Beating a dead Horse: Which Language

[Sam Jost]

put some c# source and some vb.net source side by side, have a good
look at them and choose the one where you like the look of the source
better.

(I was going to say 'flip a coin', but you wanted logic, and logic
tells me it would be better to work with the language you like the
looks of)

Sam

 

[Massimo]

I love Italy !

Me too, I live here ;-)
The country is beaufitul, but the people... well... if you're a tourist
they're ok, but if you're trying to ever accomplish *anything*, this is
absolutely not the best place :-/
This is especially true for IT jobs... IT here was ruined by legions of
wanna-be programmers, technicians and sysadmins who bought "computer
programming for dummies" (or things like that) and then tried to get a job,
and stupid companies managed by people who don't even know what a computer
is but think they can get rich with them.

On top of that, I am a Roman Catholic.

This always seemed strange to me... I can go to st. Peter's in 15 minutes,
and there are people from all over the world who only saw it in pictures
))

Though I never realized that there are that many VBs overthere
until you said so! So ignorance I am !

Yes, there are... and many of them are as I described above. If you saw a
RecordSet being used by one of them as I saw one, you would have wept over
that poor RecordSet's tragic fate :-(

Massimo

 

[Massimo]

I love Italy ! On top of that, I am a Roman Catholic . Though I never
realized that there are that many VBs overthere until you said so! So
ignorance I am !

By the way: I prefer C#, but it's only a syntax thing.
I never used VB (altough I know something about it), but used C, C++ and
Java extensively... and I definitely prefer { and } over BEGIN and END.


Massimo

 

[Cor Ligthert]

Massimo,


... and I definitely prefer { and } over BEGIN and END.

That was what I too was always thinking.

I see now large benefits from the seperated kinds of begin and ends in
Visual Basic.

A nested procedure 6 deep with only {} do I find already almost a crime.

In VBNet I have not seen the maximum of that and it stays still stays
readable.

Just my thought about this

Cor

 

[Paul Clement]

On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 00:37:51 GMT, (e-mail address removed) wrote:


¤ I want to know which language you find most compelling to accomplish my
¤ mission. It may be that it doesn't have anything at all to do with the
¤ language, from my understanding they are close to equal, but everyone I
¤ come in contact with prefer C# over VB.net
¤

What did they say when you asked them why?


