Nov 8, 2019

Visual Basic Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us for the innovations of the future! Today we’re going to cover an important but often under appreciated step on the path to ubiquitous computing: Visual Basic. Visual Basic is a programming language for Windows. It’s in most every realistic top 10 of programming languages of all time. It’s certainly split into various functional areas over the last decade or so, but it was how you did a lot of different tasks in Windows automation and programming for two of the most important decades through a foundational period of the PC movement. But where did it come from? Let’s go back to 1975. This was a great year. The Vietnam War ended, Sony gave us Betamax, JVC gave us VHS. Francisco Franco died. I don’t wish ill on many, but if I could go back in time and wish ill on him, I would. NASA launched a joint mission with the Soviet Union. The UK voted to stay the EU. Jimmy Hoffa disappears. And the Altair ships. Altair Basic is like that lego starter set you buy your kid when you think they’re finally old enough to be able to not swallow the smallest pieces. From there, you buy them more and more, until you end up stepping on those smallest pieces and cursing. Much as I used to find myself frequently cursing at Visual Basic. And such is life. Or at least, such is giving life to your software ideas. No matter the language, there’s often plenty of cursing. So let’s call the Altair a proto-PC. It was underpowered, cheap, and with this Microsoft Basic programming language you could, OMG, feed it programs that would blink lights, or create early games. That was 1978. And based largely on the work of John Kemeny and Thomas Kurts, the authors of the original BASIC in 1964, at Dartmouth College. As the PC revolution came, BASIC was popular on the Apple II and original PCs with QuickBASIC coming in 1985, and an IDE, or Integrated Development Environment, for QuickBASIC shipped in 2.0. At the time Maestro was the biggest IDE in use, but they’d been around since Microsoft released the first in 1974. Next, you could compile these programs into DOS executables, or .exe files in 3.0 and 4.0 brought debugging in the IDE. Pretty sweet. You could run the interpreter without ever leaving the IDE! No offense to anyone but Apple was running around the world pitching vendors to build software for the Mac, but had created an almost contentious development environment. And it showed from the number of programs available for the Mac. Microsoft was obviously investing heavily in enabling developers to develop in a number of languages and it showed; Microsoft had 4 times the software titles. Many of which were in BASIC. But the last version of QuickBASIC as it was known by then came in 4.5, in 1988, the year the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan - probably while watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit on pirated VHS tapes. But by the late 80s, use began to plummet. Much as my daughters joy of the legos began to plummet when she entered tweenhood. It had been a huge growth spurt for BASIC but the era of object oriented programming was emerging. But Microsoft was in an era of hyper growth. Windows 3.0 - and what’s crazy is they were just entering the buying tornado. 1988, the same year as the final release of QuickBASIC, Alan Cooper created a visual programming language he’d been calling Ruby. Now, there would be another Ruby later. This language was visual and Apple had been early to the market on Visual programming, with the Mac - introduced in 1984. Microsoft had responded with Windows 1.0 in 1985. But the development environment just wasn’t very… Visual. Most people at the time used Windows to open a Window of icky text. Microsoft leadership knew they needed something new; they just couldn’t get it done. So they started looking for a more modern option. Cooper showed his Ruby environment to Bill Gates and Gates fell in love. Gates immediately bought the product and it was renamed to Visual Basic. Sometimes you build, sometimes you partner, and sometimes you buy. And so in 1991, Visual Basic was released at Comdex in Atlanta, Georgia and came around for DOS the next year. I can still remember writing a program for DOS. They faked a GUI using ASCII art. Gross. VB 2 came along in 1992, laying the foundations for class modules. VB 3 came in 93 and brought us the JET database engine. Not only could you substantiate an object but you had somewhere to keep it. VB 4 came in 95 because we got a 32-bit option. That adds a year or 6 for every vendor. The innovations that Visual Basic brought to Windows can still be seen today. VBX and DLL are two of the most substantial. A DLL is a “dynamic link library” file that holds code and procedures that Windows programs can then consume. DLL allow multiple programs to use that code, saving on memory and disk space. Shared libraries are the cornerstone of many an object-oriented language. VBX isn’t necessarily used any more as they’ve been replaced with OCXs but they’re similar and the VBX certainly spawned the innovation. These Visual Basic Extensions, or VBX for short, were C or C++ components that were assembled into an application. When you look at applications you can still see DLLs and OCXs. VB 4 was when we switched from VBX to OCX. VB 5 came in 97. This was probably the most prolific, both for software you wanted on your computer and malware. We got those crazy ActiveX controls in VB 5. VB 6 came along in 1998, extending the ability to create web apps. And we sat there for 10 years. Why? The languages really started to split with the explosion of web tools. VBScript was put into Active Server Pages . We got the .NET framework for compiled web pages. We got Visual Basic for Applications, allowing Office to run VB scripts using VBA 7. Over the years the code evolved into what are now known as Unified Windows Platform apps, written in C++ with WinRT or C++ with CX. Those shared libraries are now surfaced in common APIs and sandboxed given that security and privacy have become a much more substantial concern since the Total Wave of the Internet crashed into our lego sets, smashing them back to single blocks. Yah, those blocks hurt when you step on them. So you look for ways not to step on them. And controlling access to API endpoints with entitlements is a pretty good way to walk lightly. Bill Gates awarded Cooper the first “Windows Pioneer Award” for his work on Visual Basic. Cooper continued to consult with companies, with this crazy idea of putting users first. He was an earlier proponent of User Experience and putting users first when building interfaces. In fact, his first book was called “About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design.” That was published in 1995. He still consults and trains on UX. Honestly, Alan Cooper only needs one line on his resume: “The Father of Visual Basic.” Today Eclipse and Visual Studio are the most used IDEs in the world. And there’s a rich ecosystem of specialized IDEs. The IDE gives code completion, smart code completion, code search, cross platform compiling, debugging, multiple language support, syntax highlighting, version control, visual programming, and so much more. Much of this isn’t available on every platform or for every IDE, but those are the main features I look for - like the first time I cracked open IntelliJ. The IDE is almost optional in functional programming - but In an era of increasingly complex object-oriented programming where classes are defined in hundreds or thousands of itty bitty files, a good, smart, feature-rich IDE is a must. And Visual Studio is one of the best you can use. Given that functional programming is dead, there’s no basic remaining in any of the languages you build modern software in. The explosion of object-orientation created flaws in operating systems, but we’ve matured beyond that and now get to find all the new flaws. Fun right? But it’s important to think, from Alan Kay’s introduction of Smalltalk in 1972, new concepts in programming in programming had been emerging and evolving. The latest incarnation is the API-driven programming methodology. Gone are the days when we accessed memory directly. Gone are the days when the barrier of learning to program was understanding functional and top to bottom syntax. Gone are the days when those Legos were simple little sets. We’ve moved on to building Death Stars out of legos with more than 3500 pieces. Due to increasingly complex apps we’ve had to find new techniques to keep all those pieces together. And as we did we learned that we needed to be much more careful. We’ve learned to write code that is easily tested. And we’ve learned to write code that protects people. Visual Basic was yet another stop towards the evolution to modern design principals. We’ve covered others and we’ll cover more in coming episodes. So until next time, think of the continuing evolution and what might be next. You don’t have to be in front of it, but it does help to have a nice big think on how it can impact projects you’re working on today. So thank you for tuning in to yet another episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We’re so lucky to have you. Have a great day!