Microsoft doesn't want you to use VB .Net

  • Thread starter Thread starter Homer J Simpson
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H

Homer J Simpson

I am coming to the conclusion that Microsoft doesn't want you to use VB
..Net, based on my experiences. I've downloaded the Express version and
signed up for various support options etc. At every turn I have found the
whole experience frustrating, involving endless non functioning software,
broken links, incomprehensible and irrelevant information, examples that
don't work, help files that don't help and a complete lack of any sort of
reasonable support.

I see no benefit in trying to carry on with this effort, and intend to
reload VB 6.0 and use that instead. At least it works (mostly) and makes
sense.

H
 
VB.Net 2003 works fine and I'm sure VB.Net 2005 will also "eventually".
Programming in VB 6.0 will probably result in a lot of problems down the road
as I'm sure M'soft will not support it much longer.

Also, you might be more satisfied with the Standard or Pro versions of VB.Net.
 
If I had a megaphone, I might say: "step away from the computer" and have
you take a break, then think about what vb.net is and why youre frustrated
with it.

vb.net is object oriented. its powerful. its a revolution in computer
science.

it takes hard work to shift from VB6 to vb.net so realize that all of us
who catch up, had to work hard. Ive programmed with it, learned the hard
way, and after x years of software engineering had to take 2 college
semester courses in vb.net just to be able to start using it right. I
started the 'basic' series in qbasic, and jumped in with VB4 then 5, 6 and
was struggling to grasp .net in 2002. its still a learning curve.

There is no "non functioning software" vb.net is a revolution in computer
science. You have to think like Java and C++. vb.net is advanced and its
hard to learn, it takes time.

It reminds me of people who fixed vacuum tube tv sets, then the new
transistor sets came out? some couldnt grasp transistors and stayed with
tube only. In cars, some people couldnt learn smog controls, oh those are
so stupid, all the hoses and wires, why bother.
 
If I had a megaphone, I might say: "step away from the computer" and have
you take a break, then think about what vb.net is and why youre frustrated
with it.

vb.net is object oriented. its powerful. its a revolution in computer
science.

it takes hard work to shift from VB6 to vb.net
Click to expand...

That's not my complaint. My complaint is that the whole procedure of trying
to upgrade has been frustrated by stunningly inept efforts on the part of
Microsoft to provide support for such migration. I doubt that they have ever
actually tried to step through the process themselves or had a test group
try to do this while someone took notes. It's a sloppy disorganized mess,
and those involved should be ashamed.
 
Do you mean upgrade your existing VB6 code into .net?

I really dont see the problem, you must re-write the majority of the
application in .net using OO priniples. What upgrade?

And Im told there is talk of a new version of VB to support the old VB6
users who dont want to migrate to OOP. (or are not able to grasp it)

I had to transition and have others also transition, its the cost of doing
business, but can you give an example(s) of something thats not being done
right? Its very possible I missed what youre describing
 
Do you mean upgrade your existing VB6 code into .net?
Click to expand...

No. I'm talking about getting to "Hello World" without finding code that
won't compile, links that are broken, training materials which drift off
into irrelevancy.
I really dont see the problem, you must re-write the majority of the
application in .net using OO priniples. What upgrade?

And Im told there is talk of a new version of VB to support the old VB6
users who dont want to migrate to OOP. (or are not able to grasp it)
Click to expand...

I'm quite familiar with OOP -- and CASE for that matter.
I had to transition and have others also transition, its the cost of doing
business, but can you give an example(s) of something thats not being done
right? Its very possible I missed what youre describing
Click to expand...

Perhaps you were luckier than me. I'm used to dealing with the odd quirk or
obstacle. This far exceeds that.
 
Well like I said, I had to take 2 semester courses on vb.net, a language I
was familiar with and developed in for business? and only now am really a
beginner. And I used to work with punched cards... I was upset at the
vb6 to .net change at first, then one day it made sense. I hope that same
joy and fulfillment comes your way soon.

Its been my experience that there are great links and examples, but the ones
with video tutorials are best IMO. If you visit the
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/ website? You will find the newest
training, for free. Its too awesome.

