Hello,

I would like to ask you this question. I am experienced in programming
in VBA and I want to upgrade my knowledge to Visual Studio 2005 now. I
hesitate whether to aim to VB or C#. Since I am familiar with VBA I
would like to choose VB but I heart from my colleagues that VB is a
"dead" language and it will probably not be included in the next
versions of Visual Studio anymore. Their other objection against VB is
that VB is not object-oriented language in fact and that it does not
offer such possibilities in OOP as C# does. On the other hand they
appreciate an ease of VB syntax.

I have to add that I would like to use VB or C# as front-ends to large
DBs placed on SQL server.

Thank you for your opinions!

Milan

Totally false! VB.NET is as alive as C# and a first class priority for MS.

You could say that of "classic" VB, but certainly not of VB.NET. VB.NET is a
full-fledged OOP language and offers all the possibilities C# offers in that
respect.

Familiarity with VB syntax is usually a reason for selecting VB.NET over C#.

Regards - Octavio

Hi Milan

Who are your friends?

It is difficult to tell you what to do but actually go on and say that
sounds very unreasonable

Shmuel Shulman

Show quoteHide quote

Hi Milan,

Here's my opinion,

Well, VB.NET is very different from VB 6.0 and even more so from VBA.
But if you compare C# to VBA, I guess you would realize that VB.NET is your
best bet.

I suggest you check out a few beginner tutorials for VB.NET on the web, and
then make your decision.

And, VB.NET *is* an Object-Oriented language, my friend.
As someone once compared them for me, C# is a sportscar and VB.NET is a SUV
(Sports Utility Vehicle, for the uninitiated.)
Don't go by what your colleagues say, and don't believe that VB.NET is a
dead language.
If it were "dead", then we're all beating a dead horse here ! :-)

Regards,

Cerebrus.

Show quoteHide quote

As others have already said, there is no reason to use a C-style language
today any more to get things done.  If you have a VB background, I suggest
to turn to VB.NET and learn to read C#, which is often useful when dealing
with code using .NET classes.  VB.NET is at least as alive as C#.

Hi,

I would suggest the opposite, start with C# , it will be a slower start but
you will not "inherit" the bad habits you adquire using VBA , you start
freshly with a complete new set of concepts and way to write code.

I have seen a good amount of VERY BAD VB.NET code that scream it was
written by somebody who changed from VB6 to VB.NET in a similar way that
when they changed from VB5 to VB6

I have seen a lot of VERY BAD C# code, but that's no reflection on the C#
language. It is a reflection on the developer. If the developer is a good
one, he/she will write good code in any language. If the developer is a bad
one, he/she will write bad code in any language.

Now, admittedly, I have seen *more* bad VB.Net code than C# code, but again,
this is not a reflection on the language. It might be a reflection on the
users of the language in general, but not necessarily (one would have to
compile some verifiable statistics), and again, certainly not upon any
individual user of the language, nor on the language itself.

I've met a lot of people that speak English poorly as well, for example, but
that doesn't make English a bad language.

me talk much gooder english tho!

Show quoteHide quote

H,


The only thing I do not understand why is still in place is that VB.net
demand than the entire sentence be written in one line, if you want to split
it in more than one you have to use the pesky _ at the end, I can't
understand why that has been dragged all along.

Also IMO they made weird selection for the new reserved words ( overridable,
mustinherit , etc ) instead of the set of them used in most other languages
( abstract , virtual, etc ) almost like if they wanted to looks diferent
from the rest of the languages.

In any other case it';s as valid as C# to code in.

I agree, the line endings are a pain. I did read somewhere that there is an
issue around interfaces on vb.net that does not exist on C# but I cant for
the life of me remember what it was.

Show quoteHide quote

I agree about the underscore used in the line endings.  That's always been a
pest.  However, as far as the other comment of the reserved words, you must
remember that since the beginning, basic and visual basic has always strived
to be the "readable" language.  MustInherit and Overrides is more
understandable when reading code than Abstract and Virtual (not to mention
Static, Void, and others...)

Show quoteHide quote

OpticTygre <opticty***@adelphia.net> wrote:
It's more understandable unless you're used to the "standard"
terminology of the rest of computer science, at which point using the
standard terminology is more understandable, IMO.

