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- Newsgroups: comp.lang.basic.visual.misc,comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc,comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: "SHOULD I DUMP VISUAL BASIC?"
- Date: 27 Jan 1996 10:09:01 -0700
- Organization: Primenet
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- Message-ID: <sundial.2191.00464727@primenet.com>
- References: <4e9g08$3dp@maureen.teleport.com> <Pine.SUN.3.90.960126125658.2477C-100000@menger.eecs.stevens-tech.edu>
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- In article <Pine.SUN.3.90.960126125658.2477C-100000@menger.eecs.stevens-tech.edu> Bob Ross <pdetagyo@menger.eecs.stevens-tech.edu> writes:
- > he told me all about the
- >great OLE features that VB4 now contained. When I told him that I wasn't
- >using any of the "great" OLE features, he told me that I needed to
- >include the OLE .DLLs anyway, because VB4 itself needs them to run.
-
-
- Here is the real downfall of VB's current design, and as Microsoft continues
- to add features to Windows it only gets worse. The interpreter is strictly
- monolithic -- one gigantic piece of software that can, and necessarily must,
- do anything any VB application in the universe might potentially want to do.
-
- Clearly, in my view, the VB interpreter needs to be split into organized units
- and be able to recover from the possibility that a particular required unit
- might not be present. Presumably some kind of compiler-option would be needed
- so that programmers could declare what language-features their programs used
- (or the language might do this itself), so that the interpreter would not
- attempt to run a program that could not be run in the present environment.
- The interpreter would verify the existence of the required DLLs but would not
- load them into memory until they are required.
-
- Second, and equally clearly in my view, the time has come -- has long since
- passed -- for VB to ship with an honest-to-God native code compiler, much as
- QuickBasic had in 1988. (So don't tell me they are not easily capable of
- doing it.) Right now, some programmers feel obligated to switch away from VB
- to "something else" (witness the cross-post of the original message I'm
- replying to) just because VB does not offer true compilation. That's really
- not a good thing.
-
- Programmers have invested millions of dollars in their VB applications, and
- they ought not be stuck with the "second son" or placed in a non-competitive
- position because of their original choices. "Rewriting" such applications is,
- in the real world, generally not an acceptable alternative -- and please, I
- *know* there are products out there that more-or-less claim to do it. I
- program daily in all three of these languages and feel that I know whereof I
- speak on this... :-/
-
- Microsoft has stated that VB will include a compiler. I hope for their sake
- they make it soon.
-
- /mr/
-
-