Editorial Product Review:

Amazon.com Review:
Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 is the single fastest way to develop applications for any of the modern Microsoft Windows environments, period. This is the world's best-known Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment, quite stable at this point in its long career. By making extensive use of drag-and-drop component assembly, boilerplate wizards, form-based graphical user interface (GUI) design, and dozens of less obvious laborsaving features, this Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is almost certainly the fastest way to get your custom Windows software off the design team's whiteboard and into operation.

True, you can use C++ (written in Microsoft Visual C++ or some other environment) to write programs that execute faster. You can use Visual J++ or a Java IDE if you like that style of object-oriented programming. But there's little debate that Visual Basic offers the best balance of feature richness, ease of use, and performance. Furthermore, if you have a bit of familiarity with fundamental programming concepts (you know something about control structures, have a handle on data structures, and have some idea of what object orientation is all about), you'll find that Visual Basic has a relatively flat learning curve. It rewards experimentation, and plenty of fine documentation exists.

Visual Basic supports all of Microsoft's solutions for database access, distributed computing, componentized software, and half a dozen other major software applications. You can use Visual Basic to write Component Object Model (COM) objects, ActiveX Controls, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) for database access, and WebClasses to provide customized responses to events that occur during Web sessions. The professional edition supplements the standard Visual Basic features with visual tools for creating database schema on Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases. The Professional Edition also integrates with Microsoft Visual SourceSafe and the rest of Microsoft's tools for development of software by teams. --David Wall

Amazon.com Item Description:
As Microsoft releases the sixth version of its award-winning development tool, more than 50 percent of all professional developers are using the Visual Basic language. Visual Basic 6.0 is the most productive tool for creating high-performance enterprise and Web-based applications. Integrated Visual Database Tools and a RAD environment promote productivity, while native-code compilation provides fast applications.

This package includes the Windows 2000 Developer's Readiness Kit (also called the Plus Pack). Learn how to take advantage of new Windows 2000 features through in-depth, step-by-step training and technical resources. Get an overview of the Windows 2000 Web Services to build scalable Internet applications. Harness the power of the new COM+ services, including integrated-component management features, transaction processing between objects, and support for dynamic load balancing across servers. Use the Visual Studio Installer to create setup programs that feature easy installation and self-repair.

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More related to this product:
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More related to this product:

• Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Step by Step, Second Edition (Step By Step (Redmond, Wash.).)
• Learn to Program Visual Basic Databases (Learn to Program)
• Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (Mps)
• Visual Basic 6 for Dummies (for Windows)
• Beginning Visual Basic 6 Database Programming
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Customer Rating: - bait and switch
I ordered Microsoft Visual Basic Professional 6.0 with Plus Pack,as advertized. I received VB 4.0, so be very careful when dealing on here. I am finished with this venue to purchase items that are integral to my work. Every piece of advertisement stated VB6.0...... but the seller (msblissbooklist)
was dishonest. USE CARE when dealing with this seller. She has refused to answer 5 e-mails.

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Customer Rating: - Microsoft's Greatest Gift
My programming experience: Fortran -> Basic -> QuickBasic -> Assembly Language linked to QuickBasic -> finally Visual Basic 6. I've written thousands of pages of code for VB6. To the reviewer who wrote that Visual Basic is for "toy applications", I hope he's grown-up since 2000. Apparently he doesn't understand the power of this program. The complexity that VB6 allows is limited only by a programmer's intelligence and imagination.

I am very disappointed in the direction that Microsoft took by dropping VB6 and going in the direction of VB.Net. There is room in the world for both VB6 and Net. I sense that the intellectual incest of certain system oriented "C" purests went into making that decision. Unfortunately, everthing in life eventually becomes political, especially company politics, and great ideas can become trivialized. I may one day learn "Net", but I can't scrap my existing code. I need VB6 and Net to work together.

I've survived using VB Learning Edition for years, which is amazing. I found VB Professional Edition on this site before it goes into extinction, simply because I need one control, "Internet Transfer Control" - otherwise Learning Edition has satisfied all my needs writing very complex programs.

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Customer Rating: - The best development tool in the world.
Easy to learn, providing lightning fast application development, worldwide supported, intuitive. It sounds like a Microsoft commercial, but it's my honest opinions about Visual Basic 6.

Underrated in performance when it comes to execution speed. If somebody tells you that speed is a con with VB6 that is not true. This is also the fastest Visual Basic version (including VB.NET).

Visual Basic 6 has never failed me. It simply is the best development tool.

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Customer Rating: - Great MS Developmental tool
This is a great tool! I have use it with numberous MS office apps, created games, software from Db and Dna 2k utilization. Going from Quick Basic to VB3 to VB5. VB6 has the better libray and the ultilization of COM+ and DirectX the horizon is virtually endless.