Is C Sharp the way to go ?

[Dallas Dahms]

Hi. Is C Sharp the way to go for learning dotnet programming, or would
VB.net be equally as rewarding to learn? My experience is limited to
BASIC and PYTHON programming.

Thanks.

Dallas

 

[Mark Rae]

Hi. Is C Sharp the way to go for learning dotnet programming, or would
VB.net be equally as rewarding to learn? My experience is limited to
BASIC and PYTHON programming.

You're actually quite fortunate in that you don't come from a Visual Basic
background The vast majority of "complaints" I hear from
dyed-in-the-wool VB programmers is that "it doesn't do it like that in
VB..." What they mean, of course, is that the .NET Framework doesn't do it
like VB does, because VB.NET syntax is actually extremely close to VB
syntax.

In many ways, it doesn't really matter what .NET language you start with
because the real learning curve is the .NET Framework itself. Your
background in BASIC and PYTHON will stand you in good stead as far as the
rudimentary concepts go - e.g. branching, looping, variables etc - but I
would strongly suggest that you get yourself a copy of Visual Studio.NET
2003 and then pick a language to start learning. You'll find that the vast
majority sample code available on the Web comes in both VB.NET and C#
versions, and also in C++ on MSDN.

Good luck!

 

[Publicjoe]

Hi Dallas,

Both languages are very similar and will produce the same results, If you
want ot get a quick overview of some of the language, I have tutorials for
both at my website, links in my signature. From here you can also look at
free chapters from lots of good books in the ebook pages of my signature.

As you have experience in neither language, have a look and take your pick.
If you want to have a go without shelling out money for either IDE, then in
the top of the c# tutorial is a page with links to all of the software you
need to get going for free.

Personally I like C#, but that is a persoanl preference as I come from a
C/C++ background.

Hope this helps

Publicjoe

C# Tutorial at http://www.publicjoe.f9.co.uk/csharp/tut.html
C# Snippets at http://www.publicjoe.f9.co.uk/csharp/snip/snippets.html
C# Ebook at http://www.publicjoe.f9.co.uk/csharp/samples/ebook.html
VB Tutorial at http://www.publicjoe.f9.co.uk/vbnet/vbnet.html
VB Ebook at http://www.publicjoe.f9.co.uk/vbnet/samples/ebook.html

Useful Articles at http://www.madsally.co.uk

 

[Carlos J. Quintero [.NET MVP]]

You can use whichever you want or like more. Being strict, there are some
very minor differences (operators, etc.) that will be removed in the next
2005 versions of the languages. Normally people coming from VB6 background
tend to use VB.NET and people coming from C++/Java backgrounds use C#. In
the .NET world languages are only a thin "layer" to write code, but the
actual difficulty is to understand and use properly 2 things:

- The huge .NET Framework library.
- The OOP concepts (inheritance, etc.) if you don´t have OOP experience.

So, you could even learn both languages, for example reading a couple of
books about .NET each one using a different language for the code samples,
which is what I did.

I have used VB.NET in the last years but for my last project I was told to
use C# and I haven´t found any problem after learning the keywords and
syntax used in C#. Using threads, TCP sockets, performance counters classes,
etc. from the .NET Framework was the actual difficulty.

--

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools 4.0: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio .NET
You can code, design and document much faster.
http://www.mztools.com