So... Is Visual Basic officially dead?
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Sometimes I feel like I am beating a dead Horse. :( First, Haters are going to hate. Second, programmers, for the most part, like and defend the language they know best, and disparage almost every other. Third, VB isn't "cool" anymore. Fourth, the main problem with VB is the word "Basic" in the name. Particularly the "B" which stands for "Beginners". For Sander. No, it is not dead. See steveb's post above about MSIL. For Griff I sincerely, greatly appreciate your knowledge, wisdom, and the fact you help a whole lot of people in this site, myself included. However, if you don't like "OnError Resume Next", or "OnError GoTo" (which is also found in C#), then DON'T USE THEM. Saying that VB should be dropped because of those statements, is like saying all tigers, extremely beautiful animals, should be killed because they might bite your head off when you try to pet them. Or saying that most women should be killed because they are a PITA. IMO this is not only foolish, but ridiculous. Finally, I am pretty sure that quite a lot of businesses are still using VB6 and VB.net to run their business, if not the majority. And I apologize for not being one of the "cool kids" and being subject to my second observation above myself.
Sometimes one man's trash is just trash, but not in the case of VB.
Yeah, I agree with you on all points.
Slow Eddie wrote:
For Sander. No, it is not dead. See steveb's post above about MSIL.
See my reply though. The tooling seems to lag behind and Microsoft seems to not update VB anymore, making the gap with C# even bigger in the future. Sure it's not "dead" because many people and companies still use it, but it doesn't seem like a good alternative for new development anymore. In the end, VB.NET can do everything C# can (or it could a few years ago) and you can write good and bad code in both languages, but how long will this be true? So by "dead" I mean Microsoft isn't actively developing it anymore, making it a no-go for new development.
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Sometimes I feel like I am beating a dead Horse. :( First, Haters are going to hate. Second, programmers, for the most part, like and defend the language they know best, and disparage almost every other. Third, VB isn't "cool" anymore. Fourth, the main problem with VB is the word "Basic" in the name. Particularly the "B" which stands for "Beginners". For Sander. No, it is not dead. See steveb's post above about MSIL. For Griff I sincerely, greatly appreciate your knowledge, wisdom, and the fact you help a whole lot of people in this site, myself included. However, if you don't like "OnError Resume Next", or "OnError GoTo" (which is also found in C#), then DON'T USE THEM. Saying that VB should be dropped because of those statements, is like saying all tigers, extremely beautiful animals, should be killed because they might bite your head off when you try to pet them. Or saying that most women should be killed because they are a PITA. IMO this is not only foolish, but ridiculous. Finally, I am pretty sure that quite a lot of businesses are still using VB6 and VB.net to run their business, if not the majority. And I apologize for not being one of the "cool kids" and being subject to my second observation above myself.
Sometimes one man's trash is just trash, but not in the case of VB.
I agree that that is no good reason to hate a language. I remember having to do some changes in a VB6 project many many years ago, there was a dynamic form, which means that when the user chooses a value from a combobox than some controls could be created at runtim (depending on the choice) I don't remember if it gave a compile error or a runtime error, what I do remember is that it did not worked as we expected, so we called for microsoft support which the company paid for. Their answer was that this is by design, VB did not allow creating controls in the closeup event of a combobox... I did not liked the language before this, but at that time I did became a real hater. There are so many examples of stuff in this language that was unbelievable, there are so many reasons not to like it. But agreed, the reasons you mention are not reasons to hate it.
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I'm working for a customer who uses Visual Basic. VB was my first language so I don't mind too much, although after years of C# it feels a bit bloated and archaic at times. I still have another VB project as well, so at least I knew what to expect. It's an old web forms project though, so all in all it's pretty meh X| So anyway, I had to start a new project (not something they do often, they basically have the one monolith) and thought I'd pick a VB project template since that's what the client is using. I have VB templates for WPF, WCF, Console, Library, WinForms and Test projects But as soon as I filter on the more modern project types, like Web, Web API, Cloud, Games or Blazor, I get zero templates. Ended up picking C# instead, as those are readily available. I remember reading Microsoft isn't actively developing VB anymore and I'm pretty sure the earlier version of .NET Core did not support VB. When googling the subject I find a mix of "VB dead" and "VB coming to .NET (Core)", but evidence would suggest it never actually came to .NET (Core). All in all it seems to me like Microsoft pulled the plug or is this wishful thinking?
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was it ever really alive then ?
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It pioneered component (vs object) oriented development; a pattern which is useful today.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
Quote:
It pioneered component (vs object) oriented development; a pattern which is useful today.
I'm pretty certain that it did not; unless my memory is failing me (and at this age that is very possible), components were part of the Windows tech stack since '92 (COM and/or OLE). VB, like other Windows programming language tools, could use them. IOW, they were installed with Windows, not with VB. VB was just the most popular way of writing Windows programs for well over a decade.