Paul
~~~~
Microsoft MVP (Visual Basic)

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

Carlos,

"Visual C#" ;-)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/

Visual C# is Microsoft's product. The language's name accoding to the ECMA
specification is C#:

<URL:http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-334.htm>

 

[Guest]

Obviously, the best solution is to use both languages (and J# also) and then
buy our converters to switch between them as often as possible.


David Anton
www.tangiblesoftwaresolutions.com
Home of:
Instant C#: VB.NET to C# Converter
Instant VB: C# to VB.NET Converter
Instant J#: VB.NET to J# Converter

 

[Carlos J. Quintero [.NET MVP]]

Yes, yes, I know, although my impression is that nobody uses the term
"Visual C#"...

--
Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio .NET, VB6, VB5 and VBA
You can code, design and document much faster.
Free resources for add-in developers:
http://www.mztools.com

 

[Elliot M. Rodriguez]

As a programmer in both, more VB.NET than Visual C#, I will echo some of
the sentiments and share my own.

Being that you are a novice programmer, it may be easier and faster for
you to start with VB.NET as opposed to C#. This curve is a bit dependent
on what tools you are using to learn with.

C#'s case dependence, bracketing, and lack of real human readable
keywords and syntax may make the transition a little longer than with
VB. The case issue was fixed in Whidbey with better Intellisense, so
this may not be an issue for you anymore... but there is something to be
said for being able to decipher how code blocks work when you are
looking at something like:

for Counter as integer = 0 to MyCollection.Count
....
next

versus

for (int Counter = 0; Counter < MyCollection.Count; Counter++)
{
}

It is less verbose, but does not convey terribly clearly what is happening.

That having been said... I can say that my usage of C# with VB.NET has
made me a much better programmer overall. Why? Because C# forces you in
some degree to pay attention to concise, clear code. This translates
well into VB.NET, despite the somewhat more verbose syntax.

Lastly, while totally undeserved, there is something to be said in the
community about being able to program in C# than VB.NET. I think part of
this is Microsoft's fault (I wont change the thread here by launching
into my reasons why I believe this), part is from the general perception
since the early VB days of it being a "toy" language.

My 2 cents, thrown in with the rest of the group.

 

[Cor Ligthert]

Obviously, the best solution is to use both languages (and J# also) and

then
buy our converters to switch between them as often as possible.

LOL

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

Yes, yes, I know, although my impression is that nobody uses the term
"Visual C#"...

ACK! And /really nobody/ uses the plain term "Basic" when talking about
Visual Basic .NET, except Microsoft in the VS.NET IDE properties dialog ;-).

 

[William \(Bill\) Vaughn]

The programming language that's best for you is a function of where you come
from. As Morten so clearly said, if you come from the OO-style languages C#
will be more comfortable but there's also Managed C++ for those folks and J#
as well. VB.NET was originally designed to help VB6 developers transition to
..NET. That's because at the time almost 80% of developers used VB6. It has
evolved over time (and is still evolving) to help developer productivity.
You'll find more differences in the Visual Studio.NET IDE than anywhere
else. In the current versions (and more so in older versions) C# required
you to constantly rebuild your project to resolve addressing. C# is always
going to be case sensitive (which is a royal PITA) and pretty anal. Newer
versions of C# have included on-the-fly compilation (finally) and
edit-and-continue (unless they dropped it again)--but so does VB.NET (which
always did on-the-fly compilation). VB.NET also has a new "My" namespace to
vastly simplify some of the more convoluted framework references. But again,
they build virtually identical IL.

--
____________________________________
William (Bill) Vaughn
Author, Mentor, Consultant
Microsoft MVP
www.betav.com/blog/billva
www.betav.com
Please reply only to the newsgroup so that others can benefit.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
__________________________________

 

[William \(Bill\) Vaughn]

Yes, sure it is. Go back to your piano and let us get some work done.

--
____________________________________
William (Bill) Vaughn
Author, Mentor, Consultant
Microsoft MVP
www.betav.com/blog/billva
www.betav.com
Please reply only to the newsgroup so that others can benefit.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
__________________________________

 

[Massimo]

A nested procedure 6 deep with only {} do I find already almost a crime.

A nested procedure with six depth levels is a crime anyway

Massimo

 

[Reginald Blue]

Anyhow, I am a novice programmer, and I will remain one as well...I
have no plans to make programming my life ambition, but I think that
it would be fun to make my databases do some cool tricks and maybe
write a simplistic client to access the database over the LAN, and by
internet as well. My programing will be centered around Data
manipulation, i.e. collecting, sorting, and reporting on this data to
myself.....

I want to know which language you find most compelling to accomplish
my mission. It may be that it doesn't have anything at all to do with
the language, from my understanding they are close to equal, but
everyone I come in contact with prefer C# over VB.net

The one thing that hasn't been mentioned, that I saw, is the direction that
Microsoft is pushing the languages towards in 2.0. The last time I went to
a presentation on this, which was a while ago, each language had been given
a particular focus.

The focus for VB.Net in 2.0 was to be the rapid application development
platform. They include the My.* heirarchy to allow for quick access to
various items... basically instant help. I believe that it also had
slightly better support, in the development UI, for developing forms, but I
could be misremembering.

The focus for C# was on back end business processing. As such it came with
facilities for assisting coding with standard Gang of Four patterns and the
ability to refactor code quite easily.

The focus for Managed C++ was for 'down and dirty' close to the framework,
fast as possible, type work.

Based on what you've said above, sounds like C# in 2.0 is better suited for
your likes and dislikes. But that's just a guess. And my recollection of
things may be off, as well as things may have changed.

--
Reginald Blue
"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my
telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my
telephone."
- Bjarne Stroustrup (originator of C++) [quoted at the 2003
International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces]

 

[Cor Ligthert]

"Massimo"

A nested procedure with six depth levels is a crime anyway

You wrote that you never tried VBNet. You should try that, you would not
believe your eyes when you see how nice that is arranged by the IDE and how
good readable your programs become by nesting something even 10 or 12 (or
more) deep.

Just my thougth

Cor

 

[Howard Swope]

All .Net languages are very similar because they ultimately produce the same
intermediate language and use the same application services. I have only
heard of (never experienced myself) a handful of capabilities in one that
doesn't exist in the other. That being said, each language is syntactically
different and has SUBTLE nuances that would be more appropriate to one
application or another. So if you really want to split hairs that is the
place to look.

You also may want to consider the possibility of if you will ever have to
look at legacy code. You might want the syntax you are familiar with to be
similar to what you are likely to encounter. Is it more likely to be C/C++
or VB?

Most serious commercial software and operating systems are written in C /
C++ with a little assembler thrown in. Other proprietary software written
for business and engineering has been written in dozens of languages,
PASCAL, FORTRAN, COBOL, ADA, SMALL TALK, POWER BUILDER, DELPHI, to name a
few. Most Microsoft applications and technologies that provide for scripting
support VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) a form of VB.

When it comes down to it all languages let you do the same thing, create and
access data structures and control the flow of logic. It will boil down to a
personal preference. For me C / C++ has always been the coolest thing
around. C# is a natural extension of this. It brings a lot of the niceties
of the higher level language to the syntax that is familiar to me. I think
also C# is the favored language of those who created .Net which is always
something to consider. The older you get the harder it is to be cool. You
might as well get it while you can.

 

[Guest]

I agree on this. Languages are only a thin "layer" to learn on top of the
..NET Framework beast.

I'd go it a step farther and say that programming languages are only a thin
layer on top of programming concepts. Once you get proficient at the
underlying logic of writing code, it becomes merely a matter of a few days to
learn syntax and some good reference books to become functional in a new
language.

 

[Carlos J. Quintero [.NET MVP]]

I tend to agree with that too, but modern languages (products?) come with
huge frameworks (class libraries) that you need to master too to avoid
reinventing the wheel while programming, so, yes, programming concepts
(structured, object-oriented) are important but class libraries too. So,
finally the syntax is almost irrelevant...

--
Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio .NET, VB6, VB5 and VBA
You can code, design and document much faster.
Free resources for add-in developers:
http://www.mztools.com

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

I tend to agree with that too, but modern languages (products?) come with
huge frameworks (class libraries) that you need to master too to avoid
reinventing the wheel while programming, so, yes, programming concepts
(structured, object-oriented) are important but class libraries too. So,
finally the syntax is almost irrelevant...

ACK. However, often programming languages live longer than class
libraries... The stronger a programming language is tied to a certain
framework, the harder it will be to migrate the code to a new framework.

Consider VB's intrinsic functions -- some of these functions exist (with
slight adaptions) since early versions of BASIC and can still be used. I
see these functions as meta-framework which abstracts from the framework
currently used, and thus prefer these functions over corresponding
functionality which is part of the .NET Framework Class Library.

The implication from that is that I believe that programming languages
(syntax and meta-frameworks) are more than "sugar".

Just my two Euro cents...