VB6 to .Net resources

I sent an email to a VB6 developer this morning to help point them to some of the resources we have available and thought I'd share it here.

If you are a VB6 developer and have not touched .Net you might like to look at some of these resources and use them to learn .Net.  These resources are all on the web and generally cost nothing.

The following web pages have some great starting points.  They may not all be applicable to you, so take a moment to look through the content and jump on board where you think you need to.

The beginner guides at https://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/ are designed to help you get started programming.  The second teir (https://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/windows/tier2/) of this series introduces the basics of .Net programming and may be a good place to cover off the ground work – although feel free to skip to their 3 if its too basic.

The starter kits (https://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/windows/default.aspx) have some really good windows applications that you can take apart and play with.  This is a great way of getting a pre-built application and figuring out how it works, and then customizing it.  There are starter kits for Windows and Web this link is just for Windows starter kits.

For help migrating from VB6 to VB.Net there are some Power Packs (https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/aa701257.aspx) which give .net some of the missing functionality of VB6 such as the Print Form control.  There is also an interop toolkit that will allow you to call .Net forms and functionality from inside VB6.  This will allow you to build new features in .Net while retaining the old application in VB6.  It’s also a great way to migrate the application to .Net one part at a time.

At Microsoft we also have a patterns and practices team.  Their job is to figure out the best way to do things and then write up guidance on how to do it.  They’ve written a guide on how to upgrade from VB6 to .Net, which has a bunch of downloads including documentation and an upgrade assessment tool that provides you with loads of experience of upgrading that you can use to make sure you do it once and get it right the first time.  You can read what they have and download the tools and documentation from https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480541.aspx.

The last thing I’d point you to is the learning resources page we have built on the Microsoft New Zealand MSDN website.  You can access the learning resources from https://www.microsoft.com/nz/msdn/resources.mspx.  This page has dozens of additional links for kick starting your learning regardless of what stage you are at.

Hope this is helpful to someone out there!