Personally I find "MustInherit" less easy to read than "abstract"
because the latter is a natural adjective whereas the former isn't.
Most of the modifiers in C# are adjectives, which makes sense to me -
they're adding information about the "noun" involved (the method,
class, whatever). The exception is "override" of course...

I agree regading some of the keywords, they are themselves to some degree
'Abstract'.

Show quoteHide quote

Jon,

I have a complete different opinion as you (you are not surprised I assume).
I have the idea that C# has inherited many program-words from the
intermediate machine-symbolic language as the first C was.

I prefer program languages which are not based on a kind of
technical/physical behaviour of the computer. Those programs do remind me
about the time when I was plugging cables in boards and I am glad that time
is gone.

To show what I mean with the most used example in these discussions Static
and Shared.

Static means for me something that it is always on the same place with a non
changeable content.
Shared means for me something that it is by more to use.

The first don't let me think on a program however on a hardware device where
that is stored, a not in a ROM fixed program is for me not direct static.

Shared means for me a memory area which is useable by more and describes it
very nice.

I have not any problem by the way with Static in C# because that is used
because of  legacy reasons. However I am glad they took (because they were
able to do that) another word meaningful word in VBNet for that.

Before you misunderstand me, I am not glad with all program words in VBNet,
however because of what I wrote before should that in my opinion surely not
be criticezed by persons biased on C#.

Just my two now worthless Dutch cents,

Cor.


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Cor Ligthert [MVP] <notmyfirstn***@planet.nl> wrote:
Show quoteHide quoteWell, Shared has a connotation (to me) of "for more than one thing" -
which goes along with the idea that a shared/static variable is shared
by all instances, whereas in fact it's independent of *any* instance,
and there don't need to be any instances at all to be used.

The ironic thing is that you say that "static" is a C legacy, but it
means something totally different in C, which indeed it would have to
as C doesn't even have the concept of an instance.

Your argument would have been more convincing if you'd said C++.

<snip>

Well, see the above.

Hang on a sec - you say that someone who likes C# shouldn't criticise
VB.NET, but you're quite happy (as someone who likes VB.NET) to
criticise the choice of keywords in C#? That doesn't seem entirely fair
to me.

I a criticism of the choice of VB.NET keywords is necessarily affected
by the person who is making the criticism. A well-considered criticism
is better than a hasty criticism regardless of the authors of those
criticisms.

Jon,

No I do not, you probably forgot the text I wrote (see below). By the way, I
don't find C# a bad program language, I don't know where you got that idea.
I find at least for UI type programs VBNet better, which text means direct
that there are in my opinion things that can better be done with C# or any
other C language.

For you is legacy maybe a bad word, for me it is affected with backward
compatibility. Maybe should I have used that. However I could not resist :-)

Cor

Cor Ligthert [MVP] <notmyfirstn***@planet.nl> wrote:
Which part are you arguing with? It seems fairly clear to me - you've
criticised C#'s choice of keywords, and said at the same time that no-
one with a preference for C# should criticise VB.NET's choice of
keywords.

I never claimed you did find C# a bad program language.

That's a logical fallacy. I could make up a language (call it BadJon,
for instance) which is terrible at *everything*. By your logic, saying
that VB.NET is better than BadJon for UI programs implies that BadJon
is better than VB.NET at other things. There's just no such
implication.

I have no problem with the word "legacy". What I *do* have an objection
to is the idea that the validity of a criticism of any language is
dependent on the person making that criticism. How can that possibly be
so? If we were to write exactly the same sentence about a particular
VB.NET keyword, why would it be any more true when you wrote it than
when I wrote it?

While we're talking about "static" however, consider this: VB.NET
itself uses the keyword "Static", and it neither means the same as C#'s
static, nor does it mean that it has "non-changeable content". It means
the same as static does in C *for a local variable*.

Cor Ligthert [MVP] <notmyfirstn***@planet.nl> wrote:

<snip>

In addition to the previous comments, another reason why VB.NET might
have been better off taking the more common keywords: the framework
uses them too:

MethodInfo.IsStatic
Type.IsAbstract

etc

In other words, a VB.NET programmer is going to have to understand the
more common keywords anyway, in order to use the framework to its best.
It would surely have been easier for a VB.NET programmer to find
IsStatic if the keyword had been Static rather than Shared.

