Visual Basic

Jeremy Falcon

Marketing tactic and ploy and to allow any type of dipshit to code for Windows, thus increasing the number of apps available for it. [edit] And there's the whole business solution thing. Which in some cases you could have a legit reason/excuse, but most of them are due to ignorance/stupidity of the "programmer" involved. [/edit] Jeremy Falcon Imputek "Oh no there was a knife in that kitchen drawer and I cut myself - please remove the kitchen." - David Wulff

Stan Shannon

Simple applications should be simple to write - hence VB. Why should someone need to know C++ just to throw up a dialog connected to some data? I'm not a real reverend, I just play one on CP.

Chris Hambleton

Of course!! ;P However, you can write concept code, mockups, and halfways decent working apps many times faster than C++... The company I work for initially wrote the main product in VC++, but is writing most of their COM objects, technical services projects, and such in Visual Basic (and soon to be .NET), simply b/c these can be developed much faster than in VC. The speed differences between VB/VC++ aren't as vast as they used to be, and to a company, they would rather have the project complete much faster using whatever tool gets the job done the fastest. Of course, VB has some quirks, but so does MFC! If I'm assigned a project with a deadline and given the freedom to use whatever tools at my disposal, I'll want to use the one that gets the job done the fastest, with the least amount of bugs, and something that can be debugged/fixed (if needbe) quickly. Also, companies would rather pay a VB programmer a bit less than a VC programmer, especially if the VB guy completes the same task in the same time (or faster) than the VC guy. As an engineer, it's very limiting (career-wise) to only know 1 or 2 programming languages -- the more you know, the more tools you have at your disposal, and the more valuable (and employable) you are. Tool "A" might not be right for a certain project, any more than using a sledgehammer to put up drywall, when a regular hammer would suffice. "If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it." -- Jeremiah 18:7-10 (God, commenting on the value of the United Nations)

Megan Forbes

Chris Hambleton wrote: If I'm assigned a project with a deadline and given the freedom to use whatever tools at my disposal, I'll want to use the one that gets the job done the fastest Too true Some of us know both languages (and a few others) but still choose VB for tight deadline stuff :cool:

Dave Goodman on funny error messages:
It is a definite no-no to run BITMAP as a user command. Your nose will grow, your lawn will die, your hair will fall out, and your first-born will marry an aardvark. Shame on you!

natalie morales

At my company, we quite often don't have a choice about using VB for our applications. We write software for sporting events and usually are given incredibly tight deadlines that can't be pushed back. Since we can't change the start date of the Olympics or the world cup soccer tournament, if VB can get the job done before the tournament/game/event or whatever starts, then that's what we use. About 2/3 of the programmers were I work are c++ programmers but quite often it's the VB people that come in and save the day.

Chris Hambleton

Yeah, but you could make the same argument with ASM vs C++ -- did AT&T create C++ just because some people were too dangerous to be let loose with Assembly? ;P How many people are writing assembly code vs C++ code now? "If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it." -- Jeremiah 18:7-10 (God, commenting on the value of the United Nations)

Daniel Turini

Black Cat wrote: If that is true, then Microsoft has failed. I have seen a lot of dum C++ developers, the only difference is they think they are better than the VB guys. LOL! My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool

Black Cat

Jon Hulatt wrote: did Microsoft create Visual Basic purely because some people (and I name no names) are simply too dangerous to be let loose with C++ ? If that is true, then Microsoft has failed. I have seen a lot of dum C++ developers, the only difference is they think they are better than the VB guys. ;P

Chris Hambleton

Ouch! ;P "If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it." -- Jeremiah 18:7-10 (God, commenting on the value of the United Nations)

George

Chris Hambleton wrote: However, you can write concept code, mockups, and halfways decent working apps many times faster than C++... That is not true.

/* I C++, therefore I am... */

Jeremy Falcon

Chris Hambleton wrote: How many people are writing assembly code vs C++ code now? Yeah but IMO to be a decent programmer you should know a little ASM. It's the only way to really learn about your computer. Jeremy Falcon Imputek "Oh no there was a knife in that kitchen drawer and I cut myself - please remove the kitchen." - David Wulff

Jeremy Falcon

Reverend Stan wrote: Why should someone need to know C++ just to throw up a dialog connected to some data? I agree, sorta. My main peeve for VB is that so many people (moronic script kiddies/programmer wannabies) mistake themselves for real programmers or call themselves 1337 because they've used VB for a year. VB is a tool meant to help, but so are batch files. Nobody calls themselves a programmer because they can type "@echo off". Jeremy Falcon Imputek "Oh no there was a knife in that kitchen drawer and I cut myself - please remove the kitchen." - David Wulff

George

Black Cat wrote: If that is true, then Microsoft has failed. I have seen a lot of dum C++ developers, the only difference is they think they are better than the VB guys. Not really. It's greatly thanks to Microsoft and tools like VB that people actually accept bad and buggy software and consider it "normal".

/* I C++, therefore I am... */

Kevin McFarlane

Sensible answer. BTW, in the UK at the moment average contractor rates for VB (and almost everything else) are higher than they are for C++! Kevin

Kevin McFarlane

Yep! Kevin

Megan Forbes

Yep, it's a pity that VB 5 etc was so crappy that people aren't prepared to give the later versions a chance and investigate them. I was lucky - I was forced into it kicking and screaming. What a fool I was... how happy I am now :-D Why do we keep coming back to this argument about our tools? Why can some people not accept that sometimes a chisel can do a better job than dynamite? :suss:

Dave Goodman on funny error messages:
It is a definite no-no to run BITMAP as a user command. Your nose will grow, your lawn will die, your hair will fall out, and your first-born will marry an aardvark. Shame on you!

Tom Welch

Actually, Microsoft didn't create the concept of Visual Basic... they bought it. Allan Cooper invented the thing. He is a big advocate nowadays for user-centric computer development. He gets bashed quite a bit, but I can see some of his argument. He wrote an article I read once about airline crashes that are blamed on human error when the computer programmers are at fault. Seems one time a plane landing in South America showed the approach path for a different airport (identified by a 3 letter abbreviation). Needless to say, the plane crashed into the Andes. The investigators blamed the pilot. This guy says the pilot was not in error, the computer was and programmers should have taken more steps to alert the pilot that the airport the plane thought it was landing at was really 10,000 miles away. Anyway, that is the mentality that spawned Visual Basic. If you have a copy of version 4.0 or earlier, you can find the Allan Cooper's name on the About box. -- If it starts to make sense, you're in a cult.

Todd Smith

Different tool for a different purpose. Hence the creation of HTML and Javascript. I'm a C++'r but I still use a lot of other easy languages because they do the job better. Todd Smith

Tomaz Stih 0

Because, from the engineering point of view, VB is superior tool to VC for some types of tasks. Examples: - business objects, - COM objects with database access, - simple XML parsers, - business app front ends, ... VB is not a bad tool in general. I've had people impressed over what can be done with it by serious programmer. The problem is that it is so simple that every fool can use it, and sometimes I think they really do. Tomaz

Christopher Duncan

Jeremy Falcon wrote: Nobody calls themselves a programmer because they can type "@echo off". Oh, please, somebody put this one in your sig! :-D Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)