Thanks for all your input. After talking to my programmer...he can write in Visual Basic, VB.net and Real Basic. So we are going to explore all 3 before starting any code.
If you can find a bug in VB6, then yes, it will never be fixed. And you're right in that it won't support new features. However, I've seen the update cycles for Microsoft software and having a fully patched compiler is a huge benefit compared to the poor quality of development tools they cycle through on an annual basis. That's not to say that bugs can't be introduced, such as compiled code running under Win 7. If it's something reasonably simple that needs to be thrown together, VB6 isn't a bad choice at all, or if there's a feature that it has that other platforms don't support properly yet, then it's a good choice. If starting a complex project from scratch, though, then Java under a Linux flavor might be a good choice.
Have him do the trading system portion in something a bit more "mainstream" such as C++, C#, Java and let him code the GUI in whatever his little heart desires. In this case, if you get sick of your VB platform, you can always migrate over to another one since the strategy code is independent of the front end and it will be a matter of implementing some glue code rather than a complete rewrite.
Easy to see that you don't trust your programmer (even with the most basic decisions). In this case it will be unavoidable getting disappointed in the long run.
VB.net and C# compile to the same MSIL code. In fact, in VS 2010, the line separating VB.net and C# has become more blurred as they have taken on similar properties of each other's language. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/scottwil/archive/2010/03/09/vb-and-c-coevolution.aspx Your comment is ignorant, and that's being generous.
what aspect of vb will you use to execute your trading strategy? will you be creating a sql database or access and if so, will you generate new data on a daily basis and/or update this database i.e. once a week? i think if you are considering spending the bucks and resources, there are better languages to use to create your computerized strategy, i.e. c# and java to name a few.
@crm99 "Gawd, anyone using VB in 2010 sucks. I mean, do you want to trust your project to someone that doesn't have the brain power to use c# or java?" Yea Right! I have programmed in every major language, since the development of COBOL & Fortran (over a 2 million lines of debugged & deployed code) - I don't use Java however - not for me! Visual Basic is a good language, easy to learn and powerful - C' is better but far more cryptic. I currently use Visual Studio - it is an excellent development tool allowing you to mix and match different languages including Visual Basic, C++, C', J Script, Assembly (Assembly -> god forbid you should go this low - but when you got to go - you got to go!) Just completed my own trading application at about 150k lines - does everything the Ninja Trader and others do and its a lot faster - You guessed it - it was written in Visual Basic. Hope this helps.
If your using Visual Studio, then select Help, to Open there help tool. Search for threading and look at the various examples. Get the book Visual Basic .NET - Programmers Cookbook - excellent examples on threading. If your working with multiple forms and trying to display information from multiple threads - good luck! I had to use thread(s) to deposit the values in various datasets common to my main (from which the forms were generated) and then use a timer on the form to display the results from the dataset. In short, your threads need to be data-safe - writing their info to a common data set and other threads read the data set.