Question:
How does Web development with Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual InterDev 6.0 differ? Which tool is better for Web development and why?
Answer:
Both products can help you arrive at a similar final destination (i.e., dynamically generated pages and DHTML), but I recommend Visual InterDev 6.0 over Visual Basic 6.0 for Web development. The story that I heard says that the Internet-related project types that are part of Visual Basic 6.0 were afterthoughts that were not originally intended to be part of the product. That alone shouldn’t be enough to deter a developer from using them, but perhaps this is: The VB Internet projects provide a way for experienced VB developers to jump into Web development while continuing to use the familiar environment of the VB6 development environment.
Although at first thought this seems like a great idea, it comes at a price. Those projects carry with them an additional overhead that could limit the performance and scalability of your site. The Visual Basic 6.0 Web projects work, but Visual InterDev 6.0 is a better choice because its projects do not carry with them that added overhead that the Visual Basic 6.0 Web projects do.
