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Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#

(github.com)
377 points porterde | 1 comments | 14 Nov 24 21:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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wiseowise ◴[14 Nov 24 22:51 UTC] No.42142078[source]▶
Still don't understand how we went from this to modern GUI toolkits.

It looks and works so intuitively.

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Onavo ◴[14 Nov 24 22:58 UTC] No.42142147[source]▶
The answer is simple, mobile and relative layouts. GUI builders are easy when you can just use absolute positioning for everything (see Retool and the dozens of Retool clones). They become insanely complex when you can't.
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1. rkagerer ◴[14 Nov 24 23:19 UTC] No.42142329[source]▶
I did extensive work in Visual Basic 6. Nearly all of the GUI's I created had resizeable windows that scaled gracefully. It was really straightforward to hook the Resize event.

I considered this table stakes for any thoughtfully-written piece of software. There were of course exceptions for fixed dialogs that weren't interacted with for long and comfortably fit any small screen.

The page or two of hand-crafted code tended to be at least as readable, and often moreso, than the declarative HTML and CSS gooblygook that's common today. And in practice as a user I found the result tended to be more useful than many of the so-called "responsive" websites I see today - which tend to hide content in annoying ways, ignore opportunities to compact whitespace, plaster the screen with outsized ads, etc. - to the point I sometimes request the "desktop" site in my mobile browser in an effort to chase down a more humane experience.