Why is VB being forsaken?

[Oakman]

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

In VB, it's "&", not "+"

No actually, in VB.NET it's both.

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

I use StringBuilder

'Twasn't always the case, though, was it?

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

I almost never use string concatenation.

I use it constantly, but then we probably work on very different types of programs.

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.

[agolddog]

For anyone reading Mark's response, it's important to note his qualifier, "In general". What he says is true. This is not to say that every VB programmer is less sophisticated than every C# programmer; there are some very good developers who happen to prefer VB. However, in the general sense, my experience has also been that people who develop in VB don't have has strong a grasp of the underlying fundamentals as those in C#. Thus, their applications are not as robust. For me, it seems as if the tools which go along with VB just don't work quite as well as with C#. Intellisense, for example: it seems as if, once I've made a syntax error in VB, inellisense just quits working, and it's more forgiving in C#.

[Oakman]

Mark Nischalke wrote:

Compared with the clean syntax of C#, VB.NET is horrid.

One of the silliest things some folks do is think that their personal preferences are actually laws of nature. When someone is used to reading one language and has trouble with the other that defines not the language, but the programmer.

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.

[Oakman]

MSBassSinger wrote:

I started VB with 1,

I started with VB for DOS - now that was a strange animal!

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.

[Oakman]

Mark Nischalke wrote:

It allows for stupid things to be done without the developer having to actually think about what they are doing.

I have seen some really horrifying code written by developers (who obviously weren't thinking) in C#. You seem to want to blame the language for the faults of the programmer. In truth, inferior programmers will write inferior code in any language and superior programmers will write superior code in any language.

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.

[Oakman]

agolddog wrote:

For me, it seems as if the tools which go along with VB just don't work quite as well as with C#. Intellisense, for example: it seems as if, once I've made a syntax error in VB, inellisense just quits working, and it's more forgiving in C#.

That is just plain silly. You don't want immediate feedback when you have typed bad code??? You are right, since intellisense in C# is far less aware of what is being written, C#, much more often than VB.NET, must compile bad code before spotting an error. I have never regarded that as a feature to be touted, but a failing that must be borne.

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.

[Oakman]

:zzz:

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.

[Renzo Ciafardone]

Exactly how can SQL be compared to any programming language? Since, you know.. it is not a programming language. ANSI/ISO SQL is not Turing complete. Now if you are speaking about some "real" programming language that is an expansion of SQL that is another subject. But SQL on its own is not a programming language, it is a language... just not a programming one :D.

[John Stewien]

It's a transform language, it transforms tables of data into other tables of data. Queries can be optimised, there are various key words for performing different functions, there's maths, filtering, and formatting, it's just that the inputs and outputs are limited to tabular format. Some problems are tricky and require programmer skill to solve.

[Not Active]

Oakman wrote:

One of the silliest things

So your arguement is my stated personal opinion is "silly" and I'm at fault for perfering one over the other? Good arguement. A really a good way to have an open and mature discussion. :rolleyes:

---

I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt

[shiznit770]

I started programming 3 years ago with VB.NET and encountered the same things you are seeing now. It won't change. VB developers are generally less likely to put content online. Limiting yourself consuming just VB or C# articles is just silly. Here's a cheat sheet to get things started. If you embrace both languages equally you should have no problem applying C# articles to your VB development.

[Oakman]

Mark Nischalke wrote:

So your arguement is my stated personal opinion is "silly" and I'm at fault for perfering one over the other?

Nope. I'll type slower so maybe you'll understand. ;) When someone expresses his personal opinion as if it is a law of nature, he is being silly. When a programmers blames the language for the mistakes he makes, he is being silly. Now, if the shoe fits, then by all means wear it. If not, then deal with the points I made rather than acting as if I attacked you rather than your argument.

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.

[Not Active]

Oakman wrote:

That is just plain silly.

A very mature attitude.

Oakman wrote:

You don't want immediate feedback when you have typed bad code???

Then how do you explain this? In VB.NET this won't flag anything in intellisence nor when compiled. It will throw an exception at runtime.

