frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

I Miss Visual Basic

https://micro.webology.dev/2025/05/11/i-miss-visual-basic/
19•speckx•10mo ago

Comments

lysace•10mo ago
There has been so much VB love here lately. Here are some counterpoints:

In the 90s, when you saw that a Windows app needed Visual Basic DLLs, you kind of knew that the app in question was very likely created by a complete amateur.

The best apps tended to be tiny and written in C by wizards.

pvg•10mo ago
Some miss old handy tools, others miss the old gatekeeping.
lysace•10mo ago
Gatekeeping or not, it was a useful indicator. There was so much crap.
rbanffy•10mo ago
I’ve seen terrible programs written in all sorts of languages.
lysace•10mo ago
And there were no patterns, particulary between 1992-1995, for MS Windows apps?
tptacek•10mo ago
Bracketing this with '92-'95 makes the claim so much funnier.
rbanffy•10mo ago
One thing VB allowed was horrible visual design. When you wrote a Windows app in C or C++, you are happy when the button appears in the UI and you leave it alone at that point. VB allowed people to customise their buttons with all sorts of colours and patterns no sane UI designer would attempt.
pvg•10mo ago
Same with Hypercard, perhaps even more so since Hypercard let you respond to UI gestures the standard UI didn't really use like mouseovers.
rbanffy•10mo ago
HyperCard, at least initially, didn’t have color, so it somewhat limited how horrendous the UI could be.
tptacek•10mo ago
[Nobody][1] [ever][2] [wrote][3] [crap][4] [in][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendmail] [C][6].
guidedlight•10mo ago
Most apps in the 90’s/early 00’s were tiny. They did one thing well.

It’s in that context, VB did really well. The thing that VB didn’t do well is scale due to language limitations, but for tiny apps it didn’t matter.

mattl•10mo ago
When you go to a modern website and you see it downloads 900kb of JavaScript just to show you the homepage, how do you feel about that?

I was a VB developer for a few years. I'm trying to remember the name of the tool we used to bundle VB applications into a single binary. It wasn't a Microsoft tool.

lysace•10mo ago
> When you go to a modern website and you see it downloads 900kb of JavaScript just to show you the homepage, how do you feel about that?

That shipping sites like that should cause you to pay some kind of tax. Use that tax income to invest in software security.

mattl•10mo ago
I saw a thread the other day on creating a website without JavaScript and so many people were saying it couldn’t be done.
rbanffy•10mo ago
I like the idea of an IDE with integrated GUI builder. We had a couple - I used NetBeans to make Java ME applications for phones.

Shouldn’t be too hard to build a framework that loads a GUI definition and auto-binds UI events to functions according to a naming convention. I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t already such a thing for Python.

guidedlight•10mo ago
VB UI’s tended to be fixed and designed for a world where everyone ran a 4:3 640x480 VGA monitor. This made VB’s UI builder very easy to achieve good results.

I’m not sure the same approach would work today.

rbanffy•10mo ago
Just replace pixels with millimetres and we are safe.

At some point it got anchors in the widgets so you could position it at a distance of another control or the window border (at least). The same effect can be done with layout managers and other tricks.

jenkstom•10mo ago
Why not Delphi? And why not Lazarus?
mattl•10mo ago
> Why not Lazarus?

I've never heard of this or if I have, I don't remember it.

It's an open source IDE that's Delphi compatible. The author of the article is trying to make a Mac app.

* Downloads are from an ad-ridden SourceForge page.

* I download Lazarus I don't get a nice little Mac app... I get a folder full of stuff

* Starting the app, macOS tells me “lazarus” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.

* On the project screenshots page, ReactOS is shown before macOS and macOS screenshots are from a while ago.

Contrast that experience with... VSCodium, the open source community version of VSCode.

* Download is from GitHub, no ads.

* Downloads a disk image with a familiar pattern

* Drag the VSCodium app bundle to my Applications folder

* I get prompted if I want to open it as it's something downloaded... and VSCodium opens (slowly at first) -- up pops a message saying I've downloaded the x86 version by mistake and I should download the ARM64 version and there's a link to do it... downloading the correct version and it opens instantly.

--

All of this to say... with any project, open source or proprietary there is a sense of native/correctly packaged for your OS that's obvious, and if a project doesn't do that I wonder if anyone is using it for that OS.

TrackerFF•10mo ago
VB.NET works just fine, no? Granted it is 13-14 years since I last time touched VB.NET, but slapping together apps in visual studio was a breeze. If something serious hasn't happened since then, it should still be easy.
gschizas•10mo ago
Modern VB.NET (and C#) suffer from overcomplication, from trying to do too much. And at the same time, not doing enough.

There are (at least) three ways to make a desktop application (Classic Windows Forms, XAML and other, more different XAML, for what used to be Metro/Windows Store apps). Not all functionality overlaps between them.

There are a plethora of (paid) custom controls which reimplement the wheel for all of those (because Microsoft didn't bundle in some elementary Windows controls)

That being said, I personally miss LightSwitch.

neonsunset•10mo ago
You are confusing platform-specific(!) GUI frameworks with the languages themselves, which have been long "divorced" from the platform they initially targeted.
jperoutek•10mo ago
VB.NET is still a supported platform by microsoft, with the GUI builder and everything. We still use VB.NET exclusively at my current job, for better or for worse. With the addition of tools and libraries like DevExpress, its honestly not a bad setup.
mattl•10mo ago
IIRC, VB.NET disregarded the 20+ years of VB developers for the most part.
nom•10mo ago
VB will always have a special place in my heart.

