Visual Basic for GUIs

[user1397]

What do you think about GUIs made with visual basic? Especially in regards to professional-quality and aesthetics.

I personally think they look a bit silly, they have that fisher price feel to them.

I'm asking because a friend of mine showed me a program he designed with visual basic that he eventually plans to sell to small businesses, and it didn't look so convincing to me...

[trizrK]

What do you think about GUIs made with visual basic? Especially in regards to professional-quality and aesthetics.

I personally think they look a bit silly, they have that fisher price feel to them.

I'm asking because a friend of mine showed me a program he eventually plans to sell to small businesses, and he used visual basic.
Quality?
Pick a different program.
Your right about the Fisher Price gag.

[jhonan]

The windows controls are the same no matter what programming language is used to display them. A button displayed by a c++ program will look the same as a button displayed by vb.

What could give it the 'fisher price' look is the programmer themselves, not the language. Someone who's starting out and hasn't got a clue about UI design, will probably pick a language like vb.

[3rdalbum]

It comes down to the programmer or interface designer, not the toolkit (in this case).

[johnnybelfast]

VB uses the standard windows controls, so any bad gui is usually tthe fault of the the designer.

VB is one of the best IDE's for rapid application development. It's very easy to design decent gui's on and the code is relatively easy to learn. Most people who have a problem with it don't like it because it's not cross platform, it's propriatary and because the coding style quite different to languages like PHP, Java and C etc. Some people simply don't like it because it's connected to Microsoft. Regardless of what those people think, it is a very useful programming language for Windows users and shouldn't be underrated. Linux has equivalents in the form of Gamabas2 and RealBasic. Gambas2 is the open source equivelent of VB and uses a very similar coding style. As Gambas don't have a major corporation like Microsoft backing them it can be rough around the edges, but is pretty good for a low budget software production.

[TheSqueak]

They're good for tracking killer's IP addresses (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU) :)

[Bandit]

What do you think about GUIs made with visual basic? Especially in regards to professional-quality and aesthetics.

I personally think they look a bit silly, they have that fisher price feel to them.

I'm asking because a friend of mine showed me a program he designed with visual basic that he eventually plans to sell to small businesses, and it didn't look so convincing to me...

Nothing wrong with VB or the rest of Visual Studio for that matter. It can be used to make applications that look identical to GTK apps and vice versa. Its just a set of tools for the designer to use.

That being stated. If he made some software that looks bad, its HIS fault. Being a programming major in college I see this all the time, many folks can code, very very few can design a proper interface. When I mention to others that they should use the Human Interface Guidelines from M$ when designing the layout. Only other person in the classroom that has a clue to what I was talking about is the instructor. There really should be a class for this one particular subject.

Like I said nothing wrong with VB, I can make programs that make you want to slap yo momma. But I got friends that make programs with it that make people want to take rusty razors to their wrist..

[cgroza]

They're good for tracking killer's IP addresses (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU) :)
They need to consult a programmer for that show.

[juancarlospaco]

Especially in regards to professional-quality

Not being made with visual basic, choose a different toolkit...

[aaaantoine]

They're good for tracking killer's IP addresses (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU) :)

Came to this thread for the CSI:NY reference. Was not disappointed.

[forrestcupp]

The windows controls are the same no matter what programming language is used to display them. A button displayed by a c++ program will look the same as a button displayed by vb.

What could give it the 'fisher price' look is the programmer themselves, not the language. Someone who's starting out and hasn't got a clue about UI design, will probably pick a language like vb.
This is exactly right. If it was being run in Windows XP, everything in XP looks "Fisher Price". It's not because of VB. If you are creating some kind of business app that doesn't need raw power, Visual Basic is a perfectly suitable option that is widely used. Any GUI app you create in VB can look exactly the same as one created in C# or C with straight winapi.

There is no reason to wade through the hassles of winapi if VB will do the job for you.

[Bandit]

This is exactly right. If it was being run in Windows XP, everything in XP looks "Fisher Price". It's not because of VB. If you are creating some kind of business app that doesn't need raw power, Visual Basic is a perfectly suitable option that is widely used. Any GUI app you create in VB can look exactly the same as one created in C# or C with straight winapi.

There is no reason to wade through the hassles of winapi if VB will do the job for you.
Exactly.

BASIC (VB Now) is normally the first language most colleges teach. It gets the user ready for other languages such as C++ and C#.

[Macskeeball]

BASIC (VB Now) is normally the first language most colleges teach.
Are you sure that's not Java?

[Bandit]

Are you sure that's not Java?

Different schools do different things. It really depends on the instructors. Thats why I said traditionally. Besides BASIC has been out way before Java. It isnt named Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code for nothing.

[trizrK]

Different schools do different things. It really depends on the instructors. Thats why I said traditionally. Besides BASIC has been out way before Java. It isnt named Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code for nothing.
Lots of schools are teaching Python first. It's a great programming language.

[Bandit]

Lots of schools are teaching Python first. It's a great programming language.
IMHO Python is a better choice then BASIC. Sadly I started learning BASIC in 2nd grade and now have no use for the language.

College I am in teaches, Basic, 2 semesters of PHP, Javascipt, XHTML/CSS/XML. I am trying to get them to remove BASIC and replace it back with C++ that it used to have a few years back.

[MasterNetra]

Are you sure that's not Java?

With ITT-Tech and a number of others its visual basic.

[BrokenKingpin]

VB GUI uses standard winforms, so it will look like any other applications under windows for the most part. A C++ win32 application, or a C# application would have the same look. If it looks fisher price to you, it is probably just the theme, or the developer has just come up with a horrible layout.

[forrestcupp]

Lots of schools are teaching Python first. It's a great programming language.

I've never heard of anyone outside the Linux community teaching Python. It's a great language, but it's not used very widely in the real world.

[cgroza]

I've never heard of anyone outside the Linux community teaching Python. It's a great language, but it's not used very widely in the real world.
It's rank is pretty high in TIOBE.

[Simian Man]

One thing I remember from Visual Basic was that it encouraged you to use fixed layouts - setting exactly where controls go in terms of pixels. This makes them look bad when resized or the fonts are changed and looks very unprofessional. Toolkits like Qt make this much harder to do.

As long as that isn't done, there's nothing wrong with Visual Basic (at least in terms of the finished product).