

[pjmlp]

You mean like this?

https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/python-vs.aspx

[Quiark]

I never got this to work properly.