Comment by jit_tech
16 hours ago
VB6 compressed a lot of the software development loop into one environment: change a property in a control, attach a behaviour and run.
I am wondering if newer avatars of coding agents can bring that back. Two reasons 1) Code generation is getting faster 2) More and more code is becoming a detail that is expected to work
Imagine a RAD where we have a VB6 like experience and can dive into real code (agent-generated) when the abstraction breaks.
MS has been working on similar ideas recently with its PowerFX language:
https://github.com/microsoft/Power-Fx
It's not really on people's radar but it seems very interesting and I think a lot of people that aren't on HN use and interact with it daily through the apps it supports.
Yes, please.
I spent a lot of time cutting my teeth in MS Access, and would've done a whole lot more in VB6 if it didn't become deprecated so quickly. It's like a whole smooth ecosystem I expected to persist and improve just evaporated, all in favor of much more fiddly stuff or much more expensive stuff (or if you're really unlucky, both).
I would like to see a comeback in this area, with modern security features and reduced bottlenecks for scaling.
I remember in Visual Studio putting a breakpoint on a line, running the execution cursor over it step by step and seeing all variable values that are in scope change in real time. Then being able to drag the cursor back to somewhere before the breakpoint, and edit any value to see if stepping through yields better outcomes. Quite powerful and delightful that.
That was part of what was so great about it, the many different ways it provided new developers to learn and get granular feedback as they went along, without encumbering the workflow for more experienced users.
I took it for granted, expected it to always be there-- wish I had something similar to point modern juniors to.