For a company, C# or VB.

[Scott Meddows]

We are throwing around the idea of not having a company standard language at my company (Which I'm not too thrilled about). I was
wondering of anyone knew of any articles that they could post to me about why a company should or should not. Also, if you could
Email me with if your company enforces a standard or not then I would appreciate it.

Thanks
Scott

 

[Lucas Tam]

We are throwing around the idea of not having a company standard
language at my company (Which I'm not too thrilled about). I was
wondering of anyone knew of any articles that they could post to me
about why a company should or should not. Also, if you could Email me
with if your company enforces a standard or not then I would
appreciate it.

When it comes to .NET it doesn't matter which language you use - some
prefer C# others prefer VB.NET.

There are always people who will say one is better than another - but
there is no real merit to those comments.

Last week, there was a similar dicussion, one poster said C# is better
because it has a better "name" than VB.NET. VB.NET carries some negative
connotations from prior versions and VB.NET attracts developers not as
skilled as C# developer - but I personally think it's hooey - there are
bad developers of both languages.

So just choose whichever langauage you're most comfortable with. Perhaps
survey your department and ask them which langauge they prefer.

BTW, there are other .NET languages too such as J#, Python, and Perl : )

 

[smith]

And Eifel ... before you laugh, you gotta admit that it's cool for
ultra-ComputerScience geeks, and it's the only Fully-OOP language that was
there with .Net from the very beginning. I may be wrong but I believe I
heard that Bertrand Meyer, the creator of Eiffel, was on the stage with Mr.
Gates at the .Net kickoff. More I think of it, it may still be the only
Fully OOP language unless there is a SmallTalk.Net I missed. ;-)

http://www.eiffel.com/products/envsn/

Joke (maybe): look closely at the free download option and see that if you
get the trial you get a version that lasts forever and that can be used for
non-commercial work. Does corporate in-house development equal "commercial"
work? I always wondered about that. ;-)


But to the point... in my experience, a VB6 dev with good VB-OOP experience
will usually find the move to VB.Net about the same as the move from DAO/RDO
to ADO, hard at first but completely doable. Gotta compare that to all the
professional and excellent guru-level VB devs who have been swearing for
years that "This is the year I will become a true Master of C++".

And how many C++ or Java Devs would condescend to becoming knows as a "VB
user"

A company can't ignore the real-world power of letting devs use a familiar
syntax... Microsoft didn't.

Robert Smith
Kirkland, WA
www.smithvoice.com

 

[Scott Meddows]

It's not an issue about which language is better (Since it's all being compiled to MSIL anyway)... The question was about having a
standard language in the company and if anyone has had any issues where there wasn't a standard language and developers used C# and
VB

And of course the survey question about "Does your company have a standard language?" =)

 

[pf]

Go with C#, there's too much typing involved for VB and lots of curly braces
and punctuation marks look cool.

Paul

 

[smith]

Eifell aside, my post wasn't a joke and did apply to the question. It's not
only a question of tech, it's an old-time management question. It's
generically about Tools: VB forced to C# or Mac forced to PC or any other
down the years.

As a person with experience setting Tool Rules, I can offer that setting a
standard can be and usually is more cost effective because it simplifies
most everything. You know exactly what you're looking for in future
candidates, you have more focused support needs and tasks are more easily
managed because eveyone is literally "speaking the same language". Hands
down, from the accounting side it can be a win.

However Technical people in Management positions sometimes forget that
spreadsheets don't always show the real bottom-line. I offer that that a
company will do well to consider the backgrounds of the expert workers on
staff before making a sweeping mandate that affects the most used tools for
their jobs. If a primary tool (language) is chosen for them and the choice
is set in stone overnight and a percentage of the workers are going to be
less productive (due to concept/syntax experience or the very real problem
in this particular industry of "religious fervor") then the company has to
take that into account as a real and true Risk. Every company has a
different set of workers so there is unfortunately no blanket answer.

Losing 20% of your workers, either because they leave or because they still
collect paychecks but are less interested in doing their jobs well, is a
valid corporate concern and it should be part of Management's decision. But
in any company looking at that Risk it usually can help to get the staff
together and at least try to make them feel like they are a part of the
final decision, that may be helpful for keeping some of the good ones even
if they have to switch.