  On Error Resume Next
dyl000•10mo ago
I was a real big fan of vb.net! Built so much with it.
sph•10mo ago
I started with VB6, but I was not a great fan of the language. Soon, I moved to MSVC++6 with MFC, and even though it had its own RAD system for designing dialogs, it was so half-arsed and limiting compared to Visual Basic. You couldn't even change the foreground colour of a label!

I still remember the envy when I found out Delphi developers were not subject to these silly restrictions, and their GUIs were always so colourful.

Wageslave: A short, narrative, dystopian dev survival game

https://cauldron.itch.io/wageslave
1•stonecauldron•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I turned Stravaleaks into an HTML broadsheet newspaper

https://stravaleaks-dispatch.vercel.app
1•alberduris•6m ago•1 comments

Skipper – Test Control from a Google Spreadsheet

https://get-skipper.github.io/
1•EmanueleMinotto•6m ago•0 comments

With casino empire gone, Trump family bets on prediction markets

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/21/politics/trump-prediction-markets-truth-predicts
1•breve•7m ago•0 comments

Nvidia admits DLSS 5 infers on 2D screencaps plus motion vectors

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-clarifies-DLSS-5-infers-on-2D-screencaps-plus-motion-vectors...
1•Xenthor•8m ago•0 comments

Designing for People with Anxiety

https://tetralogical.com/blog/2026/03/10/designing-for-people-with-anxiety/
1•ulrischa•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Korru, Web App Catalog

https://korru.app
2•anwar_nairi•11m ago•0 comments

Building the Olimex RVPC Retrocomputer

https://needlesscomplexity.substack.com/p/building-the-olimex-rvpc-retrocomputer
1•AlexeyBrin•16m ago•0 comments

Pgcli: A CLI for PostgreSQL with auto-completion and syntax highlighting

https://www.pgcli.com/
1•clouedoc•18m ago•1 comments

Vibe Coding, QWERTY, and US Healthcare

https://panthema.net/2026/0318-Vibe-Coding-QWERTY-and-US-Healthcare/
1•srom•24m ago•0 comments

PFnet UN in action Solomon Islands (2005) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtuo3m-hGTE
1•joebig•27m ago•0 comments

Study finds that we could lose science if publishers go bankrupt (2024)

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/study-finds-that-we-could-lose-science-if-publishers-go-b...
1•jruohonen•29m ago•1 comments

Systemd's New Feature Brings Age Verification Option to Linux

https://itsfoss.com/news/systemd-age-verification/
1•pera•34m ago•1 comments

I built a trend tracker that scans GitHub, HN, YC, SO, OpenAlex, and SEC filings

https://inqvey.com/trends
2•yarasheff•36m ago•0 comments

I built a tool that visualises GitHub repos as dependency graphs

https://github.com/lucyb0207/CodeAtlas
1•lucyb0207•38m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Agent skills for generating structured visuals with MotionCanvas

https://github.com/VideoZero/skills
2•prathje•42m ago•0 comments

FTC Should Develop Privacy-Protective Age Assurance Standards

https://epic.org/press-release-ftc-should-develop-privacy-protective-age-assurance-standards-lead...
1•geox•45m ago•0 comments

Molly holzschlag – 30 years of blog

https://mollyholzschlag.com/
1•vietyork•52m ago•0 comments

Musk found liable to Twitter shareholders in fraud lawsuit over $44B takeover

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/musk-found-liable-twitter-shareho...
2•gostsamo•56m ago•0 comments

What AI augmentation means for technical leaders – Birgitta Boeckeler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB7rsbDfmQg
2•mcp_•56m ago•0 comments

A Markdown textfile based Kanban board in a single HTML file

https://github.com/chr15m/kanban-todo
2•chr15m•58m ago•2 comments

The easiest way to make the world smarter [video][30m]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRcwwZXJ8gk
1•Bender•1h ago•0 comments

NPM Visual Manager – a visual dependency manager for VS Code

https://github.com/luisssc/npm-visual-manager
1•luicc•1h ago•0 comments

I'm Sorry Did You Say Street Magic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Sorry_Did_You_Say_Street_Magic
2•doener•1h ago•1 comments

Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

https://blog.atuin.sh/atuin-v18-13/
20•cenanozen•1h ago•1 comments

AI Slop Is Infiltrating Online Children's Content

https://undark.org/2026/03/20/ai-slop-children/
7•jruohonen•1h ago•0 comments

Tech Interview guide – the test without tests

http://opentranscripts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/allison-parrish-programming-forgetting-04.png
1•anong1•1h ago•0 comments

Big Win for Open Source as Germany Backs Open Document Format

https://itsfoss.com/news/germany-digital-stack-mandate/
5•giuliomagnifico•1h ago•1 comments

Apple: Accelerate your machine learning workloads with the M5 and A19 GPUs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgJX1HndGl0
3•de_aztec•1h ago•0 comments

Etel-Tuning

https://etel-tuning.com/
2•mqus•1h ago•0 comments