Why VB.Net blah blah... [modified]

[Gary Wheeler]

That's true. I still dislike the notion that the compiler provides a feature that states: "Yeah, this is a dumb thing to do, but here's how I'll let you do it..." when there's a simpler method around it. The compiler has to provide this feature, which increases its complexity, testing time, and so on, for a limited audience. It's like Apple selling every iPod with 500MB of disco that you can't delete, just because some loading dock worker at Apple likes the stuff.

Software Zen: delete this;

[Slow Eddie]

Yes John BUT 1. It blows up your whole argument about the so called superiority of your language 2. You VB Haters make me sick. It's just syntax and what you know 3. It seems to me that you are as unreasonable and pig headed about it as your boss - more so if all other programs in the shop are in VB.net... 4. The golden Rule applies "the man with the gold makes the rule" 5. And Finally "Nyah, Nyah....Nyah,Nyah,Nyah!

[Michael Kingsford Gray]

"VB is a scourge on mankind" Irrational Bigot.

[jsc42]

I am going to advocate the opposite position. ;P Reserved words are the scourge of a programmer. There shouldn't be any at all. Languages like Algol 60 had no reserved words; language constructs were represented by symbols, e.g. the if symbol was not the word 'if' even if the compiler writer decided to use the letter 'i' and 'f' concatenated to represent the symbol because the hardware of the day did not have a native if symbol. Half a century later, that forward thinking philosophy has gone out of the window (no pun intended). Why should I be restricted in my choice of words - if there is a word that accurately and succintly describes what I want, what right has some anonymous progam language designer got to ban me from using it? For example, if I have a method to stop a task that is running, what could be more natural than calling the method Stop? It should not matter that the language designer has also realised that Stop is a good way of saying stop doing something. I never thought I'd say this but "Well done, VB designers". The language should free you to express your thoughts and ideas, not contain you to some restrictive speech patterns. This is not 1984. No Orwellian Newspeak here, please.

[djdanlib 0]

Typo or not, "foul swoop" is an excellent term. Ugh, I feel bad for everyone involved in this project. At one consulting job (when VS2005 was the bees knees), I had to update seriously nasty spaghetti code written in VB5 by manager-types who thought they knew programming because they could barely handle some rudimentary VB3. It was approximately on the level of someone learning to code for the first time and I could see the bad habits as they developed by reading code from older to newer files. Physics-related things were simulated because nobody could figure out how to do basic calculus for the physics, and the results varied widely depending on what fraction of a second you simulated per iteration. They had global variables everywhere and everything used a horrible mix of the globals and similarly named variables inside loops. Yeah, there were GOTOs all over the place, including one label - seriously - called "wtfamidoing" inside an approximately 6-levels-deep nested FOR-NEXT birds' nest (which was an extremely buggy physics simulation), with comments like "I don't know why this works", "good enough for now" and "arggh, figure this out later" by the GOTOs that took you there. Months later, everyone was still giving me out-of-scope stuff to add/fix/alter "as long as you're in there"... and the product still wasn't shipping... and management was okay as long as they were getting paid! So I share in your pain, guys. I got to share plenty of jokes about the fictional COME FROM statement with my coworkers, though. Comedy gold.

[djdanlib 0]

Seconded! If I wanted my code to look like perl, I'd use perl!

[tobywf]

Hmm, that sounds great - until you have to work in a team, where other people have to read your code, then it's just egoistical. That's why we prefere C# over VB. Much more consistent to read (think stylecop, fxcop), among other reasons.

[G Tek]

VB is easier to type - the letters V and B are right beside each other on the keyboard. To type C# you have to go all the way up 3 rows AND hit shift!

[PSU Steve]

Actually this "feature" helps me tremendously. My application deals with PLATFORMS that are grouped into TYPES that are grouped into CLASSES. The ability for me to define my own classes for "TYPE" and "CLASS" prevents me from having to name them something that doesn't match up directly with the requirements. Sweet.

[Gary Huck]

Govt - that explains it. Federal?

[G Tek]

While I have to agree that VB haters tend to flourish as much as Microsoft haters (sometimes blind to the issues with whatever language or company they bow to) there are two important points here: 1. Why does ANY language (VB or C#) allow such bad practice? 2. Regardless of whatever language may allow this type of behaviour, John is right - it's HORRIBLE practice to actually do it and anyone that does should be drawn and quartered... just because you "can" doesn't mean you "should" so why the hell would anyone EVER want to use a reserved word other than for its reserved purpose?

[Jason Christian]

Lovely - "cost isn't really an issue" - because there are no taxpayer dollars going to waste on this. The real problem is that is how government IT views the costs - as not an issue, so they waste money. It's crap!