If you know OO, then vb.net should be a huge relief, easier to code than vb6

The only tech docs that were bad, that Ive found so far, were on the subject
of delegates, but I gave feedback and MSDN responded with some improvements.
Delegates are so hard to learn, there is no training. You have to simply
already understand them and use them. Delegates are so hard to understand
you have to actually create a parallel universe where you already know how
they work. Then the documentation makes sense. Worked for me.
 
Hi...

Like most developers of my generation I had my first contact with
computers with BASIC... some 20 years ago.

When I started coding in BASIC the most powerful systems were developed
using COBOL, Fortran, Algol, etc...

(If you want to know a little bit more about it take a look at my
blog... at http://pjondevelopment.50webs.com/)

Anyway... Back then all you had to do to program in BASIC was pull up a
chair, sit on your computer and (usually) start typing something
like...

2 CLS
10 PRINT "Hello World!"
20 GOTO 10

Hehe... It was easy... :-P

As I grew older BASIC grew up with me... It overcome many obstacles in
its way. It left the ugly spaghetti programing, to become a procedural
language... when you need to type something like:

Sub Main()
While (True)
Print "Hello World!"
Wend
End Sub

Then BASIC became an event-oriented programming (as of Visual Basic 1.0
for DOS -- I still have the Install :-) Where you'd need to type
something like

Sub Button_Click()
MsgBox "Hello World!"
End Sub

And for quite some time it was a event-oriented language... regarded as
a second level language for many C programmers that like their curly
brackets and their ugly syntax.

The difficulty to develop software was ever increasing as the time went
by. Computers got twice as much power every six months... Moore's Law
were obeyed more than Gravity's Law.

BASIC wasn't keeping up with the demands of this new era... Many saw
the end of BASIC as certain as death and taxes...

But then in 2001 Microsoft presented us with VB.NET...

It was not the BASIC everyone knew... yet, it was a familiar ground...
something that we understand... we knew we could Master.

The learning curve was not that steep... but there was a learning
curve. It takes time. We need to learn how to do simple things once
more... but it was good... it was fun...

And that's what everything is about... FUN!

Sure thing... A lot of us code for money... but a great deal more code
because it's FUN! (and if we are paid for doing this... it is even
better :-)

If you code for some time you know what I am talking about...

With VB.NET we need to learn about Classes, Interfaces, Polymorphism,
Overloads, Shadows, Inheritance, etc, etc, etc...

So many new things were thrown so hard at us that many of us had a very
hard time adjusting themselves. But we managed to learn everything we
need to know.

Now... if you want to write that "Hello World" program now with VB.NET
2005, all you have to do is:

Module HelloWorld
Sub Main()
Do While (True)
System.Console.WriteLine("Hello World!")
Loop
End Sub
End Module

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention... we can build console application again
now too.. :-)

Regards,

PJ
 
if you want some good guidance and especially if you are a VB6 programmer
moving to VB.Net i would recomend "Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .Net "
by Francesco Balena ( Microsoft Press ) this book has it all clear examples
of everything there is to know ( the 2005 versions comes out in middle
january )

maybe you know francesco`s book already from the VB6 world ( programming
Microsoft visual basic 6.0 ) these books are the official core references so
anyone who is serious about programming in VB should have them on his book
shelf


this book wil be a reall money saver as you will discover ( i never followed
courses , and i am working as a pro programmer , the core reference , the
self paced training kit , and a MSDN subscription was enough for me )

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]
 
Isn't this discussion 5 years old?

Sounds to me like you are still running an early beta of VS2005.
Otherwise I cannot recognize your problems.

If you can only work with full, F5-able samples, go download
something like
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/downloads/101samples/default.aspx

If you are serious about development, what are you doing with the
Express editions? If you are spending valuable time learning a new
development tool, wouldn't you rather learn it using the full version
rather than a cut-down one? Otherwise you would have to go through
a lot of the same stuff again when you move to real development tasks.

I am sure that the Express editions are fine for learning basic (pun
intended) programming skills, but I would not expect to be able to
load and run all the samples I could find on the web.

