Microsoft Compilers written in VB
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Sure, if you have really good people, you can have them navigate the traps while juggling flaming balls, but why would you? The two most common reasons for choosing a language are: It does something you need betther than others, or the developers/shop you have are most familiar with it. And you know what you think of developers that know mostly VB. Or maybe most of silverlight relies on optional parameters...
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
My first real C# project | Linkify!|FoldWithUs! | sighistI do a lot of work automating Excel and Word operations from VB. Until Microsoft replaces VBA with VC#A, I don't see any advantage in C#. I personally believe that Microsoft should consolidate the two languages. Take the best features of VB and VC# and create a single language from them. They could call it "VD".
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I do a lot of work automating Excel and Word operations from VB. Until Microsoft replaces VBA with VC#A, I don't see any advantage in C#. I personally believe that Microsoft should consolidate the two languages. Take the best features of VB and VC# and create a single language from them. They could call it "VD".
bholmes wrote:
They could call it "VD".
I have a feeling that people would be too scared to mention it on their resume... Just imagine the clueless HR person who reads through a young programmer's job experience (directly out of college). "-Tutored students in VD" :laugh:
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Lets do a survey. I am betting that if you have a college/university education in Comp Sci, VB is not your language of choice. Let the flame wars begin! My first language was algol (so that tells you how long I've been programming)
I guess that means I'm not eligible since I turned down the double or triple major that the Comp Sci dept head and EE dept head tried to talk me into after learning my prior experience. My first language was Trash-80 basic. Favorite language is Object Pascal (and also the pretty Delphi stuff). Most used language is Fortran... Just can't get the space industry out of the 60s.
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I do a lot of work automating Excel and Word operations from VB. Until Microsoft replaces VBA with VC#A, I don't see any advantage in C#. I personally believe that Microsoft should consolidate the two languages. Take the best features of VB and VC# and create a single language from them. They could call it "VD".
bholmes wrote:
I personally believe that Microsoft should consolidate the two languages. Take the best features of VB and VC# and create a single language from them. They could call it "VD".
ROFL
Jon Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be sixty-nine cents @ pound.
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Microsoft Compilers written in VB[^] :~ I'm two weeks out of the Internet, and this is the first thing that I read... I will unplug my ADSL cable now. :doh:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.(John 3:16) :badger:
Actually you shouldn't be too surprised. As someone who use to write compilers for a living I can tell you that next to an OS compilers are one of the toughest pieces of software to write (IMHO) simply because of the sheer # of permutations you have to go through to get it working correctly. Unlike most apps compilers must not only detect bad input but also report it and try to recover so the user can get as much information as possible. It is very common in the compiler world to write the compiler in the language being compiled. The compiler serves as its own test bed since the compiler will use most of the language features anyway. If you're not willing to write your language compiler in your own language why should others use the language anyway? Remember the days where MS was laughed at for saying they had a new OS called Windows 95 which (under the hood) still ran on DOS? Same concept here. Be aware though that Phoenix is suppose to be fully available soon and therefore the VB compiler (like the other compilers) will be nowhere near as big and complex as you would imagine. Most of the core compiler services will be provided by Phoenix (which is written in C#). Therefore saying VB (or any other compiler) is written in VB.NET doesn't mean it is all (or even most of it) is written in VB.NET.
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Microsoft Compilers written in VB[^] :~ I'm two weeks out of the Internet, and this is the first thing that I read... I will unplug my ADSL cable now. :doh:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.(John 3:16) :badger:
I'd spotted this a while back. I was considering posting it to CP myself but I knew someone would pick up on it sooner or later.:) No doubt it will infuriate the anti-VB zealots! (I've not looked at the rest of the thread yet.)
Kevin
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So what ? The things that suck about VB.NET are mostly traps for the inexperienced, anyone who knows how VB6 works ( or doesn't work, as the case may be ) can navigate the minefields, and produce code that's no better or worse than C# code. Heck, there are some thing VB does better ( it has optional parameters, I like how it assigns event handlers ). Sure, they are all syntactic sugar, but what else is VB *good* at ? My point is, so long as they are writing stuff in .NET, it makes no difference in the world, it's all ending up as MSIL, anyhow. And, for the purists, you can always remember that C++ or C will always be at the end of the chain, no matter what layers sit on top of it.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog "I am working on a project that will convert a FORTRAN code to corresponding C++ code.I am not aware of FORTRAN syntax" ( spotted in the C++/CLI forum )
Well said Christian. :) However, despite my being more relaxed about VB in general than you I disagree with the optional parameters and event handling. I used VB .NET for over a year recently and didn't care much for these at all.
Kevin
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
Adding racing stripes doesn't increase the horsepower, although it might help you get the girls.
The jury is still debating on that... :doh: Honestly its not the racing stripes but the fact you got a car in the first place. "Hello free ride, good bye transit!" :laugh:
Naw, you need big tail fins and a plastic flamingo hood ornament.
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C# is faster to write, because the required keywords are fewer and generally require fewer keystrokes. It's probably no slower to read, for much the same reason. VB gets more verbose and harder to read once you turn on Option Strict, which is required to get maintainable, understandable code without VB's disaster-area implicit casting. C# does have features to permit direct pointer manipulation, which can help when doing advanced interop code or in compute-heavy access to arrays (e.g. bitmap pixel manipulation). In 2.0, it has syntactic sugar to implement a delegate in-line, which I've never used because to my mind the syntax is rubbish - much clearer to simply implement another method. Haven't used
yieldyet either.Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
Mike Dimmick wrote:
C# is faster to write, because the required keywords are fewer and generally require fewer keystrokes.
Due to intellisense and code completion, C# is only faster to write if you're using, say Notepad. In fact, with VS 2003 I could write an "if" block in VB in about half the keystrokes as C#. VS 2005 has improved many of those gaps for C#.
Mike Dimmick wrote:
It's probably no slower to read, for much the same reason. VB gets more verbose and harder to read once you turn on Option Strict, which is required to get maintainable, understandable code without VB's disaster-area implicit casting.
While VB is certainly more verbose, "harder to read" is simply a matter of preference. When I was programming VB.NET, I couldn't stand curly-brace languages and found them very difficult to read. Now that I've been programming C# for a while, I find VB much more difficult to read and I'd never go back.