Comment by kragen
2 years ago
what aspect of the development speed do you feel is faster? i feel like i can write things like
<select name=title><option>Mr.<option>Ms.</select><input name=name><input type=submit>
faster in html than i could in vb6. maybe i'm wrong about that?
you can try it in your url bar: data:text/html,<select name=title><option>Mr.<option>Ms.</select><input name=name><input type=submit>
of course that doesn't give you database integration, but if you just want crud, you can get crud pretty quick out of django's admin
here's a couple of things i've hacked up recently in dhtml which i think wouldn't have been easier in vb6
http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/ifs a 2-d iterated function system editor
http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/clock a watchlighting clock
Now try to make a layout with that form example that you could free form put anywhere in 2d space and have it flex properly as the window size changes beyond the defaults that html gives you and make the generic B2B SAAS dashboard like Segment, RevenueCat, Mixpanel, Datadog, Sentry, etc. I bet you could make a VB6 / Pascal equivalent much faster than you would be able to with a mobile or web app, especially if they were updated with a decent graph widget set.
Also your two examples are drawing canvas examples, thats a pretty different target that delphi / vb6 have with their GUI toolkits.
FYI, since 2017-ish doing layouts in HTML is much easier if you use "display: grid". Just be aware that the numbering is based on lines, not boxes. Also be aware that to use percentage-based heights at top level, you have to style the `html` and `body` too.
Additionally, use of `@container` queries (the modern, poorly-documented alternative to `@media` queries) lets you do more advanced layout changes on element resize. This requires adding `container-type: size` style on the parent (I found this very confusing in the docs).
> Just be aware that the numbering is based on lines, not boxes.
With grid-template-areas, you can use ascii art instead of specifying rows/columns manually. Though you would still need numbers if you wanted something other than the default spacing, which would be based on the content.
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i'm struggling under the misconception that having things flex properly as the window sizes is the default in html and basically impossible in vb6. but i'm very open to having my misconceptions corrected. is there a public video that demonstrates what it looks like when an expert uses vb6, so i can see what things that are hard in html are easy in vb6?
i have no idea what segment, revenuecat, mixpanel, datadog, sentry, etc., are
The point everyone is making is that you could have modernized the VB6/Lazarus approach to meet modern needs and it would have been much more productive than what we have currently with html+css.
And indeed, many of the complaints people have about VB6 not supporting multiple resolutions, etc, are fixed in Lazarus.
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