🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Pine.SUN.3.90.960126125658.2477C-100000@menger.eecs.stevens-tech.edu> Bob Ross <pdetagyo@menger.eecs.stevens-tech.edu> writes:
> he told me all about the 
>great OLE features that VB4 now contained.  When I told him that I wasn't 
>using any of the "great" OLE features, he told me that I needed to 
>include the OLE .DLLs anyway, because VB4 itself needs them to run.


Here is the real downfall of VB's current design, and as Microsoft continues 
to add features to Windows it only gets worse.  The interpreter is strictly 
monolithic -- one gigantic piece of software that can, and necessarily must, 
do anything any VB application in the universe might potentially want to do.

Clearly, in my view, the VB interpreter needs to be split into organized units 
and be able to recover from the possibility that a particular required unit 
might not be present.  Presumably some kind of compiler-option would be needed 
so that programmers could declare what language-features their programs used 
(or the language might do this itself), so that the interpreter would not 
attempt to run a program that could not be run in the present environment.  
The interpreter would verify the existence of the required DLLs but would not 
load them into memory until they are required.

Second, and equally clearly in my view, the time has come -- has long since 
passed -- for VB to ship with an honest-to-God native code compiler, much as 
QuickBasic had in 1988.  (So don't tell me they are not easily capable of 
doing it.)  Right now, some programmers feel obligated to switch away from VB 
to "something else" (witness the cross-post of the original message I'm 
replying to) just because VB does not offer true compilation.  That's really 
not a good thing.  

Programmers have invested millions of dollars in their VB applications, and 
they ought not be stuck with the "second son" or placed in a non-competitive 
position because of their original choices.  "Rewriting" such applications is, 
in the real world, generally not an acceptable alternative -- and please, I 
*know* there are products out there that more-or-less claim to do it.  I 
program daily in all three of these languages and feel that I know whereof I 
speak on this...  :-/

Microsoft has stated that VB will include a compiler.  I hope for their sake 
they make it soon.

/mr/