Re: Has MS given up on us (again)?

I agree with you on all of those points, and I have to say that I wish MS
would just bite the bullet and merge the two language teams. What we
effectively have today is one language, i.e. ".NET" with a variety of
dialects. C# is one dialect, VB is another, but for the most part they boil
down to the same IL (yes, I know that's not always true).

Instead of C# leaping ahead with one particular new feature for one release,
then VB playing catch up and releasing some exclusive new feature the next,
they should just merge the two in features and functionality and then
distinguish them by syntax alone. It's actually ridiculous to imagine E&C
not being identical for C# and VB.NET, among other things.

It's a shame VB still has the same old stigma attached to it when comparing
skillsets. I've seen as many hideous implementations in C# as I have in VB,
but the difference being the C# code is always that bit harder to maintain
because it isn't as intuitive or easy on the eyes a few months down the line
when the original coder has gone AWOL. It's a shame more managers don't
consider that when hiring C# coders over VB coders...


"cj" <cj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uIduAclbIHA.5892@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I've found that managers and even a fair number of non-programmer computer
people think C automatically results in super powerful programs and those
programmers are highly paid geniuses and VB, Visual BASIC, is basic code
for beginners and students and isn't really what a true professional would
use. I find often C programmers hold these same feelings too. I think
many managers allow VB code in their company only because they think VB
programmers cost less. It all comes from the origins of the language's
name. C was terse and powerful among languages back in the day and Basic
was introduced to be easy. Frankly with the changes that happened when VB
became VB.net maybe it should have died, as a name as least. C# meanwhile
is supposed to be putting the easy in the old terse, powerful C, C++. I
have to wonder if VB and C# will merge in the future and I would expect
the name will lean toward the C side because of these general impressions.
Of course Java might surprise us all.


P.S. Long live dBase and it's derivatives, Foxpro, and Clipper! The
truly best languages.



Alex Clark wrote:
Hi Michael,

There's almost nothing to learn switching from VB to C#. You should have
it down pat in 1 day.

I can convert from C# to VB.NET relatively easily, but in order to do
that I tend to want to copy/paste and go through it line by line (unless
it's some ridiculously small example).

With MS putting examples for using their shiny new technologies in C#
exclusively, many of which don't have the most intuitive of syntax to
begin with, I'm then forced to do extra mental conversions which aren't
always easy if it's not immediately obvious as to what the code is doing
(which is often the case and is the whole reason I'm searching for
examples to begin with).

It would have been nice if MS had done the work of putting up VB code
alongside C# for all code samples in the documentation. Would have been
nice if they'd documented a lot of areas a bit more thoroughly as well
though, and actually provided sample code of *any* kind in many cases.

Our whole company switched from vb to c#. We had meeting and discussions
and more meetings and when we finally did it it was such a huge
non-event we all had a big laugh about it.

Just out of interest, what made your company want to make the change over
to C#?


.

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