The difference between VB6 and Ruby
time to read 2 min | 236 words

I'm listening to DNR #198 at the moment, and Carl compares Ruby to VB6 and says that the main difference is that now we have tests.

I don't agree with this statement.

In my opinion, the main problem with VB6 compare to Ruby, JavaScript, Python, or any other dynamically typed langauge, is that the only concession that VB6 had for dynamicasim (is that a word?) was in its typing system. In other words, variant, automatic type conversion and duck typing (to some degree) were the only dynamic features of VB6.

You can't extend VB6 in any meaningful way. In a dynamic language, mixin is a natural paradigm, extending classes and objects is a matter of course. Those features give the developer a lot of flexibility to work with. VB6 didn't have any of the real advantages fo a dynamic system.

That is also leaving aside the amount of freedom that each language gives the developers. The simplest example that I can think of is JavaScript and alert(). I override this function in my application to provide a dialog box that match the look and feel of the application. I can do it once, and any call to alert() in my application is changed (including library code). I am not familiar with any way to do that in VB6 and MsgBox

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