Print - REAL Software Offers Free Upgrade to Stranded VB Users

REAL Software will offer "stranded" Visual Basic (VB) users free upgrades to REALbasic through March 31, the company announced today. On April 1, Microsoft is ending standard support for VB 6.0, which has left millions of enthusiasts and programmers in the lurch.

"Visual Basic users are feeling abandoned right now," REAL Software President and CEO Geoff Perlman said. "They've invested a lot of time and energy into learning Visual Basic. We want them to know that they can leverage those hard-earned skills long into the future with REALbasic. We are simply offering these stranded Visual Basic users the opportunity to join the large, vibrant, and growing REALbasic community--for free."

REAL Software says that REALbasic is so similar to VB 6.0 that VB users will be able to move to the new environment easily, and even a cursory examination of the environment suggests that this statement is true. REALbasic also includes a software utility that helps convert VB 6.0 projects to REALbasic format, further easing the transition. Best of all, according to the company, after VB 6.0 projects are converted to REALbasic, the resulting applications can then be deployed on Linux and the Macintosh because REALbasic, unlike VB 6.0, also targets those non-Windows environments.

REAL Software is offering a free upgrade to REALbasic 5.5 Standard Edition for Windows through March 31, although this version won't be upgradeable to REALbasic 2005, which is shipping within the next several weeks. For more information about REALbasic 5.5 and the VB 6.0 upgrade offer, visit the REAL Software Web site.

"Visual Basic users...invested a lot of time and energy into learning Visual Basic" well, if they can't learn a bit of new syntax, they are not much in the way of quality programmers one might suppose...

As if up until now MS was supporting VB 6. When was the last service pack for VS6 released? And after 5 service packs transparent labels still don't work on transparent controls!

I dont get why everyone is whining, Microsoft is deleteing the product from programmer's PCs, they just arent supporting it, what's with all the callamimity over a legacy programming app?

Large enterprises that have invested millions of dollars and many years into VB apps still turn to MS for support such as custom patches or hotfixes, which may not be released to the public in an official service pack. Support also involves assistance with using the app, which could be included as part of a maintenance plan.

Thanks for your tip ! I just received my licence key for realbasic. The process to get it is hassle free ! This will give me far more time to evaluate realbasic than the standard 10 days demo licence normaly available.

Read this if you don't understand why so many developers are unhappy: http://www.grimes.demon.co.uk/dotnet/vbpetition.htm

2nd poster: Visual Studio 6 Service Pack 6 was released within the past year, I believe.

Ending Support for VB6 will have no real effect on VB6 programmers. I've been using it for years without ever having to contact M$. Theres plenty more useful sources of help on the web

I think there needs to be a clarification about the offer from REALBasic. The article states: "Best of all, according to the company, after VB 6.0 projects are converted to REALbasic, the resulting applications can then be deployed on Linux and the Macintosh because REALbasic, unlike VB 6.0, also targets those non-Windows environments." According to their website http://www.realsoftware.com/realbasic/pro/, that's not possible with the version they are giving away for free. You have to buy their professional version to do cross-platform development. If the CEO is really feeling the VB developer’s pain, why not give away the professional version instead!?

VB support is not ending! Read that again: VB support is not ending. The two free support incidents will expire, if you haven't used them. If you have used them, then this change won't affect you since you have to pay for additional support incidents anyway. If you have MSDN or a Premier support contract, or are willing to pay, this change won't affect you since support is still there. The change JUST expires the two free support incidents if they were not used yet. Support for VB will continue through at least March 2008.

Sounds like REAL is trying to gobble market share and beef up its development community in one swift FUD call.

"And after 5 service packs transparent labels still don't work on transparent controls!" Sure they do. You just can't tell, 'cuz they're transparent! (I'm kidding, I'm kidding...)

Oh no... what is Microsoft going to do... They're kick-butt anti-spyware product is written in Visual Basic 6... Trust me it ain't going anywhere anytime soon.

and 30 year old COBOL programs continue to hold up major banking operations, and are still supported by IBM, et al. If Microshaft want's to be taken seriously as a business solutions provider, it had better start reavaluating it's product lifecycles. business is not the same as the home games market

This is not an issue of support or not. The whole issue is that Microsoft has changed their way of reaching the market. We (the VB/VBA-people) helped them and opened the doors to get into the large accounts. Now they are there and they don't need us anymore. It's as simple as that. The people they meet today (their new customers) at the IT-apartments at the large accounts (CIO:s etc) haven't got a clue about all the stuff used out in the apartments. And if they have seen anything they dislikes it and hopes it will die as soon as possible, that is what Microsoft is trying to help them to achieve. As always we are in the battle of if IT should be implemented top-down or bottom-up. And the sad story is that Microsoft has changed position the last years. I have always been the bottom-up guy who believed in the power and the engagement at the apartments where people work and find smarter ways of using computers. The top-down represented by IBM, Oracle etc and now also Microsoft has always been madness to me. Lots of wasted money trying to implement systems invented at HQ meetings by guys drawing silly schemas with boxes and arrows using three digit words who nobody understands. No it’s simply a question of dictatorship or democracy. It is not just Microsoft moving in that direction I think the whole nation, United States of America is going there…

I must say the RealBasic product seems to be quite impressive, even though it can't create OCX controls. If Office starts using VBA.NET I'll stop programming in Access and move to RealBasic. I thought of moving to Delphi a while ago but it was too expensive, and different from VBA. I'm getting too old to learn a new language from scratch and pay the bills at the same time. I think the post about Microsoft ignoring the people who made corporations take it seriously is spot on. And the .NET framework is seriously flawed: I doubt very much whether Longhorn or the next version of Office will rely on it, after all who wants to write code that you know can be decompiled?

Come on, even executable code can be decompiled. Use an obfuscator to thwart casual hacking. Real hackers will decompile alomost anything they like, so not much is safe out there. Best I've heard of is encrypted code running in a VM with protected memory, etc. Thinstall for instance.

Executable code can be DISASSEMBLED, not decompiled, the difference? One produces assembly code, the other, something very similar to the original source, except minus the comments on what it does. In a machine code executable, you could convert the assembly back into C code but the function names would be meaningless (numerical designations) and the converter would be confused by inline assembly. A skilled Assembly programmer would be able to understand some of it, but a 500 line C++ program can potentially disassemble into a 10,000+ line assembly program. The simple fact being it may take days for some one to unravel an obfuscated .Net program but it may takes weeks, months or even years to unravel a machine code program.