Last week, the developer of APRS-SCS, John - KB2SCS announced that he was dropping all support for APRS-SCS, as it is written in VB6, which is no longer supported by "the boys from Redmond", aka Microsoft. At that time, John put the source code up on his Web Site.
I started to talk with John (he lives close by, and I really have to get together with him), and I think I'm going to take a crack at porting the program over to VB.NET.
This is NOT going to be a trivial port, and in fact, I've had a bear just getting the development environment up to the point I can compile the existing source (I'm there now - if you need hints, email me)
Anyway, John as agreed that I can "open source" the program.
I'm thinking that I'll put this up on Sourceforge (gasp - a windows app on Sourceforge!), and anyone who wants to contribute can.
The first issues that MUST be taken care of
1)The application uses what are called "old controls". These are .OCXs that Microsoft shipped with VB4 and 5, that were basically replaced by native controls in VB6, but were still available for download, but non supported. There is an "interesting" problem with the "Old controls" - they will not work in the VB6 development environment under Vista. (an aside, the VB6 IDE does not work in Vista64, but IS supported under Vista32)
2)The application uses a 3rd party OCX called "Socketwrench". There was a free version of this control, but there no longer is. Under .NET, we don't need it, the stream reader/writer classes can handle this for us
3)The VB6 and .NET graphics systems are totally different, and this will probably be the biggest part of the port
Anyway, I'd like to hear what you think, and many hands make light work. I'll need testers, reviewers, and even a few developers to help.
Anyone game?
Showing posts with label Visual Basic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Visual Basic. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Friday, May 09, 2008
Not The Post but... Visual Studio on a Mac?
I still have not gotten my deep thought post written, the brain just has not been into it (hey, the leg has been bothering me, so..)
Anyway, I've been thinking about getting a new Laptop (the current 'personal' laptop is a PIII based unit...)
I've heard some good things about Macbook pros laptops runing Vista under either Parallels or VMWare. Have any of you had any experience running Vista/Visual Studio 2008 (and in particular VB.NET) on a Macbook pro?
Comments?
Anyway, I've been thinking about getting a new Laptop (the current 'personal' laptop is a PIII based unit...)
I've heard some good things about Macbook pros laptops runing Vista under either Parallels or VMWare. Have any of you had any experience running Vista/Visual Studio 2008 (and in particular VB.NET) on a Macbook pro?
Comments?
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
AAArrrggghhh Legacy Code
Recently, I've been working on what is probably the "Ultimate" legacy/Brownfield application. It's a VERY important application for our business, or WAS, but the users are starting to find other ways to do their job. The problem is that the application in question is VERY hard to maintain, and management does not want to risk making any "non critical" changes. It's the classic "Big Ball of Mud" design.
Now no matter HOW many time's I've read Michael Feather's Working Effectively with Legacy Code, I can can never quite figure out how to make it work in this case. There are almost no seams to exploit. We have numerious routines that have a Maintenance Complexity in the 2000 to 3000 range. Of course these routines have no REASON to be that complex, it's just that previous programmers had a tendency to lump all sorts of things together that had nothing in common except that they needed to execute at the same time.
DRY? They never heard of it
The classes are just mirrors of database tables, and if a calculation needs to be done on a class or collection, the routine is usually inline in a form event, with "other" code mixed in.
I do find RefactorPro! to be a very useful tool, but even with automated tools, I have to take huge risks, just to get the code to the point I can start putting test harnesses on it.
Anyone else have to maintain a probram like this? The goal here is to get the application maintainable enough that I can start to add features to retain/regain our internal user base
Now no matter HOW many time's I've read Michael Feather's Working Effectively with Legacy Code, I can can never quite figure out how to make it work in this case. There are almost no seams to exploit. We have numerious routines that have a Maintenance Complexity in the 2000 to 3000 range. Of course these routines have no REASON to be that complex, it's just that previous programmers had a tendency to lump all sorts of things together that had nothing in common except that they needed to execute at the same time.
DRY? They never heard of it
The classes are just mirrors of database tables, and if a calculation needs to be done on a class or collection, the routine is usually inline in a form event, with "other" code mixed in.
I do find RefactorPro! to be a very useful tool, but even with automated tools, I have to take huge risks, just to get the code to the point I can start putting test harnesses on it.
Anyone else have to maintain a probram like this? The goal here is to get the application maintainable enough that I can start to add features to retain/regain our internal user base
Monday, April 21, 2008
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Feeling Frustrated
Today, I'm working on a VB 6.0 application. After a couple of years of working almost exclusively in .NET, boy is it driving me nuts
The WORST part? I'm adding a form and some classes to an application that is about 90% done being ported to .NET
The WORST part? I'm adding a form and some classes to an application that is about 90% done being ported to .NET
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