Dim i As Integer
Dim x As String
i = 0
x = "foo"
If i = x Then
End If

In C# intellisence will show the error and it won't compile.

int i = 0;
string x = "foo";
if(i == x)
{
}

Oakman wrote:

since intellisense in C# is far less aware of what is being written, C#, much more often than VB.NET, must compile bad code before spotting an error.

Care to re-state this?

---

I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt

[Not Active]

Oakman wrote:

You seem to want to blame the language for the faults of the programmer

I think you should read my comments more carefully. http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3978112#xx3978112xx[^] "Not that the language itself is bad, the developers using it, IMO, mostly, don't have the skills, training, or experience to write software in the best manner."

---

I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt

[kenSemantics]

really, isnt it the responsibility of the developer to take care of what he is writing? if the language does something without his knowing then he is just a bad programmer.

[ljw1004]

I'm Lucian Wischik, the VB language PM at Microsoft. Since VS2010 we've put a huge amount of resources behind VB. We haven't announced all the new features, but here are just some of the new VB features we've already announced: * Async programming, developed absolutely equally with C#. * Iterators, like C#, but also allowing lambda iterators and yield inside try blocks which C# doesn't have. * VBCore - removes the dependency on Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll, so VB is as easy for 3rd-parties to use as C#. * New platforms - VB support added to Windows Phone 7, to the Micro Framework (i.e. Netduino), to XNA. * (and smaller fixes, like no longer prettylisting that blasted "ByVal" in front of everything, and emitting minimally-qualified names) And of course all of these features benefit from the things we know and love about VB, like QuickFixes and XML. Here's an interesting code snippet which ties together several unique VB features at the same time:

Sub Main()
Dim xml =

      <%= Iterator Function()
            For Each robot In {"alpha", "beta", "gamma"}
              Yield *   Robot <%= robot %> reporting in for duty
            Next
          End Function()
       %>

Console.WriteLine(xml)
End Sub

What this shows is code that on the surface looks similar in structure to ASP/PHP, but is actually fully typesafe. Personally, I've switched over all my hobby web-services from python to this kind of VB because I can code them quicker and with fewer bugs thanks to the type safety. -- Lucian Wischik, VB language PM

[ljw1004]

Dim i As Integer
Dim x As String
i = 0
x = "0"
If i = x Then
End If

In languages like Javascript and Python, this works fine. Obviously it depends on whether x was initialized to a string like "0" which can be converted to an integer, or one like "foo" which can't. In C# it never works. In VB you get the best of both worlds -- you can chose to code in a Python-like fashion (Option Strict Off), or in a C# fashion (Option Strict On), or you can make it merely give warnings for things like this which may or may not work (Option Strict Custom). It depends very much on the kind of programming you want to do. We try to avoid dogma here, and instead go on the results of extensive user studies. -- Lucian Wischik, VB language PM

[Oakman]

Mark Nischalke wrote:

A very mature attitude.

It is silly, Mark. Smart people say silly things, even I do. The idea that one would want to wait for compile time to learn about an error is silly. It doesn't matter what language one is using. The idea is silly.

Mark Nischalke wrote:

Care to re-state this?

You seem to think that I am going to defend the idiosyncrasies of VB.NET because I agreed with something that someone else said about C#, but did not find it attractive the way they did. Well just because I think Obama is incompetent, doesn't mean I think John McCain is any better. Ditto for not getting feedback when you make a mistake in C# or in VB. I do not think that VB.NET is perfect. I do not think that VB.NET is always the best choice, and I do not think that C# is inferior to VB.NET. But I do think that when people start claiming that their personal preferences are laws of nature, they are being silly.

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.

[Oakman]

ljw1004 wrote:

We try to avoid dogma here, and instead go on the results of extensive user studies.

What a novel idea! ;)

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.

[Oakman]

Mark Nischalke wrote:

I think you should read my comments more carefully.

You're absolutely right. I apologize.

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. R. A. H.