The VB.NET designers seem to have decided to go against terms used in
many, many places pretty much just for the sake of it, IMO.

Hi,

I beg to differ , all the books about OOP use abstract and virtual  in fact
I think that VB.net is the only mainstream language that do not use that
words for the conpcets they represent.

FRankly I would love to hear somebody from the VB.net design team blog about
how they came to select those  words .

Does anybody knows about how lambda expressions and the others 3.0 addition
will looks like in VB ?

Well, take inheritance of another sample.  VB uses 'Inherits', Java and J#
use 'extends' and C# uses ' : '.  Which one is the best?  Did anybody count
the number of occurances of each of the terms in OOP books?  I think the
primary goal is consistency inside of each programming language's syntax
followed from choosing appropriate self-explaining terms instead of using
stupid and sub-optimal terms which have been carried forward for
compatibility reasons for decades.

Terry,

Probably a very interesting page for you.

http://www.levenez.com/lang/history.html#01

Interesting to see on this page is how more consistent the on English
language based program-languages are than the mathametical ones.

I personal find the one line in basic as well not nice, however to start
talking about that the underscore is bad to use, is for me a little bit
childness argument.

They are in my idea for sure on every Latin character keyboard in the world,
from which I am not so sure as that is with bracelets. And so we can go on
and on with trying to find for the result absolute not important arguments.

Cor

Cor Ligthert [MVP] <notmyfirstn***@planet.nl> wrote:

<snip>

Where did anyone complain about the choice of character? As I read it,
the complaint was that it was necessary to use anything at all to
signify a continuation onto the next line, not the particular character
chosen to represent it.

Obsolutley correct.



Terry Burns
http://TrainingOn.net


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Jon and Terry,

Sorry, I have read this
*one you have to use the pesky _ at the end*

My English is of course not as good as you Brittains, however I think that I
understood very well what is written.

By the way, in this do you or to use a *contiunation* character or an *end*
character, which natural would be the hyphen and the dot. I think that it is
not needed to explain for you that both don't really fit.

Cor

Cor Ligthert [MVP] <notmyfirstn***@planet.nl> wrote:
Sorry, but I think you've misunderstood. If someone were to write
(about C#) "I can't stand all those pesky semi-colons at the end of
statements" I would understand them to mean that they would prefer to
not have to use any statement termination symbol at all, not that
they'd prefer a different character.

Now it's my turn to not understand. I've no idea whether you've just
asked me to do something or not, or what it is if you *are* asking me
to do something.

In C and C# you must use a semi-colon to indicate the end of a statement.
This allows statements to continue across multiple lines without a
continuation character.  In VB, statements are only one line long unless
they have a continuation character.  Both languages support multiple
statements on a single line - C# via adding a statement after the semi-colon
and VB by adding a colon between statements.  This is a syntax issue only,
but it plays directly into readability of the language.  Which one you like
depends on your preferences.

Mike Ober.

Show quoteHide quote

Michael D. Ober <ober***@.alum.mit.edu.nospam> wrote:
Absolutely. There are definitely swings and roundabouts. As an
anonymous poster wrote, there are far more lines *without*
continuations than ones *with* - but then again, not being quite as
white-space sensitive makes it easier to cut and paste code in C#, and
encourages lines to be wrapped more often. (i.e. in VB.NET there's more
of a temptation to try to get a statement onto one line so as to avoid
the continuation character. Not much more, but a little bit...)

In addition, although this is not something that should be done very often,
it allows one to put multiple statements on the same line, and thus compact
your code a bit. There are a few situations where this comes in handy, such
as in switch statements.

switch (foo)
{
    case (1): someFunction(); break;
    case (2): SomeOtherFunction(); break;
    //...
}

Show quoteHide quote

Kevin,

That's what VB.NET has the ':' for:

\\\
Bla() : Foo() : i = i + 12 : Goo(1, 2, 3)
///

Darn, Herfried, it's been so long I forgot! I must be getting rusty with my
VB.Net!

