What did you love about VB6?
The article explores what developers loved about Visual Basic 6 (VB6) and what they find frustrating about modern .NET development, based on the author's extensive experience shipping VB6 applications. It seeks specific, firsthand insights into workflows and design choices that made VB6 effective for line-of-business applications. The goal is to preserve institutional knowledge before it fades, informing a book chapter on the transition from VB6 to modern .NET.
- ▪The author shipped around a hundred VB3-to-VB6 line-of-business applications between 1995 and 2010.
- ▪Since VB6, Microsoft has introduced seven UI frameworks, with WinForms being the only one still practical for business apps and directly descended from VB6's model.
- ▪The form designer introduced in VB6, inspired by Alan Cooper's 1987 concept, remains one of the fastest ways to turn an idea into a working application.
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// contents Why I'm asking The two questions What this is // reading 0% · ~4 min remaining 0x0D│ 2026.04.30│ 4 min read │ visual-basic · vb6 · dotnet · csharp · software-history · opinion · programming · audience-question What did you love about VB6, and what frustrates you about modern .NET? Two open questions for anyone who shipped real work on Visual Basic 6 and is now writing C# against modern .NET. What specifically did VB6 get right that you miss? And what do you find frustrating about the modern toolchain that VB6 didn't make you fight? I shipped about a hundred VB3-through-VB6 line-of-business systems between 1995 and 2010, and I'm trying to get to the root of what was actually good before too much of the institutional memory leaves the room.
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