Visual Basic on the PC w/Windows 3.1

development Apple wasn't alone in creating a beloved visual programming environment only to yank it away at the height of its popularity. If I dig deep into my own heart, really self-reflect, I find I simply don't possess whatever people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk do. I think most of us are content to know we've touched a life or two, helped make someone's existence a bit more pleasant, and can feel gratitude toward the universe for those small miracles.Others seem to know no limit in their acquisition of influence, power, and wealth. For them, it isn't simply enough to guide an industry, they must be the industry. In this zero-sum game, there is no upper limit to their cravingsBefore Musk became the first (I'm choking on the word) trillionaire, Gates was the world's richest person for a couple of decades. Like Musk, he crossed a specific monetary milestone back in 1999 as the "first person with a net worth exceeding $100 billion," about $200B in 2026 money. How he earned it and what he did with it has been the subject of any number of documentaries, books, movies, interviews, depositions, and damning rumors. I think the media can agree on at least one point relevant to our discussion today: Bill Gates was hellbent on owning the entire personal computing landscape.He said as much, out loud, on stage, to industry professionals, in front of the press. Jacqui Morby recounted the story on The Computer Chronicles. "Gary (Kildall) got up (at the Rosen Forum panel discussion) and talked about what his plans were for CP/M and where the company was going, and then made a comment, 'Well, this is a very large market, and there's room for lots of companies.' Bill Gates interrupted and said, 'No, there'll only be one company.'"Let's muse upon the body language of Gates vs. Kildall for a moment. Real shark vs. chum vibes, no?He didn't seem particularly interested in creating innovative things, so much as he wanted to make sure that the innovations of others had a Microsoft response. While working with Apple to develop software for the original Macintosh, Andy Hertzfeld recalled a story of Gates digging in for system details that didn't really have anything to do with the business applications being built by Microsoft.

Shortly thereafter, Windows 1.0 released, much to Steve Jobs's frustration. Jobs wouldn't be the last to feel screwed over by Microsoft "taking" ideas.Macintosh System 1.0 on the left; Windows 1.0 could only "tile" windows. Windows 2 would gain the overlapping, resizable windows of the Mac, leading Apple CEO John Sculley to file a lawsuit against Microsoft, despite having granted them the right to use the Macintosh's "visual displays" (under threat of Microsoft pulling all Macintosh support)Another tactic employed by Gates was absorption, the tried and true fast-track to acquiring toys one lacks. Consider the story of Alan Cooper. Coincidentally the idea for a visual application builder "popped into his head" just as HyperCard debuted, in 1987, triggered by Microsoft's announced adoption of DLLs, dynamic link libraries, which provided easy access to core operating system functions to whomever wanted to tap into them. Cooper saw this as a unique foundation upon which to build a kind of "construction set" for the DOS visual shell of your corporate dreams. Don't like the default Windows shell? Build your own!Microsoft engineer Gabe Newell was super impressed with Cooper's demo of the construction set, then called Tripod, and arranged for a demonstration for Gates. From the excellent article, "Something Pretty Right" by Ryan Lucas.“It blew his mind, he had never seen anything like it,” Cooper remembers of Gates's reaction, “at one point he turned to his retinue and asked ‘Why can't we do stuff like this?'”"Why can't we do stuff like this?" is very revealing phrasing, IMHO as an armchair psychologist. Give that line to 1,000 actors and you'll get 1,000 unique performances balancing the tension between frustration and longing. As a Very Rich Guy™, there was nothing Gates wanted that he couldn't have. Like someone who pays others to level up their RPG character, US$1M and a contract later, Tripod (renamed Ruby) was his.While Cooper insists that HyperCard had no influence on the creation of Tripod, Gates most certainly was thinking about it.

