Advice Required - Vb or Not VB (or even .NET)

[Guest]

- C# is more aimed at the profession

I don't think Microsoft has made that statement.

- C# allows pointers which can come in handy

True, but very limited use in a managed language

- C syntax requires less typing

Debatable ... case sensitivity and curly brackets are not condusive to
human readability, so it can be argued VB.NET code is cheaper to maintain
;-)

 

[Michael C]

I don't think Microsoft has made that statement.

Of course not but they most definately absolutely have done exact that. eg
C# doesn't have an option strict statement.

True, but very limited use in a managed language

That is true although if you do need it one day you are stuck. Something as
simple as modifying a bitmap requires pointers (well it can be done in VB
but at much slower rate as data has to be copied to an array).

Debatable ...

Not really. There are less keystrokes required in C#.
"dim x as int" vs "int x;"
"implements" vs ":"
"function" vs ""
"end if", "next", "Wend", "End Function", "End Sub" etc vs "}"

case sensitivity and curly brackets are not condusive to
human readability,

I find it more readable myself.

so it can be argued VB.NET code is cheaper to maintain
;-)

Considering most sample code you download is C# and most of the community is
using C# I would think C# code would be cheaper to maintain.

Michael

 

[Michael C]

Pointers is the only major difference I see between the two languages ...

There's a lot more differences than that

and there are very limited situations where you'll want to use pointers in
a managed langauge.

Still, why restrict yourself?

 

[Tom Shelton]

I don't think Microsoft has made that statement.


True, but very limited use in a managed language

I agree with both the above for the most part, but I have used
pointers in C# before. Of course, that was when I was working on a
port of the venerable ncurses lib to mono

Debatable ... case sensitivity and curly brackets are not condusive to
human readability, so it can be argued VB.NET code is cheaper to maintain
;-)

Case sensivity rocks. In fact, the non-case sensitive nature of VB is
primarily why I don't use it. I have to use stupid prefixes, like _,
to differentiate member variables from properties, etc. Drives me
nuts. Besides, if you ask me since VS 2005, I find the C# editor MORE
productive then the VB.NET editor. There's nothing more obnoxious
then that stupid background compile VB.NET is always doing. Sure, it
gives you "instant" feed back for some kinds of syntax errors - but,
it sure can bring the system to a halt on a large project.