Meanwhile, some developers — even some of those who signed the original petition — are now dealing with the VB language issue by adopting other programming languages instead. "I'm moving on to C#, ASP.NET, and C++. C++ is getting very, very good support from Microsoft," said Microsoft MVP Wood.

"If VB6 developers don't switch to VB.NET or another .NET language, they won't get to play with ASP.NET, Ajax, or any of the other new .NET toys," observed Directions on Microsoft's DeMichillie.

Throughout the controversy, however, Microsoft has made a big effort to be open with developers and to respond to their needs, according to Roxe.

Roxe said that, soon after the petition went out, he got in touch with all MVPs who signed the document in order to discuss their concerns. Microsoft has also produced Web blogs about VB6 support from both Roxe and S. "Soma" Somasegar.

The company operates a couple of Web sites expressly for VB developers: Visual Basic Developer Center and MSDN's VB Run.

Reactions to Microsoft's VB6 blog postings haven't always been positive. "MS seems to be trying very hard to focus on the word 'support,' defining it as narrowly as possible in order to turn the discussion from the key points made by the petitioners," one MVP wrote back to Somasegar. "The real issue of support isn't MS answering the phone — almost no one needs that after so many years and with such a 'passionate' developer community offering peer assistance, as you note."

But according to Roxe, the Web communications have also helped to clear up misconceptions some developers have held about Microsoft's stance on VB.

Contrary to what many developers thought, for instance, Microsoft has no plans for language changes in the VBA environment. "The changes are only for Visual Basic, not VBA," he said.

Some developers also erroneously believed that support for VB6 ended entirely last June, instead of merely slipping from mainstream to extended mode.

Instead, said Roxe, Microsoft has continued to deliver free hot security fixes for VB6, and the company intends to keep doing so. Other kinds of support have also been available for VB6 since June of last year, although only on a fee-paid basis. Moreover, developers who received VB6 through their MSDN subscriptions — getting certificates for two to four pre-paid support incidents as part of the deal — can still use those certificates.

"And now, with continuing mainstream support for the VB6 runtime in Vista, the runtime will be getting free support for another six or seven years," Roxe told DevSource.

For VB6 developers who decide to go ahead and migrate to VB.NET, Roxe cited several new tools in VS Studio 2005 that could help. These include the My name space, a set of classes providing shortcuts to commonly used functions in the .NET framework; and IntelliSense code snippets, for point-and-click insertion of prewritten code into a source file.

Due to popular demand, Microsoft has also revived edit-and-continue in VS 2005, a feature previously dropped in VS.NET 2002/3, he said.

In another capability new in VS 2005, RegFree COM, developers are able to "wrapper" COM objects for use within the .NET framework. Roxe told DevSource that, beyond promoting better interoperability between COM and .NET, RegFree COM can spare developers from the "DLL hell" of earlier editions of Visual Basic.