[Sussex] RE: [Sussex] Moving VB to LINUX - DeLux

[Dominic Clay]

It does sound very interesting.  But are we then going to end up with some
nasty spaghetti coding on a different platform, still complaining that it
cant find the Access database... =)

There is still a big question about educating many VB hugging developers to
have a more 'long term' view in their coding practise.  Try persuading many
VB developers to consider the project/projects as a whole before scoping a
variable globaly etc.  

<DEVILS ADVOCATE>
Perhaps this legacy code is better off left where it is and persuade the
management to look forward wholeheartedly.  After all, any decent developer
could support this legacy code until it falls over and dies...
Is this conversion just a wacky geeky idea that strikes us as fun...
</DEVILS ADVOCATE>



-----Original Message-----
From: Geoff Teale [mailto:Geoff.Teale at claybrook.co.uk] 
Sent: 14 January 2003 13:41
To: Sussex (E-mail)
Subject: [Sussex] Moving VB to LINUX - DeLux


Chaps,

A lot of us know that for large companies, there reliance of Bespoke
applications developed in Visual Basic is a stumbling block in any shift
towards LINUX - by succesfully invoking the mass adoption of VB (by
leveraging their  mid 1990's monopolies in office software and internet
browsers) microsoft added another lock-in to their platform.  However, in
the clammer of activity towards Billy G's ".NET Vision" the poor old
developers working to deliver Visual Studio .NET finally had to give up the
ghost on Microsofts marketing teams golden rule - "make the new product
backwards compatible, but don't let the new code run on the old system".
VB.NET - it can't run VB 6 code or VBA code.  As a half-hearted nod to
Microsoft's marketing team their is a conversion tool (that Microsoft talk
about at great length) which is universally useless unless you write your
code with conversion in mind.  Ho-hum, what will happen to all that legacy
VB code ?

Well, apparantly there is a tool out there that can convert a very high
percentage of Visual Basic 3,4,5,6 programs to Kylix / CLX
code/forms/projects.  It is called DeLux, Borland make it (and bundle it
with Delphi/Kylix) and it is _far_ more effective a transition than
Microsoft's tool for translating VB 6 code to VB.NET. 

The M$FT tool basically only works on very simple COM objects and the class
structures of programs designed as if they were always going to grow into
fully-fledged OO programs - anyone who knows about VB (and especially about
VB programmers) knows that these kind of programs are as common as patent
registered in the name "Richard Stallman".

Kylix/Delphi is perfectly capable of doing everything VB does out of the box
and DeLux apparantly works this all out and converts ADO/DAO/RDO calls,
winsock calls, etc ec... to the appropriate, cross-platform CLX controls.

SO - could this be a future for the massive VB legacy codebase?  

It's interesting that LINUX is already gaining a lot of ground in old COBOL
shops because a number of COBOL engines exist on the platform that not only
give new life to old code (At low cost) but provide a platform for taking
forward those programs into the internet age.

Could Microsoft's dumping of it's VB codebase in order to accomodate the
grand .NET plan be a strong factor in driving businesses away from them on
the desktop?   I wonder... I think there is a bigger barrier of FUD to break
through before we even get people to consider the facts, but every little
helps!

I may well do some more research on this DeLUX thing... see if I can't find
out how viable it really is!

-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk
tealeg at member.fsf.org
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