Bruce Gilham Jr.
Dying · VB6 IDE unsupported since 2008

The VB6 runtime survives on Windows. The developers do not.

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 I get you off 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. The database and the business rules are the asset; the desktop client is the layer that gets replaced, and the replacement can be staged rather than done all at once.

Tell me what it runs on All VB6 & WinForms migrations and builds

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 WinForms and WPF trading tools moved off forty hand-maintained flat files onto Bloomberg BLPAPI, and the 'mouse flicker' fault nobody could solve found inside the vendor's own .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

Broken SQL replication and a leaking data warehouse fixed first, then six years replacing the Access system the floor ran on with a desktop client over a web-service layer.

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

ACD LLC

Cryogenic pumps and turboexpanders · Lead developer

An internal WPF sizing program exposed to customers through a Silverlight front end brokering to a pool of VMs running headless copies, with the calculation code and customer identities never leaving the internal network.

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

Nissin Foods

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

Checkweigher readings a noodle plant was discarding captured off serial ports into SQL Server, with real-time control charts for operators and a counting function written inside the Siemens WinCC HMI.

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

Deluxe Digital Studios

Film localisation and post-production · Senior developer

A Silverlight subtitle authoring tool over WCF RIA Services, and a GPU encoding pipeline driving the vendor SDK rewritten so a crashed encode can no longer pass as a finished one.

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

Momentum Investment Services

Investment operations and casino floors · Lead developer

Ten click-once WinForms applications over WCF and SQL Server forming the back office for an investment business in seven countries, plus web reporting and a multi-currency operational system for gambling floors.

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

Trulok / Trio Manufacturing

Aerospace fastener measurement · Sole developer

WinForms software over a Solartron Orbit USB probe and a gauge-block catalogue in SQL Server Express, redrawing the client's own engineering drawings live 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

A WPF and Silverlight field labour capture system with an approval chain and pay-period rules, replacing an Access front end, and a web-service layer removed when it proved unreliable over the VPN.

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

Other platforms

Silverlight
Dead · support ended October 2021

Silverlight has no runtime left. The exit is screen by screen, not a rewrite.

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LightSwitch
Dead · retired with Visual Studio 2015

LightSwitch generated your app. The tooling to regenerate it is gone.

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Classic ASP
Dying · no new development since 2000

Classic ASP still runs. That is the problem.

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Delphi
Orphaned · the developers are retiring

Delphi is alive. Your Delphi 5 codebase is not.

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Visual FoxPro
Dead · support ended January 2015

FoxPro. Yes, still. The data comes out first.

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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 is the job.

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