Stone Tools2d ago

🪨 Visual Basic on the PC w/Windows 3.1 🛠️

Apple wasn't the only company to have a popular, easy to use, visual programming tool, only to yank it from their diehard fans and replace it with nothing. I see what all of the fuss was about with Visual Basic with the help of a "teach yourself" book, get pedantic about Microsoft's use of Helvetica, and *briefly* muse about slop factories. Arnold, from Diff'rent Strokes, guest stars!

#retrocomputing #microsoft #windows #basic

https://stonetools.ghost.io/visualbasic-win31

Visual Basic on the PC w/Windows 3.1

Apple wasn't alone in creating a beloved visual programming environment only to yank it away at the height of its popularity.

Stone Tools
Show threadPaolo Amoroso1d ago

@stonetoolsblog Great writeup, as usual. I had almost forgotten about VisualBasic for DOS.

In the early 1980s the Interlisp environment had something like the grandfather of tooltips:

https://fosstodon.org/@interlisp/116707865758668791

And, of course, Lisp and Smalltalk programmers have had "edit and continue" since forever, even with compiled code. 😀

Show threadStone Tools1d ago
@amoroso Really neat to learn about those tooltips on Interlisp, thanks for the info. Xcode tried to give "fix and continue" to the Objective-C crowd a long, long time ago and I think it deprecated when they switched from GDB to LLDB. Yesterday I was doing SwiftUI for my work and it has "Live View" previewing, kind of adjacent to a "fix and continue," and it just didn't work at all.
Show threadPaolo Amoroso1d ago
@stonetoolsblog By the way, I didn't know DOSBox-X comes with its own Windows implementation.
Show threadStone Tools1d ago
@amoroso No, just it's own DOS implementation. I installed standard Windows on top of that, rather than doing an install on top of real DOS. Maybe I worded that confusingly in the post?
Show threadPaolo Amoroso
@stonetoolsblog I see, thanks. My understanding from the article is DOSBox-X comes with a built-in Windows implementation or emulator.
Jun 27 at 10:35amWeb