Re: Why the VB6 versus VB.NET contest is baloney

Tom Shelton wrote:
On Dec 3, 2:26 pm, "Michael C" <nos...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"dpb" <n...@xxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:fj1qp9$ujh$1@xxxxxxxxxxx
The conclusion of this is that whatever development environment/language
you select, imo it should be a language that has a recognized Standard and
has compilers from more than one vendor. You then have a core language
with possible vendor-specific and/or OS-specific extensions, but you're
not tied into a single vendor with no real recourse.
Great idea but is that possible for a high level language?

Michael

C#, the CTS, and the core of the .NET framework are ISO standards.
There are currently 3 C# compilers - Microsoft's C# compiler, Novell's
Mono compiler, and the dotGNU compiler. The Mono project also has a
VB.NET compiler as well.

So, yes it's possible.

Doggone, Tom, ya' go and give away the secret... :)

Seriously, I kept providing the [insert your favorite Standard language] template thinking Michael was trying to sandbag but apparently not. That's a sad commentary imo on the state of awareness in general of even the existence of, what more adherence to, standards in the software development community. It's not, unfortunately, unique at all, however. It is still endemic that even in Fortran where the F77 Standard has now been in existence for 30 _years_(!) that most seem to think the "standard" is whatever their particular compiler of choice accepts.

I don't know the full status of C# w/ respect to the proprietary parts that are outside the scope of the Standard as to how crippled that leaves the environment or how aggressive MS has been and intends to be on trying to remain the 900-lb gorilla on the standards committee and in protecting their competitive advantage.

The biggest question going forward imo is whether it will "grow legs" so to speak, independent of MS so that it becomes self-perpetuating going forward or whether the next great idea from Redmond leaves it as a niche backwater product despite its status of having an ISO Standard in effect.

Hard to predict--glad I'm "retired enough" so don't have to deal w/ such questions any longer for real. :)

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