In his article "The 25th Birthday of BASIC" for BYTE Magazine, October 1989 (Visual Basic would debut in 1991).HyperCard provides an interesting example of this combination of visual and more standard procedural programming. (HyperTalk) lets you create procedures that relate to the card and the information that the card links with. . . it forms an understandable intermediate step between procedural and object-level programming.- Bill Gates, for BYTE MagazineRuby was reformulated into something with but a passing resemblance to Tripod. Its bespoke scripting language was replaced with a variant of BASIC, and the goal of the program was no longer to build shells on top of the Microsoft DLLs, but to build applications for Microsoft's own shell, Windows 3.0. Visual Basic was born, arguably a more profound product than Cooper's original vision. Credit where it's due, Gates saw potential that Cooper himself couldn't see.Looking back, though, Cooper is most impressed by Gates's strategic vision. "I thought I had written some pretty cool software," Cooper said, "But that it would become the programming control panel that is at the heart of Microsoft's success today, I could never have imagined. . . That's why Bill Gates is what he is." - GO TO, by Steve LohrA while back, I dug into Apple's HyperCard. Visual Basic gives us an interesting opportunity to look at a similar first-party, visual programming solution from Microsoft's perspective. Like HyperCard, Visual Basic had its own dedicated magazine, and inspired legions of developers long after Microsoft ceased support in 2008. As recently as 2023, Microsoft has had to issue official statements on their support plans for "classic" Visual Basic, which keeps a huge number of bespoke, legacy applications alive, something HyperCard cannot claim.The Microsoft vs. Apple wars of the day almost necessitated taking sides, but in truth each has something it could learn from the other.Historical ContextA lot of the pricing was sourced from this excellent writeup on the Visual Basic family.My SetupDOSBox-X 2026.01.02, Windows x64 build.

CPU set to PentiumDOS reports as v6.22Host system folder mounted as drive C:\ holds Windows1x scalingWindows 3.1, basic installation1024 x 768, 32K colorsmem under DOS reports 262,144K total RAM, but Free only reports 1,609K. Good enough for today, but 16-bit Windows should be able to register 4MB, not just 2MB.A few extra applications for comparative/convenience reasons: Toolbook, Actor, ObjectVision, Acrobat DistillerVisual Basic 3.0Reports 386 Enhanced Mode enabledReports 60320 KB free RAMVisual Basic 3.0 was the last pure 16-bit application in the line, and was the first version to include robust database capabilities. The true potential of the product was unlocked. This particular OS/application combination is much more in keeping with the spirit of this blog, I feel.Let's Get to WorkThere's a lot to learn. When I studied HyperCard, I noted the 1,000 page book that awaited me. Visual Basic ships with 3,000 pages, to say nothing of the wealth of 3rd party publications; an industry unto itself.As a man who recently took another annual step toward that great Blue Screen in the sky, every tick of the second hand gently rattles my bones. For large projects like this I have to consider how quickly I can get up to speed. Well, given the temperament of training books of the day, I suppose the proper first consideration is, "How dumb am I?"I refer to myself as a "big dummy" in blog posts, and I stand by that assertation, but I don't like it when others call me dumb. I can handle more complex material, but like I said, I don't have a lot of time. How quickly can I learn Visual Basic?That seems unabsorbably fast.Maybe if I didn't sleep?I think I'd forget everything by Monday.Also by Tuesday."Proglaming" sounds like fun, but a week is still too fast for my pace.Getting closer.Perfect. Slow enough for an old man to follow; fast enough to finish with time to spare before involuntary admission into a retirement home.

If I weren't 40 years too late, I'd throw my own hat into the publishing ring and combine "I'm a big dummy" with "I want to learn this quickly."Royalties to Gary Larson would take 100% of any profits this series would produce.Day 1It's been a long time since I last touched Windows 3.1. It's funny, my memory of it doesn't match my hands-on experience today. I recall it being far uglier, though it still suffers from absurdly large title bars which don't provide much in the way of information or utility. I dig that (VGA mode) powder blue, though.It's handsome if perhaps uninspired, the result of a collaboration between Microsoft and IBM for OS/2's Presentation Manager (which predates Windows 2.0). Their "Joint Development Agreement" gave pretty broad latitude to both companies to use, without licensing fees, code shared between the two companies. I'm not even tangentially familiar with law, but it does read, in part:This Agreement shall in no way preclude either party from independently developing or acquiring materials and programs which are competitive, irrespective of their similarities, with the Code and Documentation or from making similar arrangements with others.That gave Windows 2 and 3 a nice glow-up after the flop of Windows 1.0. Initially, even Microsoft had trouble getting their own developers to build Windows applications. I imagine it must have been a huge relief for Gates to have a tool that not only made it easy to build Windows applications, but that could even be an enjoyable experience.Jumping into Visual Basic, the first impression is, "I can do this."The dots form the snap-to grid.It looks approachable. I can't explain what every button in the toolbar does, but some of the basic stuff is as easy to identify as in HyperCard. Adding a control, like a text field, is a double-click away. The "Properties" panel makes intuitive sense, for tweaking the characteristics of a selected control, something HyperCard lacks. Appending code to a control is as simple as double-clicking its instance in the window."Properties" is context aware, only showing what can be tweaked on the selected object. For the large part, the industry abandoned this contextual approach.