Dennis Hayes

If you're one of the many who have VB6 code, you have three basic options: stay with VB6, convert to .NET, or rewrite from scratch. In this article, we will look at converting VB6 code to VB.NET and C#. I'll discuss when it makes sense to convert versus staying with VB6 or rewriting from scratch. I will cover what converts well and what does not, different ways to do the conversion, how to get code ready to convert, and handling issues after the conversion. Executive Overview First, let's get an executive-level overview of where VB6 and VB.NET are at in their life cycles. Note that when I mention VB.NET in this article, I mean all three versions (2002, 2003, 2005). When I talk about a specific version, I will specify the version (such as VB.NET 2002). With the advances in VB.NET 2003, as well as its compatibility with VB.NET 2002, there is little reason to migrate ... (more)

Graphics Still the Hot Topic in Open Source .NET

Graphics and GUI (System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms [SWF]) continue to be a couple of the most worked-on areas in both Mono and Portable.NET. Other areas under heavy development include cryptography, Web services, coverage and build tools for Mono, dependency charts for Portable.NET, and lots of bug fixes for both. Mono and Portable.NET Do GUI Differently In a project the size of .NET, choices often need to be made between options of nearly equal technical merit. Having more than one project (Portable.NET and Mono) can allow more than one choice to be made. The GUI code (Syst... (more)

Mono Gets a Big Commercial Win

Völcker Informatik AG has switched from Microsoft to Mono. Völcker was traditionally a Microsoft shop using VB and C++ to built its enterprise-level user management and authentication products. But when the city of Munich, one of its largest clients, decided to switch to Linux, Völcker needed technologies that would work in a cross-platform environment. It felt it had two options - Java or Mono; it decided to recode everything in C# using Mono. In nine months it recoded seven million lines of VB and C++ code into two million lines of C# that run on both Windows and Linux. Even fo... (more)

Third Mono Beta Released

Mono 1.1.16, the third beta of version 1.2, has been released. The time span between the release of versions 1.1.15 and 1.1.16 is one of the longest in several years and the number of changes included reflects that, again System.Windows.Forms (SWF) and System.Drawing got the most attention. The biggest difference is that SWF now supports threading; multiple threads can now create their own forms and controls, and have their own message processing loops. Repaint logic has also been changed to improve performance and match the Microsoft implementation. In the past, Mono sent paint m... (more)

Mono Starts C# 3.0

When the first draft of the C# 2.0 spec was released, the Mono team started working on it immediately. The first draft of the C# 3.0 spec has now been out for almost a year, but the Mono team has just started to work on it. There are two reasons for this: one is that the whole team was working on the major 1.2 release, including Winforms. The second reason is that the first draft of the C# 3.0 spec was released shortly after the official release of C# 2.0, and the Mono team was still busy fixing bugs, cleaning up code, and integrating last-minute changes to the C# 2.0 spec. Becau... (more)