Any cheap or free IDE's out there for VB6 programming?

Question

Any cheap or free IDE's out there for VB6 programming? or is MS the only way to go?

Thanks.

Answer 1

VB6 is a Microsoft language and product, so they have the VB6 thing sewed up.

Answer 2

I don't know of a complete IDE, but MZ-Tools makes a great IDE addin for VBA/VB6 (and it's free).

Answer 3

Not for VB6 (another answer mentions a .NET solution).

There used to be a Visual Basic 5 Control Creation Edition (CCE) that was freely redistributable, but my feeble attempts at searching have failed to find it; a non-Microsoft site purporting to have it has removed it and replaced it with a text file complaining of link abuse, and Microsoft themselves don't distribute it anymore, sadly.

The CCE can't be used to make executables, as hinted at by its name.

Answer 4

Not that I know of for VB6.

VB .NET has Visual Basic Express Edition, though...

Answer 5

Have you tried ebay? You may be able to pick up a genuine copy of VB6 for not a lot of money.

Answer 6

If you need the VB6 compiler, there's no alternative to the real Microsoft product. You can run it in command-line mode so I guess you could use any IDE.

• If you have an MSDN subscription, you can download Visual Basic 6 free.
• Otherwise try somewhere like eBay, although it's often surprisingly expensive. Although Microsoft said in September 09 there were still several million people using VB6, so maybe it's not that surprising.