[Steve Naidamast]

Whoa! Hold on their pard'ner... 1) VB.NET is as good as C# and I program in both fluently... However, given your circumstances Iw ould still discharge all my laser blasters in the general direction of your supervisor. Anyone who ok's development in one language and then changes his mind without a second thought to redo it in another language has got a few screws missing in the gray matter. But if this is government work... it figures.... 2) You can do the same thing in SQL Server where you can use system variable names as field names to a table...

Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com

[Earl Truss]

Show him the project plan that he approved that says the team should use C#. Make sure he takes responsibility for the delay in the schedule. "I can do this stuff 'cause I don't care if I get fired. I'll just collect unemployment until I retire."

[Euhemerus]

G-Tek wrote:

so why the hell would anyone EVER want to use a reserved word other than for its reserved purpose?

Because, and I realise I'm opening myself to be shot down in flames here, it sometimes serves a purpose when you can't think of a more apt name for a variable. I must admit i've done it myself as the following short sub will testify. The ONLY reason I used [string] as a variable name was because I just couldn't think of anything better :-O But then again, I only code as a hobby, not as a career.

Private Shared Sub AddListViewGroupStringArray(ByVal groupName As String, ByVal value As Object, ByVal listViewCtrl As ListView)

        Dim lvGroup As ListViewGroup = CType(listViewCtrl.Invoke(New AddItemGroup(AddressOf AddListViewItemGroup), New Object() \_
                                            {listViewCtrl, groupName, groupName}), ListViewGroup)

        Dim stringArray As String() = CType(value, String())

        For Each \[string\] As String In stringArray
            Dim lvGroupItem As New ListViewItem(lvGroup)

            lvGroupItem.SubItems.Add(\[string\])
            listViewCtrl.Invoke(New AddItem(AddressOf AddListViewItem), New Object() {listViewCtrl, lvGroupItem})
        Next

    End Sub

Nobody can get the truth out of me because even I don't know what it is. I keep myself in a constant state of utter confusion. - Col. Flagg

[Lost User]

Reads well to me - the brackets around [string] make it pretty easy to identify that it's not the keyword being used in the normal sense. Without the brackets I would start to dislike it. As a man, I could spend time and energy explaining how flawed evolution is for giving me useless nipples or I could go and write some useful code.

[KP Lee]

You do know you have an infinite amount of time to not produce the product in an undeclared time frame? Instead of allowing code that appalls you to stand, fix it. You'll only produce one or two more bugs in random areas of code.

[KP Lee]

Actually, this doesn't prevent you from doing anything. It does allow you to name objects something that does match up directly with your requirements. I personally tend to agree with John's assessment that this is a bad practice. How does naming a class "ClassObject" NOT directly match up with your requirements?

[Lost User]

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

I'm a government contractor - the contract doesn't end until net October, and there's no real schedule to speak of. Cost isn't an issue.

Yeah, government. Figures. Since the money belongs to someone else the cost isn't an issue. THAT pisses ME off. -Max

[Lost User]

Converting a large project from one language to another just because the "boss" thinks it's cool (regardless of what direction you're going) is absolutely nuts. I don't blame you for polishing up your resume. I would do exactly the same thing. This reminds me of one time when I went away on sabbatical for a month back in '06. We had this "director of technology" that felt that my subsystem needed to be rewritten in C#. (It's about 100,000 lines of code that has been gradually migrated over a period of 10 years from C to VB6 to VB.Net. No particular reason - he just thought that it needed to be in C# because all of our new development was being done with C#. So, this turkey waits for me to be away for a month to try and "take it away" from me. (I'm the only developer that understands the business logic in the product). Anyway ... when I got back everything was pretty much as it was when I left - I didn't learn about the behind-my-back attempt until a year later. When the developer assigned to the "conversion" was leaving to go to another job he told me about it. The conversion failed because these guys could not make heads or tails out of the logic - just a straight language conversion wouldn't work. There's too much different between VB.Net and C# particularly since a lot of old legacy VB6 techniques are still in use in that code. The "conversion" attempt was nothing more than a political move on the part of that "director" to wrest control of that part of the product from someone he must not have liked. It had nothing to do with technology or making it work better. From that point I refused to work for that VP any longer - I wouldn't even attend his meetings. I had the rare privilege (after slaving on that code close to 10 years and becoming - essentially - the owner of the product) of being able to literally wag the dog. That director wound up getting fired about a year later. AMF. Since you're working for a government agency there's NO telling what the reasoning is behind this "conversion" they want you to do but I can tell you from experience it has NOTHING to do with making your product better. Get outta there if you can. -Max :D