Re: WHY

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From: Harlan Grove (hrlngrv_at_aol.com)
Date: 12/24/04 

Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:46:27 -0800

<aaron_kempf@hotmail.com> wrote...
>klunkiness of VB
>
>hahahahahha
>
>it's got _EVERYTHIGN_ those other languages have and then some.
...

Really? How do you write a hash table in VB? Hashes are an integral data
structure in Perl and most other scripting languages. How do you write
pointers or references to functions in VB so you can, e.g., write a single
topological sort routine that accepts a comparison function (like StrComp
for strings) as a parameter? Again, Perl and the other object oriented
scripting languages, C/C++, Java, even some dialects of Pascal provide this.
How about the lack of short circuit boolean evaluation which makes some
conditional checks require two or more If blocks rather than one, thus
unnecessarily complicating the logic? How about the lack of C's continue or
Perl's next statements which eliminate the need for many If blocks or GoTos
as opposed to single line If statements inside loops?

>it has better errorhandling.. it has better _PERFORMANCE_ than other
>languages out there.

Clueless again!

Presumably you mean VB per se rather than VB.Net since VB.Net is just
another language generating virtual machine code for .Net to execute.

Does VB provide anything more than 'On Error GoTo <label in current proc>'
and 'On Error Resume Next'? Have you ever seen a performance comparison
between VB and any scripting language for any serious text transformations?
Have you ever seen a comparison of calculating eigenvectors and eigenvalues
of square matrices between VB and FORTRAN? (Since any halfway intelligent VB
developer would call routines in LINPACK or LAPACK, they'd actually be using
compiled FORTRAN libraries, so not a real comparison.) How many operating
systems or hardware device drivers are writen in VB?

>VB has momentum. VB has marketshare.

We differ on whether

market share = better language

vs

market share = dominant monopoly pushing it

Also another example of your lack of perspective. Since your so mired in a
Windows shop you just don't factor in development on non-Windows OSs. VB is
nothing outside Windows.

>it is ridiculous to even consider other languages.

In the same way it's ridiculous to consider anything other than English as a
human language. If all you speak is English and you lack the intelligence
and/or perseverence to learn anything else, yelling at everyone else to
speak English may have some appeal. That's what your databases & VB ranting
is equivalent to.

Clearly you don't understand numerical programming. While VB is not
significantly worse than most other procedural languages for numerical
programming, it ain't APL or FORTRAN . . . or MatLab.

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