Bruce Gilham Jr.
Dying · VB6 IDE unsupported since 2008

The VB6 runtime still ships with Windows. The IDE and the developers are gone.

Where you are

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 you need the application on the web, on a phone, or in the cloud.

How the move goes

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. The database and the business rules are what you keep; the desktop client is what gets replaced, and it can go one form at a time rather than all at once.

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

Forty hand-edited flat files replaced with direct Bloomberg BLPAPI calls, futures screens with automatic rollover, and a years-old 'mouse flicker' bug traced to unreleased pointers in the vendor's .NET wrapper.

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

We Buy Cars / Used Car Club

Used-vehicle wholesale · Sole developer and database rescuer

SQL Server replication repaired, a row-losing data warehouse fixed, and an Access front end replaced with a LightSwitch client over a web-service layer, with Twilio SMS and record locking.

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

ACD LLC

Cryogenic pumps and turboexpanders · Lead developer

A Silverlight front end over WCF brokering requests to a pool of VMs each running a headless copy of the WPF sizing program, with a watchdog, an admin router, and generic external logins mapped to companies only on the inside.

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

Nissin Foods

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

Moxa serial-to-IP converters on every checkweigher, virtual COM ports into a logger, every reading into SQL Server, a live control chart for the line, and a counting function inside the Siemens WinCC program.

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

Deluxe Digital Studios

Film localisation and post-production · Senior developer

Silverlight and XAML subtitle authoring with waveform sync and safe-area overlays, plus a command-line encoder over the Expression Encoder SDK and a job manager for the GPU farm, with error trapping the original never had.

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

Momentum Investment Services

Investment operations and casino floors · Lead developer

Around ten WinForms apps on click-once over WCF services and SQL Server, a logged chat system, ASP.NET reporting for a poker site, and a gambling-floor system converting every figure at the day's exchange rate.

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

Trulok / Trio Manufacturing

Aerospace fastener measurement · Sole developer

C# WinForms reading a Solartron Orbit probe over USB, a gauge-block lookup in SQL Server Express, iButton operator identification, and a fixture drawn to true proportions from the client's engineering drawings as the operator types.

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

VectorUSA

Network and infrastructure contracting · Sole developer

WPF field capture with a signature step, a Silverlight approval module, a self-mailing five-day report, duplicate-date and pay-period rules in T-SQL, and a web-service layer ripped out when it would not hold up over the VPN.

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

Other platforms

Silverlight
Dead · support ended October 2021

Your Silverlight app has no browser to run in. The code still says what it does.

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LightSwitch
Dead · retired with Visual Studio 2015

LightSwitch generated your app. You cannot regenerate it, but you can read it.

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Classic ASP
Dying · no new development since 2000

Classic ASP still runs. No debugger, no tests, and it is your problem now.

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Delphi
Orphaned · the developers are retiring

Delphi is alive. Your Delphi 5 codebase, on components that no longer compile, is not.

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Visual FoxPro
Dead · support ended January 2015

FoxPro. Yes, still. Someone has to open it.

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

Your records are in Notes databases. Someone has to read the Notes data model to get them out.

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