As for VB6: I used VB4-6 for 8 years and loved it. Whatever I hit the
wall, I could usually solve my problems by making calls directly to
the Win32 API. Nowadays, when I open one of my old VB6 projects,
it feels like a toy language and it takes me quite a while to get my
head into VB6 mode in order to do something productive.

But I'll stop now: Seeing that you are posting anonymously in a
group like this, I presume you are just a troll.

/JB
 
First for love; then for a few friends; eventually for money.

All of us have had different paths to .NET, but almost all of us agree
that the destination has been worth reaching.

Yes, the MSDN .NET BCL documentation lacks something (namely cogent
examples; it would also be nice if the constructor lists showed more
than types; etc.), but if memory serves, the early MFC was (dare I say)
worse -- much worse.

The encapsulation of common WinAPI functions, the wealth of simple and
consistent forms controls (is it caption? is it label? no, it is
*always* Text now), the consistency of event handler code, generics,
etc. etc. etc. All of these are good things.

Throw into the mix type safety, code-access security, simplified
licensing, etc. and you have a really great set of tools with which to
write almost any application.

Yes, change can be painful, but in this case, the rewards far outweigh
the costs. Who ever dreamed of the day when you could write a Windows
application, a web application, an XML web service, a COM+
application,... all in the same language without having to import all
sorts of byzantine Win32 structures, without having to import a lot of
win32 dll functions, etc.? The destination is well worth the effort.

Now, if we could just get Microsoft to make all of the features in
VB.NET and C#.NET the same (anonymous delegates, the wonderful default
keyword, etc.) then life would be even better...
 
Homer,

There is told that the current situation with MSDN is one of the major goals
to improve soon.

In my opinion you are right at the moment, it is for me as well at the
moment terrible, while it was real good, if you keep in mind what ammount of
information is in it.

Just my thought,

Cor.
 
The problem isn't with VB.Net itself. The problem is with the lousy
configuration control on www.microsoft.com. There have been innumerable
times in the past where I have clicked a link on the MS web-site only to
have it go off into never-land. Sounds like the VB portions of the site are
being reorganized while on-line. Both the VB 2005 and VB 6 support links
are seriously broken.

Mike Ober.
 
ok. I rarely use the Microsoft site. Only the online documentation.

I always have complete copies of MSDN Library October 2001
(for my VS6 needs), MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2005, as well
as the latest version of MSDN Library (October 2005 at the moment)
installed locally on my machine.

For the rest of my research I use community sites and newsgroups.

If I need to figure out what the framework is doing under the hood,
I use .Net Reflector, which is a great study aid. I simply cannot
heap enough praise on this tool. Notice how I mention the use of
it in every other post I make :)

Then there are the books, articles, and open source projects: Whenever
I get hold of a book in pdf or chm format, it goes into a "Research"
folder (chm files are decompiled to html files). Web pages containing
interesting articles and source snippets are saved to this folder as
well. Finally, open source or public source (or what you care to call
them) projects are downloaded and unzipped to this folder.
I then use Copernic Desktop Search to search through all this stuff.
On my machine, Copernic is *only* configured to index files stored in
this folder, so if I want to see some uses of a specific .Net command,
I can just open Copernic Desktop Search and type the command,
which usually produces a number of results in various contexts.

So with all of the above, I have not had any need for the Microsoft
site - except when a Google result brings me directly to an article on
the site.

Which must be why any problems you might have experienced have
completely slipped under my radar.

Regards,

Joergen Bech
 
Joergen,
If I need to figure out what the framework is doing under the hood,
I use .Net Reflector, which is a great study aid. I simply cannot
heap enough praise on this tool. Notice how I mention the use of
it in every other post I make :)
Click to expand...
The problem I have with the use of tools as reflector is that we see that
they are often overused.

In my opinion has it in a normal situation no sence to gain some
milliseconds. The user is not fast enough for that. The way a program is
written and with that the maintainability is in my opinion much more
important.

Reflector should only be used if there are problems that cannot be overcome.

However that is my opinion.

