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Any cheap or free IDE's out there for VB6 programming? or is MS the only way to go?

Thanks.

JimmyPena
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JimDel
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    You do know that Microsoft doesn't officially support VB6 anymore, right? – Daniel Pryden Nov 19 '09 at 21:05
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    The runtime is apparently supported on Win7, even if the IDE only works on XP... But you're right, you should probably grab the latest version of VB.NET and try to convert it. – Matthew Scharley Nov 19 '09 at 21:10
  • I do, but unfortunately I may not have a choice but to use it. At least until I can port it to C#. – JimDel Nov 19 '09 at 21:11
  • The IDE wont run on Windows 7? – JimDel Nov 19 '09 at 21:22
  • Some people say it will run on Windows 7, e.g. here http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion/browse_thread/thread/91906802150aa029/5c28d9009c22cc04?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=ide+windows+7#5c28d9009c22cc04 – MarkJ Nov 19 '09 at 21:52
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    For what it's worth, I have the VB6 IDE running on Win 7, 64 bit without any problems. – George Mastros Nov 20 '09 at 02:14
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    @JimDel - Any thoughts to writing .NET COM callable components to use with VB6? New development could then be done in .NET and therefore there would be less to port over to C# in future. – Russ Cam Nov 20 '09 at 12:27
  • Why would anyone bother to make one? It was always a lousy language. I can't imagine anything less rewarding than making a lousy clone of a lousy language and having to deal with whiny support requests from people who are not only writing lousy code in a lousy language, but who are too lousy to pay for it and too useless to pirate it. – Boann Oct 24 '13 at 17:57
  • for syntax coloring, code folding and similar have a look at the Eclipse Colorer plugin: https://stackoverflow.com/a/53831524/1915920 – Andreas Covidiot Dec 18 '18 at 11:13

6 Answers6

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VB6 is a Microsoft language and product, so they have the VB6 thing sewed up.

Ken White
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If you need the VB6 compiler, there's no alternative to the real Microsoft product. You can run it in command-line mode so I guess you could use any IDE.

  • If you have an MSDN subscription, you can download Visual Basic 6 free.
  • Otherwise try somewhere like eBay, although it's often surprisingly expensive. Although Microsoft said in September 09 there were still several million people using VB6, so maybe it's not that surprising.
MarkJ
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Not that I know of for VB6.

VB .NET has Visual Basic Express Edition, though...

igul222
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I don't know of a complete IDE, but MZ-Tools makes a great IDE addin for VBA/VB6 (and it's free).

Lance Roberts
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Have you tried ebay? You may be able to pick up a genuine copy of VB6 for not a lot of money.

Martin
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Not for VB6 (another answer mentions a .NET solution).

There used to be a Visual Basic 5 Control Creation Edition (CCE) that was freely redistributable, but my feeble attempts at searching have failed to find it; a non-Microsoft site purporting to have it has removed it and replaced it with a text file complaining of link abuse, and Microsoft themselves don't distribute it anymore, sadly.

The CCE can't be used to make executables, as hinted at by its name.

Jeremy Smyth
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