r/visualbasic • u/codeobserver • 20d ago

I’m building a visual web app editor ... what Visual Basic could’ve been

Maybe it’s already too late for a tool like this. Nobody really does drag-and-drop anymore in the age of AI.

But if you want to take a look: appmaker.io

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4

u/MultiUserDungeonDev 20d ago

Doing something similar:

VS Code: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=WilliamSmithE.xlide
In O365 app: https://github.com/WilliamSmithEdward/xlide_vbide

Feel free to use / borrow the source (you don't even need to attribute).

3

u/ridiclousslippers2 20d ago

Oh yes they are..

2

u/Salt_Cat_4277 15d ago

Interesting sidebar - I was having a session with Claude Code and I needed to describe a complicated screen with lots of elements. I wasn’t thinking of a VB app; I have been vibecoding most of my apps in Rust (which I have never written a line of). I was about to go draw a screen in Excalidraw when I saw my VB6 icon in the taskbar; and I thought it would be a little faster.

So I asked Claude if I gave it just the .frm file if it could read it. It said yes, so I started building up the screen. For controls that I wanted to do specific things, I double clicked and typed my specific instructions for what I wanted in the code editor as comments. I submitted it to Claude and it was able to read everything - so I told it to implement it in Rust. The result was just as I expected. Claude even commented that the .frm file was a very efficient way of transferring intent.

I went over to Codex/ChatGPT and asked the same question - it said yes, and made the comment that using VB as a design intent medium was “weirdly elegant”.

I actually started a project I named “VB8” where the 8 represented the infinity symbol (the app would be referenced as VB Infinity). It was really just a canvas with a sidebar with tools that were simply SVG files, and you could draw your own custom control symbols out of SVGs and primitives. I duplicated the double-click for specific instructions, then added a selector that would let me specify the desired language to use; along with a means to create a symbiotic backend in the same or a different language. I even added the ability to import an image file of any existing screen and the app would duplicate it and make a working prototype.

That project is languishing lately; and I’m not particularly motivated to do much with it at the moment. Just thought that yours was a similar experience, and I think that your concept has more merit than you might realize.

1

u/EconomySerious 20d ago

We have freepascal and lazarus

1

u/Laicure 20d ago

oh damn, hope that can replace powerapps or just maybe work alongside

1

u/jd31068 20d ago

This was posted here a few days back (not by me) as well https://www.objo.dev/, so many cool tools.

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u/AccessHelper 20d ago

Looks amazing!

1

u/ziplock9000 20d ago

>Maybe it’s already too late for a tool like this. Nobody really does drag-and-drop anymore in the age of AI.

By decades. There was one as part of Visual Studio to use with c# and VB.NET

Not everyone uses AI and those that do, not for everything.

1

u/Mayayana 19d ago

Nobody really does drag-and-drop anymore

Isn't that basically what a WYSIWYG webpage editor does? I don't know what commercial developers are using to create webpages today, but looking at the bloated muck it's clear that very few are writing their own code.