Show quoteHide quote

No problem.  Personally I do not like the ':' statement separator ;-).

I believe 'Overridable' is more meaningful than 'virtual' and 'MustInherit'
is more meaningful than 'abstract'.  'virtual' and 'abstract' are far too
generic and not self-explaining.

Just my two Euro cents...

Hi,

Just check the other posts here,  for a non english speaking person they are
not that meaningful in the first place. also virtual & abstract are
universaly used , all the books use them as well as all the mainstream
languages.

IMHO vb should take the chances of a new start and be more like the rest of
the languages when it transisionate to managed code. It's fairly common that
you need to modify or even program in either language, I do that all the
time lately :( and sometimes I just forget what the virtual's equivalent is
in vb.net

but again, nothing is worse than the _ at the end of the line to split an
instruction, does anybody has any info of why it was carried out to vb.net ?

I am a native German speaker and I find them more meaningful.
'Overridable'/'Overrides' is more consistent than 'virtual'/'override' as is
'MustInherit'/'Inherits' vs. 'abstract'/'<class name> : <...>'.

Well, but that's not a guarantee that those terms are a good choice.

Who knows...

Isgnacio,

You are consequently talking about other languages. What languages do you
mean. The set of languages you are in my opinion talking about is really
small and is hug only because it exist in so many different tastes.

See this schema where they for this languages had to stretch the schema.

http://www.levenez.com/lang/history.html#01

The languages you referring too can not tip to the consistent language as
Basic (and more). However have some legacy behaviour (needed for backward
compatibility in what is written about it). What should not mean in my
opinion that a new language should inherit that legacy in the same way as a
new root in that family should not avoid to keep using that legacy/backward
cmpatibility..

If it was as you write, than English speaking people would still eat *flesh*
instead of *meat*.

Cor

I look at it this way. I rarely need to wrap code across multiple lines -
most of the code I write is single line statements or block statements. In
VB, I don't have to concern myself with making sure to mark the end of every
line of code when I'm finished with it as I do in C#. I simply press the
enter key (which I am also obligated to do in C# as well anyway) and move to
the next line. I find the constant need for the trailing ';' characters in
C# to be a far more pesky than the occasional '_' character in VB. Besides,
if VB were to do away with the new-line character as the terminator, then
they'd have to replace it with a variation of the C ";" approach. What would
be the point of that?


Of course, when I actually do get into a C# or Java project, I stop noticing
the fact that I'm constantly pressing the ";" key and just do it. It becomes
second nature almost immediately. So too in VB - about the only time I
routinely wrap lines is in multi-parameter function statements and the
occasional string concatenation. As with the ";" character in C#, I really
don't notice the "_" character after the first pass or so. As with most
things regarding VB vs. C#, this is simply a matter of style and has nothing
to do with the languages themselves.


It seems to me that VB (and basic before it) has always been written in such
a way that it is largely self documenting. The keywords of VB.net strike me
as keeping with that trend. In VB, if you must inherit a class, it is marked
as "MustInherit". That strikes me as being much more self-evident statement
than the keyword "abstract" used in elsewhere. In this same vein, I think
declaring functions or members of a class as "Shared" is much clearer than
flagging them as "static" (implying they never change which of course they
can). The reserved keywords of VB are only weird when you are first
introduced to them.


That said, I am English speaking and so I find the language construction of
VB very natural and obvious. I recognize that someone who does not speak
English may not share in that assessment. Even so, C#, like C/C++ and Java
before it, are also based on English terminology (switch, case, for, if,
break, continue, abstract, event, private, protected, class, structure,
object, etc., etc.). Therefore, I don't think that learning VB for the non
English speaking programmer is significantly harder than learning C# on that
particular basis.


Ralf

The bad habits are not attached to the language (at least most of them), but
to the programmer, and they will be carried to any new language. Even if
they are not bad habits but just ignorance, say, not using inheritance
because it did not exist in VBA/VB6, he will not be using it just because of
choosing C# and not VB.NET.

Hi Milan,
  VB.Net is definitely not a dead language.  There is a much greater VB
population out there than C# so it will not go away any time soon.

