[OK, this was brought on after a night of fighting with the latest VS2005 “Made For Mort(tm)“ features in VS2005 and after hearing even more about the silly “VB Unmanaged 4Ever Petition“. Yes, I know, there are professional, intelligent, etc. VB programmers who signed. I also started programming in BASIC. And yes, I know this suggestion is as bad as the actual petition.]

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A PETITION TO END THE ATROCITIES OF VISUAL BASIC

We would like to suggest a path for the future development of VB6 and similar apps to put an end to the crimes against the world committed by worshipers of Microsoft's product, Visual Basic. This path will help anyone who should be working with computers on a technical level.

OBJECTIVES

We ask that Microsoft stop catering to low-end, “Mort” developers, especially those who cling to past glories achieved through VB6.

1. Preservation of Assets
    Microsoft should not:
        - Force customers to uninstall Visual Basic 6
        - Push a patch out through Windows Update that disables the VB6 runtime
        - In any way, magically make VB6 stop working at the end of March, 2005

2. Discontinued support for Visual Basic
        - Medical trials have shown strong correllation between Visual Basic usage and degration of the brain, notably the areas that deal with change and improvements.
        - Microsoft should take responsibility and make its products harder to use to raise the level of entry.

3. Ease migration of deprecated developers

        - Provide “Career Days” where developers can learn about and get jobs in exciting industries, such as textiles and hospitality
        - Promote local support groups and 12-step programs
        - Sponsor emigrant visas 
        - Provide a VB6-to-C++ reverse engineer tool.

SUGGESTED APPROACH

We believe the best way to meet these objectives is to drop support for VB.NET after Visual Studio 2005 (Codename “Whidbey”). For brevity, we’ll call this “natural selection”.

To quell proponents of “VB.COM”, we suggest explaining that “VB.COM” and “VB.NET” are so completely unlike C# and C++ that it sounds like a bad joke. We also suggest that Visual Studio team members personally make disparaging comments about how silly this is. While personal attacks and racial slurs shouldn’t be used, general stereotypes such as “…people who think architecture means making a wrapper for MsgBox” are fine.

CONCLUSION

With VB.NET out of the picture, less “Morts” will use Visual Studio. Microsoft can then focus on designing a strong framework and toolset that doesn’t worry about people who won’t understand why System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show doesn’t work “as it should” in an ASP.NET page.

Overall, we feel this will enable a better environment, and more robust software being created in the industry today.