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Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - Programming - Let's Rant about Visual Basic! | New poll | | |
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Guy Perfect Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6430 days Last view: 6429 days |
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You can break execution at run-time within the IDE by using the Ctrl-Pause/Break key combo. Works well with infinite loops. A holdover from the QBASIC days. | |||
Cellar Dweller + Red Koopa Since: 11-18-05 From: Arkansas Last post: 6438 days Last view: 6429 days |
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Let's see, VB is Windows only, does not have bit shift operators, doesn't have pointers, and is designed for people who barely know how to program.
Paul Graham explains very well how programming languages can vary in power when he makes his case for Lisp being the most powerful programming language. I thing that the following paragraph explains it well: Originally posted by Paul Graham at http://paulgraham.com/avg.htmlI think that those who have used any dialect of BASIC and then used another language will clearly understand the above paragraph. Originally posted by Ogama Dobe Most practical programming classes are aimed at students planning to program in a business environment. VB is designed for programming simple one off business apps by marginally skilled programmers, so I would not expect to learn about programming games in a VB class. |
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HyperHacker Star Mario Finally being paid to code in VB! If only I still enjoyed that. <_< Wii #7182 6487 4198 1828 Since: 11-18-05 From: Canada, w00t! My computer's specs, if anyone gives a damn. STOP TRUNCATING THIS >8^( Last post: 6429 days Last view: 6429 days |
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Originally posted by Guy Perfect Yeah, I wish I'd known that at the time. |
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Sukasa Birdo Not quite as active as before. Xkeeper supporter Xk > ||bass I IP Banned myself! Twice! Since: 11-17-05 From: Somewhere over there Last post: 6429 days Last view: 6428 days |
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I've used it before, too. Very helpful.
I find that I don't really have problems with VB6. If there's something I want to do, there's usually code, an API call, or a combination of the two that can do what I want. And yeah, that article is spot-on. I agree with everything it says. For bit shifting, I find it easy enough to use division by powers of two, and it wouldn't be at all hard to just write a function that can bit shift. I don't have any experience with pointers, though, so I can't comment on them. And as far as the Blub analogy goes, well, VB6 is my Blub. |
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Kyoufu Kawa Intends to keep Rom Hacking in one piece until the end Since: 11-18-05 From: Catgirl Central Station Last post: 6428 days Last view: 6428 days |
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Fun fact: when you write your own message processor, you might want to do messages like "WM_RESIZE" or what was it. In fact, Sappy does this to lock horizontal sizing and limit vertical without flickering.
Unfortunately, the message passes a pointer to a struct. VB can't do that, as we know. So I CopyMemory the passed struct to one of my own, edit that and CopyMemory it back. Problem solved, case closed. |
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Guy Perfect Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6430 days Last view: 6429 days |
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Mr. Graham certainly describes very well the typical mindset of a programmer. I've seen through experience that programming languages are kinda like political ideals... people defend theirs tooth and nail even if they have no idea what the other ones are like. And as such, since Grandma and Grandpa were associated with a specific one, there's no need to even consider the existence of the others.
It depends on what your needs are. If you want a programming language that can accomplish just about any conventional task and is easy to work with, then Microsoft Visual Basic is a viable candidate. If you want something that can compile on other operating systems, then VB is not the candidate of choice. If you don't need your programs to run on other operating systems, then VB is a viable candidate. Originally posted by Cellar DwellerIn the world of debate, this comment is classified as what is called prejudice. It's a judgemental statement that is almost always prompted by an affinity for an alternate point of view and is typically underinformed. I don't know your Blub, Cellar Dweller, but unless you were on the design committee at Microsoft when designing Visual Basic, I don't think you'd be able to conclude that it was designed for those "who barely know how to program." Again, I use the example of the F-Zero X level editor. I used Visual Basic and a Microsoft-provided, VB-targeted type library to work with OpenGL. If Microsoft didn't intend for VB to be used by those who are proficient in programming, then they wouldn't have given it the capabilities they did. Microsoft holds true to one of the original concepts of BASIC: to protect the user from the operating system. As such, they never implemented ways to manipulate pointers, but they certainly provided a way to access them. The undocumented VarPtr() function and AddressOf operator were made for that very reason; such that VB programmers will still be able to use memory addresses in their programs, even if they can't access memory directly by that manner. I also know through experience and by example (see above) that pointers and bit shifting are not required for most things. If you don't need them to make a 3D editor for a Nintendo 64 game, then they must not be significant weaknesses of the language. |
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Kyoufu Kawa Intends to keep Rom Hacking in one piece until the end Since: 11-18-05 From: Catgirl Central Station Last post: 6428 days Last view: 6428 days |
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Originally posted by Ogama DobeIGIARI! In my dad's class, my first assignment was to write a Tic Tac Toe game in VB.Net. Now I don't like .Net much, and cheated with an open-source IDE, Sharpdevelop (#Dev). The second was a Pong clone. The third and final task a higher/lower number guessing game, wtf? |
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Sukasa Birdo Not quite as active as before. Xkeeper supporter Xk > ||bass I IP Banned myself! Twice! Since: 11-17-05 From: Somewhere over there Last post: 6429 days Last view: 6428 days |
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higher or lower? Dude, ouch. My class got to stuff that was fun and there was always room for modifying the assignment. Some of the assignments included a Blackjack game, and a program for Klunker Kar Kompany, and other thigns along those lines. Plus, if we wanted to expand upon/change part of oru assignments, we were allowed to as long as we larned the focal lessons of the programs. | |||
HyperHacker Star Mario Finally being paid to code in VB! If only I still enjoyed that. <_< Wii #7182 6487 4198 1828 Since: 11-18-05 From: Canada, w00t! My computer's specs, if anyone gives a damn. STOP TRUNCATING THIS >8^( Last post: 6429 days Last view: 6429 days |
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I did silly things like Pong, Don't Hit The Cow (you move your mouse to prevent the cursor from hitting this one stationary cow as the road scrolls by), crappy Pac-Man clones, and other random junk like that. One of our projects was just to make something in Java that used images and scrolling backgrounds. I made a Pokémon Silver map renderer using graphics stored in bitmap files.