  When it comes to deciding between C# and VB.Net, really to make a jump
from classic VB to VB.Net is probably just as great as moving from classic VB
to C#, although VB and VB.Net share the same VB initials in order to program
well in VB.Net you will need a totally different mindset.

  I personally prefer C# because VB syntax seems too cluttered to me and
makes reading code difficult (obviously I am use to C# so that comment is a
little biased).  I also like C# because it is a lot less forgiving that
VB.Net meaning it does not try to assume anything for you, I prefer this as
you know what they say about assumptions.

Mark Dawson.
http://www.markdawson.org


Show quoteHide quote

Milan, learn both, they're pretty much of a muchness at the guts level, they
differ (in a huge way) at the syntax (surface level). Learn one first at
least, familiarise yourself with the .NET Framework in doing so, the other
one will cascade your learning curve. VB will not become a dead language,
well VB .NET anyway. VB 6.0 (also referred to VB .COM) is quickly becoming
(become) a sunset technology. VB .NET is a fully fledged OO language that
has the abilities of C# and visa versa.

Your colleagues may be referring to VB .COM, or are still talk the MS is
planning on phasing out VB rhetoric or, VB .NET has changed VB so much
everyone is going down the C# road or, MS wants to wipe Java out and is
pushing everyone to C#....etc. I can only say (personally) that this is
allot of murmur and noise that tends to come out from grapevines.

VBA may become obsolete in the next version of office??? I'm just saying
that I don't really know. Personally I hope so, we'll see next office
version. Keep your VBA skills for now as having the ability to develop in
Excel is a very handy skill to have.

As for DB front ends VB, C# there's allot of both out there, which ever one
is required of you to do so then, so be it. Keep in mind the VB .NET, C# has
unified programming.

- SpotNet

Show quoteHide quote

C# is more elegant as a language than vb.net in my opinion and I have
noticed in the UK at least, that demand for C# coders far exceeds the demand
for vb.net coders.

Show quoteHide quote

Absolutely correct, especially in the contract market. Simply put, although
I can program in VB.NET if I have to, I have not had any need to do so for
over two years now, and can't see that changing any time soon.

I have not written a single line of VB.NET 2 code, nor do I have any
intension of doing so.

Show quote Hide quote <sigh>


Your colleague is wrong. VB is hardly a "dead" language which the recent
enhancements MS made to the language in the 2.0 release of the framework
attest. Further, VB.net is as fully object oriented as C#. Can your
colleague give you any real world examples in C# that cannot be replicated
in VB (apart from being able to use "unsafe" code blocks)? Virtually
anything that can be coded in C# can be coded just as well in VB. Yes, there
are situations where C# brings some thing to the table that VB doesn't, but
the same can be said of VB with regards to C#.


At the end of the day, the choice between the languages largely comes down
to personal preference and background. I'm a VB6 programmer for example, so
it naturally I find VB.net preferable to C#. A Java and C/C++ programmer by
contrast would naturally prefer the C# way of doing things. Neither language
is necessarily better than that other, however. The real thing you'll need
to learn if you choose to use VB or C# is the framework. Both languages use
that framework and are fully interchangeable as long as you adhere to the
CLS (common language specification). Once you get a handle on that, the
language you use is for the most part irrelevant. Since you have a VBA
background and are therefore already familiar with the VB syntax, you'd
likely be more comfortable with VB. (That said, you wouldn't go wrong to be
at least familiar, if not competent, with both VB and C#.)


Now, from a career perspective, there does seem to be a bias towards C#
programmers over VB.net - if that is indeed so (and I believe it is), that
reflects nothing more than a market bias. VB programmers have long been
viewed as unprofessional and/or amateur programmers when compared to C/C++
(and more recently Java) programmers. Such an attitude is unfounded and ill
informed, but that does nothing to mitigate the fact that the attitude
persists. That, in my opinion, reinforces my earlier suggestion that at the
very least you become familiar with both languages.


Go with the language you prefer and don't worry about what your colleague is
telling you.


Ralf

Milan,

You're obviously dealing with some code bigots -- and ignorant ones,
too.  But language Nazis are one pragmatic reason to consider C#,
especially since the .NET platform is language-agnostic, anyway.  No one
ever kicks sand in your face over C# (or any other C-family lanaguage,
really).  But you will often be fighting an uphill battle about the
imagined inferiority or "toy status" of VB.NET (or any other Basic
dialect, really).

