Some history:For the last six months I have been employed at a small firm with just three programmers, my employer among them. The firm maintains two programs written in VB6. I am asssigned as the lead programmer to one of these. In the last six months I did some maintenance and bug hunting, but created some new functionality too. I had an interview last december, which was favorable, and my contract was prolonged. I am very happy with this course of events as I only obtained a .Net certification a year ago and have no other qualifications (in the field of coding, that is).
It is my strong opinion that, while migration of the existing program to .Net is advisable, it is paramount that from now on the new functionality should be written in VB.Net class libraries. After some study I found out how simple it is to integrate .Net class libraries into the VB6 development environment and how easy it is to add their functionality to existing installations by using application manifests.
So, I have decided that now is the moment to roll up my sleeves and try and convince my employer that he should let me develop new code in VB.Net, using VB6 for maintenance only. We get along quite well, but I think I am going to need all the ammunition I can get to convince him. Any arguments, preferably backed up up ones, are very welcome, even arguments to dissuade me 😉
Best Answer
VB6 apps will not work when Win8 (or whatever it gets called) comes out. The company I just left got burned when Vista came out and the 16-bit apps stopped working because the VBXs could not be made to run on Vista. Microsoft decided to take out the native libraries that handle accessing Access databases. They can easily do that with the VB6 runtime library.
As a form of risk management, your boss should be considering updating the technology. Slowly moving piece-by-piece to .NET would make things much less stressful if MS decides to kill off the VB6 runtime. When new operating systems are in beta (usually called CTP), I strongly recommend getting a copy to install on a virtual to test your existing software. Vista was a shock to us, and that company didn't have a replacement for the 16-bit code for about a year after Vista came out - and we only knew it was a problem when customers starting calling to say it didn't work.
edit: while watching a number of webcasts on Microsoft Events, and in particular this one, I've come across the statement by more than one presenter that the VB6 runtimes will not be distributed in future operating systems.