Fine little piece of advertising you dug out there, Fedrico.  :-)

But what benefit, really, does a rote translation from one language to another provide?  (Even assuming -- BIG ASSumption -- it's accurate!)  Especially given all the supposed benefits of moving to this allegedly superior platform?

Why advise folks continue suffering their slavishly crippled-by-design architecture, when a real "evolution" would mean redesign from the ground up, taking full advantage of all the new platform has to offer?

I sense a conflict here.

Federico -- It'd be nice to be able to discuss things, I agree.  But first we seem to need to come to terms with some sort of invisible language barrier between us.  I mean, it seems we're both writing in English, but we're apparently seeing/hearing different words.  What part of my post did you take as a personal attack?  And why shouldn't I take it as a personal attack when you describe an honest opinion, offered without malice, as a personal attack?  You pulled this in the other thread, as well, saying that I implied just the opposite of what I actually wrote.  WTH, man?  Don't read words between the words.  I write what I mean, nothing more.  I trust you to do the same.  Thanks...

Cool.  There's a lot of hostility surrounding all this, and probably most of that originates with, well, the origin of your business.  In fact, with the very need for your business.  Not that any of that's your fault!  You saw an opportunity and jumped on it.

So, have you looked at porting VB6 to other languages?  What about to Delphi or Java?  ABM, y'know.

I understand there is a conversion tool for VB6-to-Delphi that far outperforms any sort of automated conversion between VB6 and VFred.  This would suggest that the differences are just too stark to ever hold out much hope for a one-size-fits-all solution in Microsoft's world.  That they've taken what was once simple and elegant, and just made a huge mess of it all?  100,000 mappings for different functions just sounds ludicrous on the face of it.  Like there'd be no hope of ever reigning that in under control.

I see a number of contributing factors that make a direct port appealing. The main driver is to 'stop the rot' as soon as possible. The timeframe and corresponding cost of a total rewrite often mean a proposal to move away from a technology becomes prohibitive to the business.

With systems built up over years it can take a good deal of time to understanding the subtleties of how they work. There are however, a number of tangible benefits that can be had by taking smaller incremental steps. The first is improving the end user experience with the runtime's interaction with the environment. Removal of the reliance on COM registration (especially the way VB implements it) can significantly improve the installation and reliability of the application. It is also coming to the point where having a VB6 architecture can get your application rejected from potential sales. And, in my experiece, a direct ported application does run noticeably faster than the VB6 application (especially database access).

On the development side it makes automated builds simpler, allows you to have better cross-project viewing. You also have access to a richer base of tools with which to analyse your application. This in turn makes it easier to restructure and refactor your code in a more controlled and efficient way.