A browser-native classic Visual Basic VB6 IDE

133 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by wiso
(wieslawsoltes.github.io)

47 Comments

vjvjvjvjghv

2 hours ago

Wow, this feels almost like the real thing.

Is there something similar for the web now? Easy UI editor but a fully featured language behind with direct database access.

Narishma

2 hours ago

These kinds of browser recreations of old native apps always fails at text rendering.

nullpoint420

2 hours ago

What's wrong with it? Sure it's way more higher quality but the layout seems... fine?

sijmen

7 hours ago

Slick! Thanks for bringing back some memories of how i got into programming; by automating math-homework in visual basic.

wiradikusuma

2 hours ago

Debugging and IntelliSense don't work, and the deliverable isn't a .exe but an .html (though it works). Wondering if it can access ODBC lol.

Kuyawa

3 hours ago

Oooh beautiful! Visual Foxpro was the same, only the language changed but their screen designers were almost identical

vunderba

9 hours ago

Nice job - definitely consider implementing at least a little bit of the Win32 API layer! For kicks I tried importing an old highschool VB6 map editor at it which uses BitBlt but sadly it didn't work.

pcdoodle1

5 hours ago

Awesome! If only we could publish the programs as a PWA :)

WillAdams

2 hours ago

Thoughts on tools capable of that?

- Xojo is a commercial tool which I believe does that (but with a price and license to match)

- MoonBasic seems like a promising start

- Gambas for folks using Linux?

- For folks using the very affordable PureBasic there is the matching (also commercial, just about as affordable) SpiderBasic

Naturally if one extends the search to other languages there are lots of options, but Lazarus with a .js Object Pascal compiler seems worth mentioning. For my part, I was swayed when flet.dev announced their v1.0 and so went the Python route....

Dwedit

3 hours ago

Best part of VB5 was that when you hit F1, you instantly got help for whatever was under the cursor. VB6 changed it to use some much slower MSDN help system instead.

sssilver

2 hours ago

This was also the best part of QBASIC.

It was just wonderful. I owe so much to that thoughtful feature as a child.

I wish I could meet the person who decided that. You’ve changed my life.

egonschiele

3 hours ago

This takes me back! Right clicking works too, this is awesome. I miss property tables, that was a nice UX. Flash had it too.

hagbard_c

6 hours ago

The speed with which this thing launches in a browser should put shame on the faces of current IDE developers. While VB itself was nothing to write home about there certainly was something lost when hardware became more powerful. Imagine what current and 'recent' hardware were capable of if only efficiency was taken seriously again. Maybe generative AI can provide a boost where human developers would rather spend their time on chasing the latest fads, adding yet another feature or inversely removing even more functionality in an attempt to create the 'perfect' sparse application? Let the humans think up the features and write the initial implementation, then loosen the bots on the code to make it run as efficiently as possible on hardware which used to be current a few generations back.

hyperhello

6 hours ago

The power relationship between the computer and the human has shifted since then. We want our computers to run slower so we don’t feel quite so inferior.

fuzzzerd

5 hours ago

I don't. It's a machine, it should be fast and efficient.

hyperhello

4 hours ago

Are you sure? A UI based on instant gratification? Seeing everything simply blink into place instantly might not be as fun as you think after the newness wears out.

Anyway, if you really want to, you can emulate old OSs with a very fast modern computer. Some emulators even bridge the network and file system to support enough that you can really live in it.

aero_code

4 hours ago

I would love if everything on a computer were instant. One of the fastest programs I use is Sublime Merge for a Git UI. It opens and does everything so fast, and I love it. Since the first time I opened it, I haven't even opened the previous Git GUI I was using, even though I like both their UIs about the same. I had to buy Sublime Merge, compared to the free app I was using before it.

It's not just me who prefers everything as fast as possible, but true of people in general. Google measured that slowing down loading a search page by only 400ms caused people to do fewer searches. And the biggest reason I heard people say they switched to Chrome was that it was faster than other browsers (which was true for the first couple years after release).

bitwize

3 hours ago

> Are you sure? A UI based on instant gratification? Seeing everything simply blink into place instantly might not be as fun as you think after the newness wears out.

laughs in Amiga

sakesun

4 hours ago

I guess you don't have the same opinion with your vehicle.

dkga

3 hours ago

My first <del>love</del>IDE…

orthodonticjake

7 hours ago

easy way to trigger an Epic developer

Onavo

6 hours ago

Wait Epic as in the medical software is written in VB6‽

roywiggins

5 hours ago

The GUI parts are or were.