Cor
 
Joergen,

The problem I have with the use of tools as reflector is that we see that
they are often overused.

In my opinion has it in a normal situation no sence to gain some
milliseconds. The user is not fast enough for that. The way a program is
written and with that the maintainability is in my opinion much more
important.

Reflector should only be used if there are problems that cannot be overcome.

However that is my opinion.
Click to expand...

That is why I said it was a great *study* aid. Although I do sometimes
use it to figure out what objects cause the least overhead, my main
use of it is to study how the framework classes are structured and fit
together. This provides some inspiration when I write my own classes
for tasks not directly supported in the framework.

I agree that for most tasks, there is no reason to look under the
hood. The implementation details might change, so optimizing for
the current CLR implementation might not be a good idea in the
long run.

But:

1) It is good to look at other people's code once in a while. Whether
through Reflector, the code produced by a colleague, or some open
source project. That way I am introduced to classes and collections
I have not stumbled across before in other contexts. At least when
looking at the framework through Reflector, I know that I am looking
at working production code - and learning a few things about the
framework at the same time.

2) I do a fair amount of graphics programming, which sometimes
requires writing highly optimized loops, caching calculations, and
so on and so forth. In those situations, I *do* care a lot about how
the compiler treats my code. Sometimes to the point where I rewrite
a loop in C (after prototyping/writing and debugging it in .Net, of
course:) ), and call it from managed code.

3) In some cases I might use the "wrong" constructor for an
object. When I look at it in Reflector, I might see that this
constructor calls another constructor (or uses an entirely
different class to do its work). If, that way, I find that the classes
used under the hood are more appropriate for my task, I'll
rewrite my code to use those classes directly. I consider this
to result in much cleaner code *provided* of course that it
does not mean writing *more* code.

Hope that makes it a bit clearer.

/JB
 
PJ on Development said:
Hi...

Like most developers of my generation I had my first contact with
computers with BASIC... some 20 years ago.

When I started coding in BASIC the most powerful systems were developed
using COBOL, Fortran, Algol, etc...
Click to expand...

I started with punch cards on an Elliot 503. First language was Algol 68.
Like I say, I've worked with many a buggy system, but my complaint with VB
..Net isn't the language, it's the abysmal Microsoft support. ISTM that they
rushed it out without really checking what they were doing. For example, the
DVD library software they use as an example accesses Amazon for data.
Unfortunately they screwed up the access system and it breaks on many of
Amazon's pages, something which is not handled. Now you wind up poking
around in poorly documented code trying to figure out what the error is. And
this is just one of many failures. If they had chosen simpler examples,
something which accessed stable pages for data, it would have been much more
helpful IMO.
 
But I'll stop now: Seeing that you are posting anonymously in a
group like this, I presume you are just a troll.
Click to expand...

I post anonymously from a deep desire to avoid solicitations to enlarge
various parts of my body - some of which body parts I do not have.

You should learn the difference between actual trolling and reasoned
complaints which are fully justified.
 
That is why I said it was a great *study* aid. Although I do sometimes
use it to figure out what objects cause the least overhead, my main
use of it is to study how the framework classes are structured and fit
together. This provides some inspiration when I write my own classes
for tasks not directly supported in the framework.
Click to expand...

When I was learning C I found the Mix debugger was almost magical in it's
ability to show you what the compiler was doing. I would still recommend
that combination to anyone learning C.
 
When I was learning C I found the Mix debugger was almost magical in it's
ability to show you what the compiler was doing. I would still recommend
that combination to anyone learning C.
Click to expand...

When I wrote my first game in machine code, I was writing it
on paper with the mnemonics to the left and the opcodes to
the right. I would then POKE the values into memory in a
FOR ... NEXT loop. Then I would save my work to tape
before I ran it (I would add new code below the previous,
finished work, hoping the game would be done before I hit
the bottom of the memory). If it crashed, I could only cry.

Later, when moving on to better hardware, I could actually
study dumps of the memory when something went wrong.
Well, sometimes ...

Ah, those were the days.

Wrong group. Better get back to VB now.

/JB
 
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