Just an opinion.

Smith

 

[W.G. Ryan eMVP]

Since you can use both languages in a Single solution - I see absolutely no
benefit to standardizing. Let people use what they like - C# and VB.NET in
the same solution compiles just fine.

--
W.G. Ryan MVP (Windows Embedded)

TiBA Solutions
www.tibasolutions.com | www.devbuzz.com | www.knowdotnet.com

It's not an issue about which language is better (Since it's all being

compiled to MSIL anyway)... The question was about having a

standard language in the company and if anyone has had any issues where

there wasn't a standard language and developers used C# and

VB

And of course the survey question about "Does your company have a standard language?" =)

 

[Lucas Tam]

A company can't ignore the real-world power of letting devs use a
familiar syntax... Microsoft didn't.

Here is a list of .NET languages:

http://www.startvbdotnet.com/dotnet/languages.aspx

 

[smith]

I'll be danged ... SmallTalk.Net.

.... Well, it's listed as supported but I guess I'll have to keep looking for
a real release. S#, a subset/dialect apparently made with MS cooperation
shows it's last "pre-release" mention back in May. Other than that... high
hits show VisualWorks "supports .Net" because it can consume web services.

Maybe for a new post to a different group

Thanks Lucas.

-smith

 

[Ken Halter]

And how many C++ or Java Devs would condescend to becoming knows as a "VB
user"

That's very true but... don't go there bub <g>. I can't count the number of
C++ "hotshots" I've basically "chased" out of the company I work for. While
they're in their meetings discussing the pros and cons of using == vs =, I'm
out at my desk getting the job done by pumping out VB code that works just
fine. btw, VB wasn't responsible for all of those nasty security holes we're
constantly patching ;-)

See the "And the bad code is?" section of this article (last paragraph)

RAD is not productivity
http://www.danappleman.com/index.php?p=4

 

[Cor Ligthert]

Scott,

Maybe you can see this thread wherein you was involved with almost the same
question as yours.
http://groups-beta.google.com/group..._frm/thread/72d2fcc950b14401/e521122e8e796a49

Cor

 

[smith]

Mr. Appleman is always a voice worth hearing, Thanks Ken. (php pages ...
shows he's also still an unbiased voice)

-smith

 

[Samuel R. Neff]

For an individual company, I think it is important to have a standard
that all projects. The client i'm with right now uses VB.NET and when
the idea of using C# comes up I totally support VB.NET because it's
the standard, even though I personally prefer C#.

Reasons for making a standard center around source code and knowledge
reuse. Of course you can use a compiled DLL from any .NET language
with any other .NET language, it's beneficial for projects written
within a single company to be the same language. That way if you need
to move employees around to different applications, there's no issue
with having them adjust to a different language (which is an issue for
some programmers--even though the two are similar). Also other
application serve as a knowledge base for development--if one
developers needs to do something similar that was done in another
application, they can easily read the code and understand it. Of
course they shouldn't copy any code (use cross application shared
DLL's for that with a central source repository), but reuse as a guide
for similar situations is common, particularly for new developers.

As far as to choose C# or VB, that's always a heated discussion.
Personally, I'd choose C#. The C# debugger is better related to
unhandled exceptions, the language is more compact, it uses industry
standard terms and not MS made up stuff for pre-existing concepts
(static vs shared, sealed vs notinheritable, virtual vs overridable,
etc). VB.NET forces you to load an additional DLL even if you don't
use it (the compiler adds stuff that does, even if you don't want it
to). Also, more examples exist in C# than VB.NET and there are
generally more advanced books for C# than there are for VB.NET (and
indication of authors and editors perception related to the
languages--which is also a reflection on many employers perception).

Just my $0.02.

Sam

 

[Guest]

There is no difference on performance.
But in VS.NET development environment, VB.NET is smater, it can almost tell
all grammer error, for ex, vb will tell you are using a variable you didn't
define. C# can't do that until you do compiling code.