Surveys generally show a little better rates of pay for C# work, too.
Far too many companies don't realise that it's not "C# work" or "VB
work" -- it's CLR work -- .NET platform work.  But you can use their
ignorance in your own favor by being familiar with the tools, languages,
buzzwords and processes they are fond of.  You mustn't deprive your
direct reports of the talismans they surround themselves with.

Remember that the key thing is your skills as a developer, regardless of
the language -- particularly your skill at defining and solving
problems; and secondly, mastery of the platform(s) and API(s) you are
working with, regardless of language.  Language comes in kind of a
distant third (at best) in true importance.  Just because most companies
hire and recruit based on a simplistic "sack o'skills" model doesn't
mean it really matters in the real world.

My bottom-line advice -- learn both C# and VB.NET, and you'll be
comfortable with the languages used on 98% of all .NET projects.
Knowing one language influences your use of the other and improves your
understanding of the underlying CLR and .NET framework.  And if you can
find the time, just for fun, learn Eiffel.NET or some other .NET-hosted
language.  Learning new languages is one of the easier things you can do
to broaden your thinking and improve your marketability.

Best,

--Bob

Milan wrote:
Show quoteHide quote

If you want to read a *thorough* and relatively objective answer to your
question, I highly recommend the eBook at this link:
http://www.desaware.com/products/books/net/vborc/index.aspx

There is a small charge, but given the amount of time you might spend
pursuing a new language, it is worth it (IMO).

-HTH



Show quoteHide quote

Milan,

I think that the comments of your friends show why C# is in some places more
wanted.

Cor

I write often that this sounds the same as that is told that kids are coming
from cabbage.

This talking from your colleagues sounds for me the same.

Most VBNet people examine things first.

They know better and have therefore much more pleasure with their product.

Cor

Cor Ligthert [MVP] wrote:
I think that's just as biased an opinion as the pro-C# ones coming from
Milan's friends, to be honest. I don't think it's reasonable to make
that kind of generalisation without pretty detailed research which I
very much doubt you've done. (And as far as I know, no-one else has
done either.)

Jon

Jon,

Show quoteHide quoteI can assure you that I have pretty well reseached that kids don't come from
cabbage and I am absolute sure that I am not the only one.

Cor

Cor Ligthert [MVP] wrote:
Yes, I'm quite happy to agree with you on that.

Now, do you have anything to back up your assertion that VB.NET
programmers "know better" (presumably meaning "do more research before
using something"?) and that they have a better time with VB.NET than C#
programmers have with C#?

Jon

Jon,

You can think that I wrote as you tell. However, it is not written and not
intended in that way. I never write that VB.Net developpers have a better
time with VB.Net than C# programmers have with C#. I think that it is (can
be) in my opinion completely egal. You should known that I will never write
things like that.

However, in my idea I have seen more really crazy sentences which are based
on bias from people using C# than from the VBNet users. Maybe are those not
so sure when their is bloated about OOP, however even that is the start of
research.

Cor

Cor Ligthert [MVP] wrote:
I was surprised, but having read your post several times I couldn't see
any other way of understanding what you were saying. What *were* you
trying to say?

The sentence I'm really puzzled by is (speaking of VB.NET programmers):
"They know better and have therefore much more pleasure with their
product."

If you could spell that out in detail, it would be appreciated. I hope
that if you look back to your post you'll see how easy it was to
interpret it the way I did.

Yes, there are plenty of biased views around. However, adding another
biased view to the "other side" doesn't help, IMO. I understand you may
not have been trying to do so, but as I said before, I think if you
reread the post (trying to do so from the point of view of someone who
didn't know what you were trying to say beforehand) you'll see what I
mean.

Jon

"They know better and have therefore much more pleasure with their
product."

If (InvestigatedOwnProduct)  PleasureInOwnProduct = PleasureInOwnProduct  +
10;

Not

If (InvestigatedOwnProduct) PleasureInOwnProduct  = C#Product-10;

There is a better word than "product", however would be wrong in these
newsgroups according to the message.

