Bruce Gilham Jr.
Dying · VB6 IDE unsupported since 2008

The VB6 runtime survives on Windows. The people who can maintain it are retiring.

Where the business is

Microsoft stopped supporting the VB6 IDE in April 2008. The runtime still ships with Windows, so the applications run, and the people who can read the code are retiring. WinForms on .NET Framework is in better shape, but it stops being fine the day the business needs the application on the web, on a phone, or in the cloud.

What I do about it

I have shipped WinForms desktop systems for a bond-pricing desk, an industrial fastener-measurement fixture, an investment back office and a food plant, and moved desktop systems to the web. Your database and your business rules are the asset worth paying to keep; the desktop client is the part that gets replaced, and it does not have to happen all at once or in one budget.

Tell me what it runs on All VB6 & WinForms work

VB6 & WinForms engagements

8 shipped on it, migrated off it, or both
2007–2021Still running

Coast Asset Management

Fixed-income asset management · Lead developer and rescuer

A fixed-income desk's daily trading tools rebuilt off forty hand-maintained files onto the Bloomberg feed, and a years-old display fault nobody could solve traced to the vendor's own software. Fourteen years on the desk.

WinForms C# .NET WPF SQL Server
2013–2019Still running

We Buy Cars / Used Car Club

Used-vehicle wholesale · Sole developer and database rescuer

Arrived to fix broken reporting and stayed six years to replace the Access system the business ran on, finding along the way that the reports had been built on data that was neither live nor complete.

LightSwitch Microsoft Access C# SQL Server SQL Server replication Twilio
2013–2023Delivered

ACD LLC

Cryogenic pumps and turboexpanders · Lead developer

An in-house pump and turboexpander sizing program turned into a customer-facing service, designed so neither the calculation code nor the customer list ever left the company's own servers.

Silverlight WCF C# .NET WPF IIS
2013–2019Still running

Nissin Foods

Food manufacturing · Sole developer (software half of a two-firm bid)

A noodle plant weighed every pack and did nothing with the readings. Captured them into live control charts the line operators watch, and rolled it out line by line without stopping production.

LightSwitch WinForms SQL Server IIS Moxa serial-to-IP Siemens WinCC
2012Delivered

Deluxe Digital Studios

Film localisation and post-production · Senior developer

A subtitle authoring tool for a film localisation team, and an encoding farm that had been failing silently made reliable, proved against seven deliberate failure cases before it went back into production.

Silverlight WCF C# .NET XAML WCF RIA Services
2004–2012Shipped

Momentum Investment Services

Investment operations and casino floors · Lead developer

The entire back-office estate for an investment business in seven countries, ten applications deployed so every launch is the current version, plus the operational system for gambling floors in three of them.

WinForms .NET ASP.NET WCF SQL Server
2011–2014Still running

Trulok / Trio Manufacturing

Aerospace fastener measurement · Sole developer

The Windows software behind an aerospace fastener measurement system, in production at Alcoa and Allfast years after hand-over, with no further work from me needed.

WinForms C# .NET Framework 4 SQL Server Express Solartron Orbit USB probe
2008–2011Handed over

VectorUSA

Network and infrastructure contracting · Sole developer

Field labour capture for a network contractor: technicians, approvals and pay-period rules, replacing the slow Access front end accounting had been living with, and catching the duplicate dates and pay-period errors that were costing money.

Silverlight Microsoft Access .NET WPF ASP.NET web services SQL Server

Other platforms

Silverlight
Dead · support ended October 2021

Your Silverlight application has no browser left to run in, and the people who built it have gone.

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LightSwitch
Dead · retired with Visual Studio 2015

LightSwitch built your application. Nobody can change it now.

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Classic ASP
Dying · no new development since 2000

Classic ASP still runs. That is why it never gets fixed.

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Delphi
Orphaned · the developers are retiring

Delphi is alive. The one person who can read your Delphi 5 program is not on staff.

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Visual FoxPro
Dead · support ended January 2015

FoxPro. Yes, still. And the business still depends on it.

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Lotus Notes / Domino
Orphaned · HCL owns it; nobody is hiring for it

Your records are in Notes databases. Getting them out without losing them is the job.

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