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From: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms.programmer
Subject: Re: Visual Basic
Message-ID: <1991Jun28.235857.23757@tc.fluke.COM>
Date: 28 Jun 91 23:58:57 GMT
References: <17537@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Reply-To: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer)
Organization: The John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 32

I played around with VB for an evening the other day.  The touchstone I'd
compare it to would be HyperCard, i.e., an application allowing you to
create GUI applications quickly, using a lot of point-and-click design
techniques, and having it's own underlying language.  The major difference
(after five hours experience, so grain-of-salt time) between HyperCard and
VB is that VB intrinsically works harder at making your VB program look (and
act) like a standalone Windows application.  HyperCard doesn't have quite
this amount of support for creating dialog boxes (let alone the code for
selecting files via the dialog boxes).  

Generally, I like it quite a bit; it seemed pretty intuitive to me.  I've
been programming in HyperCard and SuperCard on the Macintosh for about two
years, and as I was building a VB program, I generally assumed that if I
could do it in HC, I could do it in VB; as it turned out, a pretty good
assumption.  The execution speed wasn't bad, either.

In short, a really nice system for getting a simple application up and
running in Windows, fast; but with enough options to extend it farther than
a "demo builder" application.

[Disclaimer: I'm a long-time Mac guy who's ended up, like all all who
 challenge the authority of DOS, in an iron coffin, with spikes on the
 inside!...  Err, I mean, programming Windows applications in C.]

                           "Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of
                            Science?"
---
                                        Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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