Objective Honesty and no religious wars - thankyou
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First, before we get all sorts of passionate replies, let me state the obvious: "The whole world hates VB.Net, it's is the spawn of the devil, etc, etc" All feeling better now? Good. OK, here's the deal. Although we aren't completely ready to rebuild our site (tool requests still coming in from client services, finance and marketing), we are starting to experiment with it, and will probably redo the public area of the site in the meantime. Here's the rub: We are not going to be using C# :(( . There are only 3 of us in IT - the IT director, myself, and one other. The other (lets call him Sid* - although please don't reply with passionate anger towards Sid either, that's for another thread about people who sniff all day in open plan offices :mad: ) has said that he will not be able to cope with C# (which is quite true from what I've seen), and it's good that people know their limitations. Although this hasn't been stated as the reason by my boss, it has been announced that it will be impossible to work as a team with me doing C# and Sid doing VB.Net. So, for the next year or whatever, I'll be using VB.Net at work. Fortunately that obviously doesn't mean I have to use it for any private sites. But using 2 different languages for ASP.Net dev might prove rather confusing. Anyone have experience of that btw? So, anyway, honesty time. Who else is forced to use VB.Net at work. And how do you find it? Unfortunately the 8 hours I spend at work everyday is paid for by my boss, so I'm not going to argue with him. But I am very interested to hear any constructive advice, what to look out for with VB.Net, and particularly any experience on using both VB.Net and C# at the same time in different locations (in my case work and home). Thanks :) * Not his real name, his real identity has been kept confidential to protect him and his family against raging CPian VB.Net haters...
$500 for a penny people, cheap at the price, just 500 big ones for a penny! Don't shove, there's enough pennies for everyone! - Daffy Duck, manning a wishing well
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First, before we get all sorts of passionate replies, let me state the obvious: "The whole world hates VB.Net, it's is the spawn of the devil, etc, etc" All feeling better now? Good. OK, here's the deal. Although we aren't completely ready to rebuild our site (tool requests still coming in from client services, finance and marketing), we are starting to experiment with it, and will probably redo the public area of the site in the meantime. Here's the rub: We are not going to be using C# :(( . There are only 3 of us in IT - the IT director, myself, and one other. The other (lets call him Sid* - although please don't reply with passionate anger towards Sid either, that's for another thread about people who sniff all day in open plan offices :mad: ) has said that he will not be able to cope with C# (which is quite true from what I've seen), and it's good that people know their limitations. Although this hasn't been stated as the reason by my boss, it has been announced that it will be impossible to work as a team with me doing C# and Sid doing VB.Net. So, for the next year or whatever, I'll be using VB.Net at work. Fortunately that obviously doesn't mean I have to use it for any private sites. But using 2 different languages for ASP.Net dev might prove rather confusing. Anyone have experience of that btw? So, anyway, honesty time. Who else is forced to use VB.Net at work. And how do you find it? Unfortunately the 8 hours I spend at work everyday is paid for by my boss, so I'm not going to argue with him. But I am very interested to hear any constructive advice, what to look out for with VB.Net, and particularly any experience on using both VB.Net and C# at the same time in different locations (in my case work and home). Thanks :) * Not his real name, his real identity has been kept confidential to protect him and his family against raging CPian VB.Net haters...
$500 for a penny people, cheap at the price, just 500 big ones for a penny! Don't shove, there's enough pennies for everyone! - Daffy Duck, manning a wishing well
I have never used VB .Net however from the very little I have seen, they seemed to have taken VB and given it an OO face lift. I know of a lot companies (through friends) that have decided to take the path of VB .Net instead of C#. Luckily, where I work we chose C#. What I find amazing is that people find C# hard to learn. I just do not buy that argument. C++ or C I can understand, but C# is really easy to get started with. We have a lot of VB developers and they are adapting quite well to C#. With the caveat that they may not understand OO but that is something they will learn over time. And learning is good :-) The point I am trying to make is that perhaps you may want your managers/decision makers to rethink their decision. Learning is an essential aspect of the profession we are in. Therefore the logic of "this is too hard to learn so lets not do it" does not make sense. Hope you succeed at assimilating them :-)
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I have never used VB .Net however from the very little I have seen, they seemed to have taken VB and given it an OO face lift. I know of a lot companies (through friends) that have decided to take the path of VB .Net instead of C#. Luckily, where I work we chose C#. What I find amazing is that people find C# hard to learn. I just do not buy that argument. C++ or C I can understand, but C# is really easy to get started with. We have a lot of VB developers and they are adapting quite well to C#. With the caveat that they may not understand OO but that is something they will learn over time. And learning is good :-) The point I am trying to make is that perhaps you may want your managers/decision makers to rethink their decision. Learning is an essential aspect of the profession we are in. Therefore the logic of "this is too hard to learn so lets not do it" does not make sense. Hope you succeed at assimilating them :-)