Cor

God I've missed these arguments

Show quoteHide quoteShow quoteHide quote

Jon,

Show quoteHide quoteMhm...  I do not have concrete empirical data, but I read many VB.NET and C#
weblogs on a regular basis and I realize that VBers more often use both
VB.NET and C# while on the other hand C#ies only use C# and hate everything
which doesn't have curly braces.

Herfried K. Wagner [MVP] wrote:
Whereas there are plenty of C# newsgroups posts along the lines of "I
have to use both VB.NET and C# at work, but out of choice I'd always
use C#" :)

Jon

Jon,


However in the VBNet newsgroups are a lot who are about the oposite. Does
that say something about better or worse or whatever.

I think that most people in this message thread have given the right answer,
so why to start a kind of C# VBNet war or it should be because of fun, I can
only laugh about that.

Cor

Cor Ligthert [MVP] wrote:
Absolutely not. I was just countering Herfried's anecdotal evidence
with a similar but opposite piece, to show that neither of them are
particularly conclusive.

Sure. (And in case anyone should doubt it, I certainly disagree with
the advice given to the OP by his colleagues.)

Jon

Do you remember the "Anti-VB.COM-petition activism" which has been mainly
driven by C#-only programmers, which was mainly political than based on
rational argumentation?  I agree with you that it's hard to get conclusive
results by mentioning some examples only.

Herfried K. Wagner [MVP] wrote:
Not sure exactly what you mean. I certainly remember Karl's petition,
if that's what you're talking about. Otherwise I may have missed it...

(There are plenty of rational reasons why some people prefer C# and
plenty of other rational reasons why some people prefer VB.NET, of
course...)

Yup. My dad has a lovely quote about it: "The plural of 'anecdote' is
not 'evidence'" :)

Jon

My Uncle Chutney sez that the second cousin of 'anecdote' is 'antidote.'

But then sometimes he gets so deep that he sinks.

He invented a new word the other day: "Frubasticate." It means "To obfuscate
beyond all recognition."

Show quoteHide quote

Just to repeat a remark I read here previously about the transfer from
VB6 to either VB.Net or C#:

When you come from a VB6 background it's easy to think of VB.Net as
"just VB6 with some syntax changes". This could frustrate you ("why did
they change this") and cause you to miss out on the big changes in the
language (such as real O.O.).
If you switch to C#, it's a different syntax. This will "feel" as a
different language so it's easier to also take up the bigger changes as
"just part of the transition".


Hans Kesting

Hi Milan,

If you come from VBA, VB.NET is the natural choice. If you come from Java/C,
C# is the natural choice. Also, once you learn the .NET framework and
concepts, the IDE and VB.NET, you will notice that you can learn C# quite
easily and you can switch if you want to.

If they refer to VB.NET, the language is quite alive and will be in the
future.

So, they are really referring to VB.NET. Well, they are dead wrong about
this. VB.NET is fully OOP.

When you are ready to look at frameworks to aid in building database
applications, particularly of the Smart Client (WindowsForms) variety,
take a look at the DevForce framework (www.ideablade.com). There is a
free version for basic client-server with SQL Server. And the examples
come in VB and C#. (I am a DevForce user, not an employee.)

If it matters, I prefer C# as "cleaner." However, that is about as
helpful as saying that it is better to program wearing jeans instead of
dress pants. It is truly a matter of style and preference.

Sean

Supposedly C# programmers earn more $$$ than VB programmers.

Nope. Bill G still likes Basic. It is also much better at self documenting
than any other language.

Homer J Simpson <nob***@nowhere.com> wrote:
I've heard that said before, but never been given any evidence for it.
Of course, in VS.NET 2003, if you're using VB.NET you can't produce XML
documentation without extra plug-ins, so your code had *better* be
self-documenting... (I'm not sure why it was missed out of VB.NET to
start with - I'm very glad it's finally here in VS 2005.)

Is there a difference between passing "" and passing Nothing to a Windows API ?
Moving a project from 2003 to 2005
Time?
UI Design question
2003 0r 2005
Using GetOleDbSchemaTable and Visual Basic .NET for MS-Access and SQL Server Express
TCP/IP Socket communication from multiple clients
reading text files
Help to Italy
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