in reply to Visual Basic to Perl transition

Yes, a FOO-to-Parrot compiler is always possible. There are, if I counted correctly, at least 10 languages targeting Parrot right now, and Perl isn't one of them. (Though Python is ...)

But, the hype about MS ending free support for VB6 ... whatever. It's not like my VB code is going to suddenly stop working. Not to mention that the VB interpreter is still going to be part of WinXP, WinServer2k3, and Win2kPro. Oh - and .Net (which means it's part of Mono, which is F/OSS). It just isn't going to be part of Longhorn.

As for transitioning a product from language X to language Y ... the basic rules apply.

Not to mention that transitioning from VB (which is extremely OO) to Perl (which isn't) is going to be problematic. Transitioning from VB (which is crappily OO) to Ruby (which isn't) is also going to be problematic. Transitioning from anything to PHP (which is a toy) is dumb. (I don't know Python well enough to make stupid comments about it.)

Frankly, I'd rewrite VB applications in Javascript (which is actually a pleasant language once you get past the browser incompatibilities) and go from there. At least, you still have the same graphical interface you're used to.

Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

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Re^2: Visual Basic to Perl transition
by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Mar 18, 2005 at 16:58 UTC

    Frankly, I'd rewrite VB applications in Javascript

    I think you are confusing Visual Basic with VBScript or perhaps Visual Basic for Applications. Visual Basic itself has no relation to browsers whatsoever (unless you would care to write a CGI or ISAPI application in it). Visual Basic targets the native windows GUI - not that that makes it any less awfull.

    /J\

      It is not very hard to write a completely stand-alone Javascript application that uses the browser as the rendering engine. You have access to CSS for layout, the DOM for data, and Javascript is a full language with some really nice features that I'd love to see added to Perl6 (but which won't be, for various reasons).

      And, since you're writing it for a Win32 machine, you can specifically target IE, with all of its quirks, making your application quite easy to build quickly. Forms can be handled by

      <form onSubmit="do_something();return false;"> </form>
      and everything else is done with location.reload() and a very small frameset.

      The only thing you don't have using Javascript-in-IE vs. a standalone VB app is control of the menubar. Frankly, I'm not impressed with menubars in corporate apps.

      Oh - deployment of fixes is now very simple, too. You just have an onLoad handler for the window that checks to see if a server is available, and then asks the server with XMLHTTPRequest if there's an update. If there is, it goes ahead and sets the location to the spot, does an implicit reload, and onLoad does a save of the data locally, overwriting the old icon. :-)

      Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
      Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
      Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
      Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

Re^2: Visual Basic to Perl transition
by scmason (Monk) on Mar 18, 2005 at 16:50 UTC
    "There are, if I counted correctly, at least 10 languages targeting Parrot right now, and Perl isn't one of them. (Though Python is ...)"

    This sounds like you are saying that Perl is not targeting Parrot? Parrot is the interpeter for Perl 6, so this doesn't make a lot of sense.
    Unless you are saying that Perl isn't one of the '10 languages'. In that case, I apologize.

      Perl isn't one of them ... yet. The only semi-working Perl6 interpreter (Pugs) actually targets Haskell, not Parrot. (This is largely due to Parrot's lack of support for certain necessary features in Perl6, like objects.)

      Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
      Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
      Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
      Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

        If it does not support objects, then how could it be of any use to Python?