Ranjan Banerji wrote: Hope you succeed at assimilating them Thanks Ranjan, I agree with all you said. I do believe that in a year we will , at least in part, be using C#. Mainly because I plan on writing some kick-ass tools at home, which by coincidence, will be very useful for our project here :) At the same time, I don't believe the said "Sid" will ever cope with it, and it will then be a mixture. But in the meantime I will have to put up with starting out with VB.Net at work. My boss is a great manager, and an excellent developer. I'm not going to fight with him, but I'm sure gentle persuasion will bring about some compromise. Unfortunately this will take a few months... :(
$500 for a penny people, cheap at the price, just 500 big ones for a penny! Don't shove, there's enough pennies for everyone! - Daffy Duck, manning a wishing well
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First, before we get all sorts of passionate replies, let me state the obvious: "The whole world hates VB.Net, it's is the spawn of the devil, etc, etc" All feeling better now? Good. OK, here's the deal. Although we aren't completely ready to rebuild our site (tool requests still coming in from client services, finance and marketing), we are starting to experiment with it, and will probably redo the public area of the site in the meantime. Here's the rub: We are not going to be using C# :(( . There are only 3 of us in IT - the IT director, myself, and one other. The other (lets call him Sid* - although please don't reply with passionate anger towards Sid either, that's for another thread about people who sniff all day in open plan offices :mad: ) has said that he will not be able to cope with C# (which is quite true from what I've seen), and it's good that people know their limitations. Although this hasn't been stated as the reason by my boss, it has been announced that it will be impossible to work as a team with me doing C# and Sid doing VB.Net. So, for the next year or whatever, I'll be using VB.Net at work. Fortunately that obviously doesn't mean I have to use it for any private sites. But using 2 different languages for ASP.Net dev might prove rather confusing. Anyone have experience of that btw? So, anyway, honesty time. Who else is forced to use VB.Net at work. And how do you find it? Unfortunately the 8 hours I spend at work everyday is paid for by my boss, so I'm not going to argue with him. But I am very interested to hear any constructive advice, what to look out for with VB.Net, and particularly any experience on using both VB.Net and C# at the same time in different locations (in my case work and home). Thanks :) * Not his real name, his real identity has been kept confidential to protect him and his family against raging CPian VB.Net haters...
$500 for a penny people, cheap at the price, just 500 big ones for a penny! Don't shove, there's enough pennies for everyone! - Daffy Duck, manning a wishing well
The company I work for is a C++ (Pocket PC, Palm, etc) and VB (desktop) house, so as we're moving to .NET at the moment, using VB.NET made the most sense, as it made best use of the skillset already here. Well, as far as RAD tools go, VB.NET has been the most useful and capable one I've used so far (I've used Delphi and VB6 over the years, and both of them fade into insignificance). I don't think you are really losing anything using VB.NET instead of C# (other than the respect of certain CPians :-)). If you really need to use C# for something, you could always place it in it's own .NET Assembly, (making sure it has a CLS Compliant interface of course - VB.NET can't use things like unsigned types), and get Sid to use it from VB.NET as he would anything else. I wonder if Sid doesn't feel capable of shifting languages *and* libraries at the same time? If that is the case, you could migrate him to C# later on? It's probably less of a jump than you would think, as VB.NET seems to have acquired a small number of C-style constructs anyway (like initialising arrays) HTH -- Ian Darling
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The company I work for is a C++ (Pocket PC, Palm, etc) and VB (desktop) house, so as we're moving to .NET at the moment, using VB.NET made the most sense, as it made best use of the skillset already here. Well, as far as RAD tools go, VB.NET has been the most useful and capable one I've used so far (I've used Delphi and VB6 over the years, and both of them fade into insignificance). I don't think you are really losing anything using VB.NET instead of C# (other than the respect of certain CPians :-)). If you really need to use C# for something, you could always place it in it's own .NET Assembly, (making sure it has a CLS Compliant interface of course - VB.NET can't use things like unsigned types), and get Sid to use it from VB.NET as he would anything else. I wonder if Sid doesn't feel capable of shifting languages *and* libraries at the same time? If that is the case, you could migrate him to C# later on? It's probably less of a jump than you would think, as VB.NET seems to have acquired a small number of C-style constructs anyway (like initialising arrays) HTH -- Ian Darling
Well, it's a relief to get an answer like this and know that I'm not alone :). Ian Darling wrote: I don't think you are really losing anything using VB.NET instead of C# (other than the respect of certain CPians If the only difference is snob value, not functionality, that's actually pretty sad. Ian Darling wrote: wonder if Sid doesn't feel capable of shifting languages *and* libraries at the same time? If that is the case, you could migrate him to C# later on? I think this is very possible. Once he gains confidence he might even start to like the idea...