One amusing one we did was a program that had you enter an amount of money and it calculated interest on it or something. I made mine look like a malfunctioning "Eye-Bee M" bank machine - you put in a random name and password (just mash anything and hit Enter), then it says something like "system error, re-enter account balance". Mr Graham (freaky coincidence?) was amused, so bonus. (edited by Alice on 12-26-06 11:22 PM) |
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BriGuy92 Red Goomba Since: 09-10-06 From: That dot on the globe Last post: 6450 days Last view: 6434 days |
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Originally posted by SukasaWow. I want your VB teacher. Ours class is so boring! We did a number guessing game in Qbasic (blah) but nothing of the sort in VB. All we ever do is make boring, business-type apps. You know, Inventory reports, Order forms, and the like. Some of it is kinda interesting, but, just like Dobe said, Originally posted by Ogama Dobe (edited by BriGuy92 on 01-04-07 12:23 PM) |
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Ogama Dobe Rope Since: 11-15-06 From: The Darkness of my Soul Last post: 6428 days Last view: 6428 days |
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Bri asked me to post so as to enable him to post. Please don't get angry at me. | |||
BriGuy92 Red Goomba Since: 09-10-06 From: That dot on the globe Last post: 6450 days Last view: 6434 days |
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Originally posted by My VB code Yeah. If you know what this means, you know how stupid this class is. Admins, if you don't like this huge post, I'm sorry. (edited by BriGuy92 on 01-05-07 11:43 AM) |
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Kyoufu Kawa Intends to keep Rom Hacking in one piece until the end Since: 11-18-05 From: Catgirl Central Station Last post: 6428 days Last view: 6428 days |
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My dad's a whacko, it runs in the family. He's also my CS teacher.
When I showed him Pong in MAME, he was amused to see me make the Pong clone I was supposed to write look like the one in MAME. Blockball and white paddles on black instead of red, green and blue paddles 'n ball on windefault gray. |
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HyperHacker Star Mario Finally being paid to code in VB! If only I still enjoyed that. <_< Wii #7182 6487 4198 1828 Since: 11-18-05 From: Canada, w00t! My computer's specs, if anyone gives a damn. STOP TRUNCATING THIS >8^( Last post: 6429 days Last view: 6429 days |
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Hah, that reminds me of the assignment "make a clock using the Timer control". My code looked something like this:
Private Sub Timer1_Count 'I haven't used VB in years so I don't remember how this part actually goes
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Sukasa Birdo Not quite as active as before. Xkeeper supporter Xk > ||bass I IP Banned myself! Twice! Since: 11-17-05 From: Somewhere over there Last post: 6429 days Last view: 6428 days |
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Close, Timer1_Timer()
Our teacher is learning more flash actionscript this year for his students, as he splits the programming class 50/50 VB6 and flash. |
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Mega-Dog Since: 11-19-05 From: Minnesota Last post: 6450 days Last view: 6432 days |
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VB IMO is an enviroment capable of alot. All of my windows NES editors were coded in it. Also it does have pointers and bit-shifting, just some simple 3-4 lines of code to do it. Now VB.NET blows and is really confusing... | |||
Sukasa Birdo Not quite as active as before. Xkeeper supporter Xk > ||bass I IP Banned myself! Twice! Since: 11-17-05 From: Somewhere over there Last post: 6429 days Last view: 6428 days |
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I find multiplying or dividing by powers of two is close enough for me when I need to do bitshifting.
Offtopic, but My CS teacher *rocks*. He keeps Starcraft and tribes Vengeance on the School computer hard drives |
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BriGuy92 Red Goomba Since: 09-10-06 From: That dot on the globe Last post: 6450 days Last view: 6434 days |
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Wow. How many really cool teachers do you have?
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Sukasa Birdo Not quite as active as before. Xkeeper supporter Xk > ||bass I IP Banned myself! Twice! Since: 11-17-05 From: Somewhere over there Last post: 6429 days Last view: 6428 days |
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They're all cool, actually
And I'm looking at visual Basic, and yaeh, I've run into it's slowness issue. I think there are two reason for this: first off, I'm using the windows GDI for my graphics work (IIRC it's insanely slow), so I'm looking into directdraw, and the message pump is supposed to be crappy. Really, other than that I've had no problems with VB6, and I don't believe that it's a poor language. |
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Kyoufu Kawa Intends to keep Rom Hacking in one piece until the end Since: 11-18-05 From: Catgirl Central Station Last post: 6428 days Last view: 6428 days |
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Originally posted by asakuSOBJECTION! My first attempt at a fighting game used GDI exclusively for it's graphics and was as fast as a greased hedgehog. In my last attempt, I found out that lowering the color depth helped for DirectX. Also... unless you go subclassing, there IS no message pump in VB programs. It's all delegated to events. |
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