0x0D│ 2026.04.30│ 4 min read │ visual-basic · vb6 · dotnet · csharp · software-history · opinion · programming · audience-question
Two open questions for anyone who shipped real work on Visual Basic 6 and is now writing C# against modern .NET. What specifically did VB6 get right that you miss? And what do you find frustrating about the modern toolchain that VB6 didn't make you fight? I shipped about a hundred VB3-through-VB6 line-of-business systems between 1995 and 2010, and I'm trying to get to the root of what was actually good before too much of the institutional memory leaves the room.
Two open questions for anyone who shipped real work on Visual Basic 6 and now writes C# against modern .NET.
I am not asking either as a rhetorical setup. I am genuinely trying to understand the answer, in the words of people who lived it, and I want to do it before too much of the institutional memory leaves the room.
Why I'm asking
I shipped about a hundred line-of-business systems on VB3, VB4, VB5, and VB6 between roughly 1995 and 2010. Form designer, double-click an event, write the handler, ship the EXE, walk away. After 2010 I moved to C# and have been there ever since. I have used WinForms, WPF, parts of Silverlight before it died, a small amount of UWP I would prefer to forget, MAUI for one project that did not survive, and Avalonia, which is what I build on now.
I am writing a history of Visual Basic and the research keeps surfacing the same observation. Microsoft has launched seven UI frameworks since VB6. Most of them have been positioned as the successor. WinForms in 2002 is the only one of those seven that is still the path of least resistance for a working line-of-business app, and the model it ships is recognisably the model VB6 invented. Twenty-eight years on, the form designer that Alan Cooper drew on paper in 1987 is still, somehow, the shortest distance from "I have an idea" to "I have a running app."
That is interesting. I think it is more interesting than the usual "VB6 was a toy" or "VB6 was a masterpiece" arguments allow for. So I am trying to get under those framings and understand what it actually was, from people who used it heavily.
The two questions
If you have a few minutes and you used VB6 in production:
What specifically did you love about VB6? Not the general feeling of nostalgia. Specific things. A particular workflow, a particular shape of problem it solved, a particular design choice that made your day-to-day faster or clearer. A thing you reach for now and notice is missing, even if the missing thing is small.
What do you find frustrating about modern .NET, C#, and Visual Studio that VB6 didn't make you fight? Same shape of answer. Specific examples. "I miss being able to do X without Y" rather than "modern .NET is too complicated." Things you have learned to live with but would rather not.
I want to keep both questions open-ended on purpose. If I asked "was it the IDE or the language or the ecosystem," I would get answers sorted into my buckets, and the most interesting answers would be in categories I did not think of. So please reach for the specific example before the category.
What this is
An exploratory post. Nothing being announced today and no email list to add you to. I am writing a book chapter on the VB6-to-modern-.NET transition and I want the chapter to be honest to the experience of the people who lived through it, not a recital of my own opinions. If something I learn from these answers eventually points toward a piece of work worth doing, that conversation will happen in its own post on its own day. For now this is just the question.
If you want to reply in the comments here, I will read every one. If you'd rather drop a note privately, the contact form on this site goes straight to me.
Thank you for the time. The next chapter will be better for it.
-EG