Re: The Demise of C#

From: Karl Seguin (_at_)
Date: 02/23/05 

Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 07:46:51 -0500

"Many C# developers today are basically VB.Net developers using a different
syntax"

This may be true today, but it's equally important to look at where the
languages are going. It seems to me that in the 2.0 release, we are
starting to see a divergence, albeit slight, between the two language which
i expect will be a continuing trend. I agree that refactoring is only a
tool which can easily be done as an addon, but that the C# IDE supports it
and the VB.Net one doesn't suggests that the VB.Net team sees the needs of
its developers as being different than those of C# developers. Other
features such as My, Iterators and enhanced nullable types which are either
in one language or another (anonymous functions in vb.net??) are all signs
that MS is moving away from having the languages simply be "different
syntax".

As far as the crappiness of VB programmers which was touched on by others,
my personal opinion is that the programming language doesn't make the
quality, it's the person behind the keyboard. A bad programmer will
programming equally bad using whichever language. I think the belief that
there are simply more bad VB programmers out there is highly speculative and
even if true, an HR departement would be foolish to ignore the fact that
there are plenty of good programmers in either language. Having said that,
VB.Net does make it a little easier to be sloppy (option explicit and
strict, on error resume next, ....), but I'm sure that if someone wanted to
they could come up, item for item, of a list of things C# allows which could
be argued it shouldn't.

Karl 

-- 
MY ASP.Net tutorials
http://www.openmymind.net/
"Kevin Spencer" <kevin@DIESPAMMERSDIEtakempis.com> wrote in message
news:%23XnYteSGFHA.2876@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> About 2 years ago, and as recently as perhaps 1 year ago, I can recall
> seeing many posts about what language to use with ASP.Net. The consensus
was
> that employers paid more for C# programmers, and it seems that C# became
the
> darling of the ASP.Net crowd.
>
> In the meantime, I have observed an interesting phenomenon. Originally,
> employers hired programmers who used C# because it was based on C, and the
> prevailing opinion was (and may still be) that C# developers were better
> because they must have known and/or practiced C or C++ at some time, which
> would make them better programmers overall. C and C++ are hard-core
> programming languages compared to VB.
>
> However, now that nearly everyone has jumped on the C# bandwagon, it seems
> to me that the distinction between the languages has nearly disappeared,
at
> least in terms of evaluating programmers for hire. There seem to be almost
> as many clueless C# developers out there as VB.Net developers. Many C#
> developers today are basically VB.Net developers using a different syntax.
I
> wonder if the employers have become aware of this trend?
>
> -- 
>
> Kevin Spencer
> Microsoft MVP
> .Net Developer
> Neither a follower nor a lender be.
>
>

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Killing VB softly with his song, Killing VB softly...with a song.............
    ... C++ offers developers the largest degree of control over ... Programmers who wish to build truly cross-platform solutions. ... C++ language contains an ISO-standardized and truly portable syntax, ... Unique Language Features ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb)
  • Re: Wild speculations about the "other" factors
    ... and no single language exposes all of them or ever will. ... while 99 % of the software dev community has gone West. ... Meanwhile the angst of over .NET syntax will only to apply to a tiny subset ... most Delphi programmers already have a mountain of code that they're going ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • IDEs, syntactic vs. semantic highlighting, etc. (was Re: What is your favourite IDE? Eclipse DLTK!)
    ... ability to move from basic syntax highlighting of code to something more like ... While syntax highlighting is nice, ... I think we're starting to get into language design and language processor implementation issues here, and I'm all in favor of debating that. ... And how many programmers *really* program on a "team of one?" ...
    (comp.lang.ruby)
  • Re: Language design evolution vs. revolution
    ... Programmers prefer a language that is similar to what they ... Semantic revolution. ... They don't want to have to learn completely different syntax just for the ...
    (comp.lang.misc)
  • Re: Language to replace C
    ... I notice that you have abandoned a lot of C's syntax. ... I've been pondering language design issues for some ... new programmers that have never seen the language before. ... instead of char* argv, ...
    (comp.lang.c)
Loading