Discussion on:

Achieve pure .NET development with VB.NET

What conscious decisions have you made to use or limit the use of VB-specific extensions to Visual Studio .NET in the development of your applications?

This article might have been of interest 2 years ago. Give me a break. Do you think anyone thinks they HAVE to go to C#? They don't understand everything compiles to MSIL?

Your topics are so boring. The minute I see your face as the author (Iclick over from .NET wire) I close the window.

Please stop rehasing topics from years past.

I read the article after I wrote the comment. It points out issues with VB.NET compatability libraries. But look at the DOTNETWIRE lead:

Developers are often confused by the choice of C# or VB.NET for .NET development. Most, mistakenly, think C#is the only viable choice. However, VB.NET and C# are built on the same foundation, so either is acceptable.

How stupid is this? This has been discussed a 1000 times. Maybe your problem is bad marketing.

I switched to C# not so much for technological reasons, but consistency.

The C# community has well-defined standards that they FOLLOW. Pick up any C# book, read any C# article, all of the conventions - how they name their variables, how they use certain language constructs - are consistent.

The VB community, unfortunately, is saddled with the curse of variable naming conventions, prefixes of "s" versus "str", "m_" versus "m" for member variables, "$,%", - it's just refreshing to see a little bit of discipline. C# is also less verbose, and once I master some of the more common techniques (delegates and applying well-established design patterns), I am sure it will be the correct choice for me.

But no religious zealotry or technological arrogace here - VB has been and I'm sure will continue to be a viable and effective tool for many years to come.

David

Sorry, totally disagree with you.

I'd rather write:

For i = 1 To 10
If i=3 Then
...
End If
Next 'i

than:

for(i=0 i=10; i++){
if(i==3){
...
}
}

Which syntax do you figure takes more time to pick up and is easier to read (assuming you have same amount of experience with both languages)? I programmed with Java and C++ for years and when I switched to VB, I had objections. (I still remember all the nasty bugs that occurred when I used = instead of ==) VB.Net offers everything C# does now (delegates, OO structures too), but with more english-like syntax that is easier to remember and follow.

Also, there are well established naming standards many companies use with VB... and most of these are supposed to be language independent... such as the Hungarian notation (str prefix for example). I prefer m_ for member variables because it is easier to pick out the scope. (m_strName vs. mstrName).

Anyway, simply my opinion.