$500 for a penny people, cheap at the price, just 500 big ones for a penny! Don't shove, there's enough pennies for everyone! - Daffy Duck, manning a wishing well
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Well, it's a relief to get an answer like this and know that I'm not alone :). Ian Darling wrote: I don't think you are really losing anything using VB.NET instead of C# (other than the respect of certain CPians If the only difference is snob value, not functionality, that's actually pretty sad. Ian Darling wrote: wonder if Sid doesn't feel capable of shifting languages *and* libraries at the same time? If that is the case, you could migrate him to C# later on? I think this is very possible. Once he gains confidence he might even start to like the idea...
$500 for a penny people, cheap at the price, just 500 big ones for a penny! Don't shove, there's enough pennies for everyone! - Daffy Duck, manning a wishing well
Megan Forbes wrote: If the only difference is snob value, not functionality, that's actually pretty sad. It depends on the developer. I've known those who were snobs about VB (in the same way "Real Programmers" only drink coffee, which I can't stand), but there are others who are just uncomfortable with languages outside of the C family - kind of a reversal of Sid's "problem". And C# does have a couple of things VB.NET doesn't (like
unsafe) - just nothing that I would consider of concern for most application developers. Looking at it from a different perspective, VB'sIsandTypeofoperators are far more appealing than usingdynamic_cast<>()in C++ (C# has similarissyntax to VB) - it's more intuitive, and after all software is just as much about communicating with other people as it is communicating with computers, and if using VB.NET helps you communicate intent with Sid better, then that's what you should use. After all, LISP is probably the most elegant and productive problem-solving language ever designed, and nobody really uses that outside academia these days because it's such a pain in the arse to read someone else's LISP code. It's also why COBOL was/is so popular, even though it's such a bloody awful language - because anyone could pick it up and make some sense of it. -- Ian Darling -
First, before we get all sorts of passionate replies, let me state the obvious: "The whole world hates VB.Net, it's is the spawn of the devil, etc, etc" All feeling better now? Good. OK, here's the deal. Although we aren't completely ready to rebuild our site (tool requests still coming in from client services, finance and marketing), we are starting to experiment with it, and will probably redo the public area of the site in the meantime. Here's the rub: We are not going to be using C# :(( . There are only 3 of us in IT - the IT director, myself, and one other. The other (lets call him Sid* - although please don't reply with passionate anger towards Sid either, that's for another thread about people who sniff all day in open plan offices :mad: ) has said that he will not be able to cope with C# (which is quite true from what I've seen), and it's good that people know their limitations. Although this hasn't been stated as the reason by my boss, it has been announced that it will be impossible to work as a team with me doing C# and Sid doing VB.Net. So, for the next year or whatever, I'll be using VB.Net at work. Fortunately that obviously doesn't mean I have to use it for any private sites. But using 2 different languages for ASP.Net dev might prove rather confusing. Anyone have experience of that btw? So, anyway, honesty time. Who else is forced to use VB.Net at work. And how do you find it? Unfortunately the 8 hours I spend at work everyday is paid for by my boss, so I'm not going to argue with him. But I am very interested to hear any constructive advice, what to look out for with VB.Net, and particularly any experience on using both VB.Net and C# at the same time in different locations (in my case work and home). Thanks :) * Not his real name, his real identity has been kept confidential to protect him and his family against raging CPian VB.Net haters...
$500 for a penny people, cheap at the price, just 500 big ones for a penny! Don't shove, there's enough pennies for everyone! - Daffy Duck, manning a wishing well
I was pretty well forced through the C++>>VB6>>VB.net>>C# learning cycle, and as much as I don't like it, there is nothing that bad about VB.net. (And it does force you to write better code than you did in VB6.) The only real suggestion I have is, if you can, use VS.net 2003, it solved 90% of our problems.
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First, before we get all sorts of passionate replies, let me state the obvious: "The whole world hates VB.Net, it's is the spawn of the devil, etc, etc" All feeling better now? Good. OK, here's the deal. Although we aren't completely ready to rebuild our site (tool requests still coming in from client services, finance and marketing), we are starting to experiment with it, and will probably redo the public area of the site in the meantime. Here's the rub: We are not going to be using C# :(( . There are only 3 of us in IT - the IT director, myself, and one other. The other (lets call him Sid* - although please don't reply with passionate anger towards Sid either, that's for another thread about people who sniff all day in open plan offices :mad: ) has said that he will not be able to cope with C# (which is quite true from what I've seen), and it's good that people know their limitations. Although this hasn't been stated as the reason by my boss, it has been announced that it will be impossible to work as a team with me doing C# and Sid doing VB.Net. So, for the next year or whatever, I'll be using VB.Net at work. Fortunately that obviously doesn't mean I have to use it for any private sites. But using 2 different languages for ASP.Net dev might prove rather confusing. Anyone have experience of that btw? So, anyway, honesty time. Who else is forced to use VB.Net at work. And how do you find it? Unfortunately the 8 hours I spend at work everyday is paid for by my boss, so I'm not going to argue with him. But I am very interested to hear any constructive advice, what to look out for with VB.Net, and particularly any experience on using both VB.Net and C# at the same time in different locations (in my case work and home). Thanks :) * Not his real name, his real identity has been kept confidential to protect him and his family against raging CPian VB.Net haters...