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I wouldn't mourn. It was in the eighties when I wrote:
10 PRINT "Herman is the best !!1!!1!11!";;;;;
20 GOTO 10In Word you can only store 2 bytes. That is why I use Writer.
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I'm working for a customer who uses Visual Basic. VB was my first language so I don't mind too much, although after years of C# it feels a bit bloated and archaic at times. I still have another VB project as well, so at least I knew what to expect. It's an old web forms project though, so all in all it's pretty meh X| So anyway, I had to start a new project (not something they do often, they basically have the one monolith) and thought I'd pick a VB project template since that's what the client is using. I have VB templates for WPF, WCF, Console, Library, WinForms and Test projects But as soon as I filter on the more modern project types, like Web, Web API, Cloud, Games or Blazor, I get zero templates. Ended up picking C# instead, as those are readily available. I remember reading Microsoft isn't actively developing VB anymore and I'm pretty sure the earlier version of .NET Core did not support VB. When googling the subject I find a mix of "VB dead" and "VB coming to .NET (Core)", but evidence would suggest it never actually came to .NET (Core). All in all it seems to me like Microsoft pulled the plug or is this wishful thinking?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
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I'm working for a customer who uses Visual Basic. VB was my first language so I don't mind too much, although after years of C# it feels a bit bloated and archaic at times. I still have another VB project as well, so at least I knew what to expect. It's an old web forms project though, so all in all it's pretty meh X| So anyway, I had to start a new project (not something they do often, they basically have the one monolith) and thought I'd pick a VB project template since that's what the client is using. I have VB templates for WPF, WCF, Console, Library, WinForms and Test projects But as soon as I filter on the more modern project types, like Web, Web API, Cloud, Games or Blazor, I get zero templates. Ended up picking C# instead, as those are readily available. I remember reading Microsoft isn't actively developing VB anymore and I'm pretty sure the earlier version of .NET Core did not support VB. When googling the subject I find a mix of "VB dead" and "VB coming to .NET (Core)", but evidence would suggest it never actually came to .NET (Core). All in all it seems to me like Microsoft pulled the plug or is this wishful thinking?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
We started using C# many years ago (10 years or so). Although we've had to continually adjust/tweak our dependencies, mainly due to interactions with SQL Server and backup functions, it has done the job for us. I learned VB in college, but we are strictly C# now. We moved away from WinForms due to some inherent functionality restrictions that were cramping our style.
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And VB has
On Error Resume Nextwhich is a damn good reason for killing it! :-D"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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It's more down to the editors and compilers supporting the language. I could undoubtedly compile my own VB files and run them on .NET 6 (I'm assuming the resulting MSIL will run fine, but it isn't guaranteed as Microsoft seems to have dropped support). However, Visual Studio doesn't support VB projects anymore, so I'd have to do it all manually, which is a pain, and not viable for a professional project. And, as said, it's not VB.NET generating the MSIL, but the compiler, and when Microsoft drops support for that, it could be possible that VB.NET becomes incompatible with newer versions of the framework.
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Well, C# allows a few things which VB doesn't.
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I'm working for a customer who uses Visual Basic. VB was my first language so I don't mind too much, although after years of C# it feels a bit bloated and archaic at times. I still have another VB project as well, so at least I knew what to expect. It's an old web forms project though, so all in all it's pretty meh X| So anyway, I had to start a new project (not something they do often, they basically have the one monolith) and thought I'd pick a VB project template since that's what the client is using. I have VB templates for WPF, WCF, Console, Library, WinForms and Test projects But as soon as I filter on the more modern project types, like Web, Web API, Cloud, Games or Blazor, I get zero templates. Ended up picking C# instead, as those are readily available. I remember reading Microsoft isn't actively developing VB anymore and I'm pretty sure the earlier version of .NET Core did not support VB. When googling the subject I find a mix of "VB dead" and "VB coming to .NET (Core)", but evidence would suggest it never actually came to .NET (Core). All in all it seems to me like Microsoft pulled the plug or is this wishful thinking?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
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When I was in high school, some wizard wrote a Fortran program nicknamed The Black Death. It entered an infinite loop that printed solid lines of asterisks. It was soon outdone by The White Death, which entered an infinite loop that "printed" form feeds.
Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.I worked in IBM for a few years, and once, dispatch got a call to hurry up and come fix their printer, because it was having a carriage runaway, and it was already on its second box!
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Quote:
It pioneered component (vs object) oriented development; a pattern which is useful today.
I'm pretty certain that it did not; unless my memory is failing me (and at this age that is very possible), components were part of the Windows tech stack since '92 (COM and/or OLE). VB, like other Windows programming language tools, could use them. IOW, they were installed with Windows, not with VB. VB was just the most popular way of writing Windows programs for well over a decade.
