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.
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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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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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!
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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.
Eddy, well said! I recall creating Windows applications prior to VB3 ... GAWD! That was ugly. The rise of VB brought about far quicker development times as we didn't have to re-create the wheel by inventing new atoms each time. I also recall other vendors playing catch-up, trying to emulate VB's drag-n-drop. Other vendors saw some success, but VB set the stage for modern development. After MS terminated VB6, I stuck with it for several years, then tried VB.NET for a year. I saw the handwriting on the wall, jumped to C#, and that's been my primary language since then. VB.NET is not dead, but support for it is less and less each year -- at this point I'd not bother with it. But I also have a consultant's POV, so anything that doesn't increase my marketability loses my interest.
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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
I don't believe most of the people making comments especially the most negative have ever written anything in VB much less VB.NET. I understand why people might prefer C# if they are coming from C programming background. Moving to VB.NET was a big change from VB6 as I needed to learn about OOP. I wonder how many replying even know that VB.NET is OOP. I have been using visual basic since about 1992 VB3 thru VB6 and Visual Studio 2017 VB.Net. I write code to test hardware that I design. Over the years it has been radios for the military and Aviation. I like VB and currently VB.Net because anyone with some programming exposure can read my code like a test procedure.
pmarshall
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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
I have a complete collection of MS Visual Basic 6.0 with Library and Visual Studio 6.0 and More books than I care to admit to all this was purchased before I had the internet. Never was able to load it on New Windows 7 32 bit Machine even with great suggestions from Slow Eddie Make you a great deal like FREE just pay shipping I still write with VS 2019 and VB.Net WinForms apps with SQLite it is fun because I know a lot from what I learned using VB 6. Basic taught a lot of us coding in the beginning of your coding careers So it deserves some respect. But as progress moves forward and New Projects require more workable languages professional programmers embrace new languages. Clients do not always understand the need for a rewrite in a more workable language. Perhaps I will take some time this Winter to learn C# For now I am trying to build a Desk and looking at Track Saws and building a MFT style cutting station
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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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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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VB.NET and VB, probably are dead-ish as everyone above has discussed. VBA, which is VB for Office apps, is most definitely not.
Bond Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
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When I attended Microsoft Ignite in 2019, I won a t-shirt that said "Kill VB, before it kills you!" Sounds like someone at MS saved my life :laugh:
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They meant Visual Basic 6 - at that time. MS's goal was to replace VB6 as a stand-alone application with VB.Net as part of what's now Visual Studio.
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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.
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.My favorite was a program that recursively created a bunch of folders with names borrowing characters from the extended ASCII set in the user's home folder. That was back in the Novell Netware days, working on DOS, so you couldn't easily batch-delete folders. I just left the program in my share (everybody's folders were public to everyone). I wanted to prove that idiots will run unknown EXEs from unknown folders...and they did not disappoint. Eventually the admin got tired of calling out people asking why they had a bunch of non-sense folders eating up his disk space.
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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
No, the tooling is still available, it's just no longer obvious: How to Do Web Forms in VS 2022 (Even Though Microsoft Recommends Blazor/.NET 6) -- Visual Studio Magazine[^]
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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
Public Sub btnOK_Click(s as Object, e as EventArgs) handles btnOK.Click End Sub versus btnOK.Click +=new eventhandler(btnOK_Click); // always miles away from the code, if you hand code it and accidentally make VS handle it for you in the GUI you can break your form until you fix it by hand in designer.cs You can even declare this in VB Public m_OK as Button WithEvents ' and the above vb code still works fine. So I think in general VB.Net handles events much more elegant than C#. I've got a huge c# app that has only hand coded "+= new eventhandlers, none were established with the crazy c# GUI. I think it's just too much of a PITA to maintain the code base with the GUI because I have both GUI drag drop controls on forms and many, quite a few, of the embedded form controls where in VB I used to get to say "withevents" with ease. This app was originally written in VB.Net and it was a PITA to convert it! Most of my other c# apps use a combination of hand written events and GUI maintained ones. I coded in VB for the Navy starting in 1995 up until 2017 and only after retiring did I start using C#. I absolutely depend now on C# syntax being close to my old friend c && c++ which I have been using since 1987. VB requires so much typing... Coding in Assembler was like running naked on a tropical island! We can only dream about such unbound less freedom.
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Public Sub btnOK_Click(s as Object, e as EventArgs) handles btnOK.Click End Sub versus btnOK.Click +=new eventhandler(btnOK_Click); // always miles away from the code, if you hand code it and accidentally make VS handle it for you in the GUI you can break your form until you fix it by hand in designer.cs You can even declare this in VB Public m_OK as Button WithEvents ' and the above vb code still works fine. So I think in general VB.Net handles events much more elegant than C#. I've got a huge c# app that has only hand coded "+= new eventhandlers, none were established with the crazy c# GUI. I think it's just too much of a PITA to maintain the code base with the GUI because I have both GUI drag drop controls on forms and many, quite a few, of the embedded form controls where in VB I used to get to say "withevents" with ease. This app was originally written in VB.Net and it was a PITA to convert it! Most of my other c# apps use a combination of hand written events and GUI maintained ones. I coded in VB for the Navy starting in 1995 up until 2017 and only after retiring did I start using C#. I absolutely depend now on C# syntax being close to my old friend c && c++ which I have been using since 1987. VB requires so much typing... Coding in Assembler was like running naked on a tropical island! We can only dream about such unbound less freedom.
Yeah, I never use events in web development. Preferred the VB way when doing WinForms development.
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