And parts of their patient portal website were still VB6 on the backend a decade ago, not sure that's true anymore. Visual Basic 6 as a web backend.

SoftTalker

5 hours ago

VB was the backend language for the vast majority of original Active Server Pages sites.

zdimension

an hour ago

My memory may fail me, but I'm pretty sure ASP used VBScript, not regular VB. Similar syntax but not the same runtime/environment. ASP could use any Active Scripting language (the other language shipped with Windows being JScript, MS's impl of a subset of JS)

bitwize

3 hours ago

Here's something that will bake your noodle. Sage 100, the accounting/ERP software, is still to my knowledge written in Business BASIC from the 1970s—specifically the variant that ran on MAI Basic Four minicomputers (just 64 KiB of RAM!). This variant of BASIC was so, as Claude says, load-bearing that several companies emerged to support source-compatible versions on a variety of platforms as the non-mainframe business world evolved from custom-schmustom minicomputers to Unix workstations and PCs. The most common variants today are BASIS International's BBx and BBj (Java), and ProvideX. Sage 100, originally MAS 90 and MAS 200, was an accounting solution originally developed for those 1970s minicomputers and then forward-ported to new platforms as the business landscape evolved.

imnotr0b0t

5 hours ago

Wow, that's great. It brings back so many memories

truetraveller

6 hours ago

Was this done with an LLM? Repo?

ranger_danger

5 hours ago

Their github account lists over 5,000 commits and 1,500 pull requests... just in the last 4 days.

tech234a

5 hours ago

Yes, if you look at the developer's Twitter account they've shared a large number of projects in the past week, including in-browser recreations of Windows Vista, XP, 2000, ME, 98, 95, 3.1, Mac OS 9, Word, Excel, OneNote, Access, Visio, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Reader, a Git Client, a CAD program, a video editor, etc. https://x.com/wieslawsoltes

pan69

5 hours ago

Looking through his work it seems that he has build a whole .net browser based ecosystem [1]. Pretty impressive its own right. However, for his showcase projects I was wondering how he'd prompt to guide these recreations, i.e. what is used as the input, I can't image that he'd describe every tiny detail...

[1] https://wieslawsoltes.github.io/Home/ecosystem/

userbinator

3 hours ago

I was wondering how he'd prompt to guide these recreations, i.e. what is used as the input, I can't image that he'd describe every tiny detail...

I thought the same way when I saw some impressive AI-generated videos not long ago, and I suspect the author prompted AI to get a basic idea, and then possibly after many iterations, finished it up with manual editing.

broast

5 hours ago

This is amazing

diavelguru

5 hours ago

talk about a blast from the past!

Sarkie

6 hours ago

Intellisense?

Was that there?

jimmygrapes

5 minutes ago

IIRC even QuickBASIC 4.5 had a form of "IntelliSense" in the form of hints as to the defined data structure, if provided in DECLARE statements. F1 hints are mentioned elsewhere for built-ins but I seem to recall it (or a similar quick action) also working for a smart of "what kind of data are you allowed to pass to this user defined subroutine or function".

nvme0n1p1

6 hours ago

What do you mean?

Does the site have intellisense? Yes

Did VB6 have intellisense? Also yes

bitwize

3 hours ago

OK, so I followed through to the author's GitHub page and the project's repository and...

no CLAUDE.md, no AGENTS.md, no SKILL.md, no .claude or .agents directories either.

Dare we dream? A project this ambitious, done without AI help? I'm getting that feeling like when I see a piece of really well done art come across my feed—and it was done entirely by a human!

drnick1

3 hours ago

> no CLAUDE.md, no AGENTS.md, no SKILL.md, no .claude or .agents directories either.

Untracked.

mkrishnan

9 hours ago

Wow. very nice, it even runs the app