Component-based "architecture" was about reuse; not "COM" or "OLE" in particular. VB was popular because of drag and drop (components). The "RecordSet" (a component) was fundamental to sane client-server development.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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When you have a series of
try { dosomething() } catch {}
statements in a row then on error resume next is a wonderful syntactic sugar to clean up your code. And yes, there are places where this syntax is appropriate.
That syntax is never appropriate, because you are swallowing exceptions and have no way to find out they occurred, much less what might have caused them. At the very least, log the error detail before you swallow it - but then it wouldn't be
On Error Resume Next, would it ..."I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Sometimes I feel like I am beating a dead Horse. :( First, Haters are going to hate. Second, programmers, for the most part, like and defend the language they know best, and disparage almost every other. Third, VB isn't "cool" anymore. Fourth, the main problem with VB is the word "Basic" in the name. Particularly the "B" which stands for "Beginners". For Sander. No, it is not dead. See steveb's post above about MSIL. For Griff I sincerely, greatly appreciate your knowledge, wisdom, and the fact you help a whole lot of people in this site, myself included. However, if you don't like "OnError Resume Next", or "OnError GoTo" (which is also found in C#), then DON'T USE THEM. Saying that VB should be dropped because of those statements, is like saying all tigers, extremely beautiful animals, should be killed because they might bite your head off when you try to pet them. Or saying that most women should be killed because they are a PITA. IMO this is not only foolish, but ridiculous. Finally, I am pretty sure that quite a lot of businesses are still using VB6 and VB.net to run their business, if not the majority. And I apologize for not being one of the "cool kids" and being subject to my second observation above myself.
Sometimes one man's trash is just trash, but not in the case of VB.
I believe the largest "railroad" in North America runs COBOL and IMS for it's backend and VB for it's front end (because I worked on that project and can't see the effort required to change).
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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It pioneered component (vs object) oriented development; a pattern which is useful today.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
Quite a few folks don't know that MarshalByReferrence has been around for decades all the wat back to the Win 9X days... And everyone has forgotten the real roots in COM!
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That syntax is never appropriate, because you are swallowing exceptions and have no way to find out they occurred, much less what might have caused them. At the very least, log the error detail before you swallow it - but then it wouldn't be
On Error Resume Next, would it ..."I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
OriginalGriff wrote:
is never appropriate
Uh, no. But there should be a comment to state that it is appropriate for that code. Some of what I'm doing now is ignoring Exceptions because that's what works best. Just yesterday I wrote:
try
{
this.buffer.Append ( Char ) ;
}
catch ( System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException )
{
/* Hit the end of the StringBuilder, ignore */
}Which allows the caller to provide a limit to how many characters are allowed in the StringBuilder as appropriate. Yes, this is not a catch-all, but I have those as well as appropriate.
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VB is still far better at parsing stringly typed data sets than any other language. The C* functions in VB hide hundreds of lines of code complexity for parsing strings into fundamental data types.
Probably not something I would use. In my opinion, the one thing VB does better than C# is how Extension Methods are defined.
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I'm working for a customer who uses Visual Basic. VB was my first language so I don't mind too much, although after years of C# it feels a bit bloated and archaic at times. I still have another VB project as well, so at least I knew what to expect. It's an old web forms project though, so all in all it's pretty meh X| So anyway, I had to start a new project (not something they do often, they basically have the one monolith) and thought I'd pick a VB project template since that's what the client is using. I have VB templates for WPF, WCF, Console, Library, WinForms and Test projects But as soon as I filter on the more modern project types, like Web, Web API, Cloud, Games or Blazor, I get zero templates. Ended up picking C# instead, as those are readily available. I remember reading Microsoft isn't actively developing VB anymore and I'm pretty sure the earlier version of .NET Core did not support VB. When googling the subject I find a mix of "VB dead" and "VB coming to .NET (Core)", but evidence would suggest it never actually came to .NET (Core). All in all it seems to me like Microsoft pulled the plug or is this wishful thinking?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
It's just pinin' for the fjords. :-\
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OriginalGriff wrote:
is never appropriate
Uh, no. But there should be a comment to state that it is appropriate for that code. Some of what I'm doing now is ignoring Exceptions because that's what works best. Just yesterday I wrote:
try
{
this.buffer.Append ( Char ) ;
}
catch ( System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException )
{
/* Hit the end of the StringBuilder, ignore */
}Which allows the caller to provide a limit to how many characters are allowed in the StringBuilder as appropriate. Yes, this is not a catch-all, but I have those as well as appropriate.
And what you are doing is not
On Error Resume Nexteither: you are ignoring a specific error, and marking why in the code. I do the same under some circumstances. That's not the same as a blanket "Ignore all errors from now on", or puttingtry...catch()around each line of code! :-D"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