$500 for a penny people, cheap at the price, just 500 big ones for a penny! Don't shove, there's enough pennies for everyone! - Daffy Duck, manning a wishing well
Knowing your limitations is one thing, fooling yourself is another. I was a VBer and when I got into .NET I decided to take a leap of faith and try C#. It turned out to be pretty simple actually and I am far from a great programmer. If I can do it, Sid can. It sounds more like he is just scared and is taking the easy route out. Many of our contractors are like Sid in that they think they are unable to do C# or that VB.NET is the logical choice because they know VB. Some have responded to my challenge to try C# and most have done fabulously well, picking up C# quite easily. It is holding you back, which is wrong. It is holding the company back which is also wrong. Sid needs to meet the challenges, not force the company to meet him. Otherwise why does the company pay him a salary each month? Anyway to your question; I do have to work on both VB.NET and C# ASP.NET projects. The syntax change is ok, nothing major. Obviously all the .NET classes remain the same, all the methods and properties are the same. Controls and pages are coded the same way and generally it is an easy transition. The hardest bit though is the IDE. Intellisense works differently when you are using VB.NET, and it gets incredibly annoying, I mean really annoying (anyone know how to tell the IDE to use the same intellisense while coding VB.NET as when coding C#?) Also namespaces and the using/import bits work differently as well. VB.NET hides most of that and I get confused when trying to check for neccesary dependancies. I find I code slower and produce worse systems when I am forced to use VB.NET. Hopefully you will not have to wait too long before your company realises the mistake and steps up to the C# plate.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South AfricaChris Losinger wrote: i hate needles so much i can't even imagine allowing one near The Little Programmer
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First, before we get all sorts of passionate replies, let me state the obvious: "The whole world hates VB.Net, it's is the spawn of the devil, etc, etc" All feeling better now? Good. OK, here's the deal. Although we aren't completely ready to rebuild our site (tool requests still coming in from client services, finance and marketing), we are starting to experiment with it, and will probably redo the public area of the site in the meantime. Here's the rub: We are not going to be using C# :(( . There are only 3 of us in IT - the IT director, myself, and one other. The other (lets call him Sid* - although please don't reply with passionate anger towards Sid either, that's for another thread about people who sniff all day in open plan offices :mad: ) has said that he will not be able to cope with C# (which is quite true from what I've seen), and it's good that people know their limitations. Although this hasn't been stated as the reason by my boss, it has been announced that it will be impossible to work as a team with me doing C# and Sid doing VB.Net. So, for the next year or whatever, I'll be using VB.Net at work. Fortunately that obviously doesn't mean I have to use it for any private sites. But using 2 different languages for ASP.Net dev might prove rather confusing. Anyone have experience of that btw? So, anyway, honesty time. Who else is forced to use VB.Net at work. And how do you find it? Unfortunately the 8 hours I spend at work everyday is paid for by my boss, so I'm not going to argue with him. But I am very interested to hear any constructive advice, what to look out for with VB.Net, and particularly any experience on using both VB.Net and C# at the same time in different locations (in my case work and home). Thanks :) * Not his real name, his real identity has been kept confidential to protect him and his family against raging CPian VB.Net haters...
$500 for a penny people, cheap at the price, just 500 big ones for a penny! Don't shove, there's enough pennies for everyone! - Daffy Duck, manning a wishing well
I gotta agree with Paul here, I don't see why your friend can't cope with C#. For the majority of the time, what you'll be using is the .Net Framework and not the language itself. So if he can cope with VB.Net, he should be able to use C# :confused: I've been working with VB.Net and C# for over 6 months now( VB.Net in the office and C# at home) and I've found that VB.Net is geared much more towards to beginner. It has the tendency to hide things, like Paul mentioned, but it can also simplify your work a lot. Take for example the
Withkeyword. Once you have used it, you'd have to wonder why MS never included it in C#. Unlike what Paul thinks, I find that the intellisense in VB.Net is a tad bit smarter, in terms of it's auto-completion. You'd be surprised at how much less typing you have to with that feature. Good luck with your job. If you have any questions, fell free to ask a person who is also doing VB.Net at work(ie. Me :) ) Nick Seng (the programmer formerly known as Notorious SMC)
God, I pity me! - Phoncible P. Bone