[moonchrome]

>What exactly does 'actively investing' mean in this context and why is it needed? If the software is actively maintained so that it continues to meet business requirements, is that not enough?

If you're actually investing in maintaining something that's running on a deprecated platform that's decade over EOL and nobody wants to touch with a 10 foot pole - that sounds like a crap project by definition.

Anything that's sufficiently funded to be actively developed would have figured out a migration plan by now, the only scenarios where it wouldn't sound like terrible projects to work on.

>That is orthogonal to what programming language is being used. When the project is actively maintained, knowledge can be transferred regardless of the programming language.

No it's not when the language is deprecated by the owners for over 12 years at this point. It's like having software that only works on windows xp and maintaining it because you can still boot a VM to run it. Good luck working on that POS.

[joshuaissac]

> If you're actually investing in maintaining something that's running on a deprecated platform that's decade over EOL and nobody wants to touch with a 10 foot pole - that sounds like a crap project by definition.

The platform it runs on is Windows 10, which is not deprecated. Microsoft provides an 'It Just Works' guarantee on Windows 10 for VB6 applications. It does not matter whether someone wants to maintain code. The company pays people to do it. Just like how there are many people who do not want to work on proprietary software but do it anyway because their employer pays them to do it.

> Anything that's sufficiently funded to be actively developed would have figured out a migration plan by now, the only scenarios where it wouldn't sound like terrible projects to work on.

Actively developed means that bugs are fixed and features are added as needed by the business. It does not mean jumping on the latest tech trends when there is no business justification. And I am pretty sure that the users are happy that they can use a fast, responsive application instead of a lumbering, bloated Electron app.

> No it's not when the language is deprecated by the owners for over 12 years at this point. It's like having software that only works on windows xp and maintaining it because you can still boot a VM to run it. Good luck working on that POS.

That is a strawman argument because the VB6 IDE and programs compiled with it run on Windows 10 natively, without a VM. And running VB6 programs on Windows 10 is officially supported.

[moonchrome]

>The platform it runs on is Windows 10, which is not deprecated. Microsoft provides an 'It Just Works' guarantee on Windows 10 for VB6 applications. It does not matter whether someone wants to maintain code. The company pays people to do it. Just like how there are many people who do not want to work on proprietary software but do it anyway because their employer pays them to do it.

My point is that every time I've seen scenarios like this with products stuck on unsupported platforms is that product is used but there's no money in actively maintaining it (or else it would have made migration plans in the last 12 years). This means you are likely getting shit money working on it, working on a legacy stack you won't use anywhere else, codebase is almost always shit, and the work you do is unrewarding. So crap projects by definition, and every testimonial I've seen so far confirms it.

I've worked on projects being stuck on tech close to EOL - they always had migration plans to upgrade to supported tech.

[joshuaissac]

I think none of those assumptions apply in this case, or even in general. If there were no money in it, then the products would not have been actively maintained. VB6 was ranked 20th in TIOBE last year, so it is not just used in my company, either. In fact, if it were so unused, Microsoft would have dropped support for it already, but they currently support it until Windows 10 EOL, and possibly will on Windows 11 as well. I have not looked at the codebase behind the VB6 products in question, but there is no reason for me to assume that it looks any different to any other long-established codebase, or that the developers who maintain it are paid less. I would assume they are paid more because they are harder to replace, which in turn makes their work more rewarding.

I have worked on products with old tech stacks as well, e.g. a C++98 codebase for the core product of a multi-billion-dollar company, with no plans to migrate. New features were being frequently added, and the company's own standard library replacement that bridged the gap was itself actively developed.