Future of VB.Net

[asommer]

Sorry for my rhetorical question.
As in my country all the vacancies are on C#.Net
If you are VB.Net developer it's hard to find something ( almoust impossible )
As I know those 2 languages are almoust same by difficulty.
So, may be in future microsoft will leave only one of them ( only C# )?
What are you thinking about ( or may be even know )?

[Shaggy Hiker]

It has been debated at length over in General Programming. In many places, the pay for a C# dev can be higher than for a VB dev, though there is no sound reason for that. However, MS sells lots of copies of VS. For them, the question is probably one of abandoning a sector of their developer base versus continuing that sector. The only advantage they would see from abandoning VB would be the savings in their own internal teams, if any. The cost would be the alienation of a set of coders. Which makes more sense? I would say that they won't abandon VB, but others might feel otherwise.

[SJWhiteley]

Since MS has spent a lot of time integrating VB into the XNA framework and the MF (Micro framework), I don't think VB is going away in the near future.

[DickGrier]

I, too, doubt that MS will abandon Visual Basic. There are far too many developers using it. And, while the adoption of VB by new programmers is lower than that of C# -- it really isn't that much lower, regardless of what you read in the popular press. The fact (IMO?) is that large organizations are more likely to standardize on C#, while smaller ones will be divided. And, smaller organizations far outnumber large ones.

Dick

[techgnome]

I think the industry will give up on VB long before MS does. More and more organizations are moving to C# mainly because there are more C/C++ programmers out there, so the transition is fairly simple. Other organizations are moving to C# because if they have to train their staff on something new anyways, just make the cut over.

This has some side effects... VB jobs are become scarcer. VB developers are become scarcer. What VB-related jobs are left... are starting to pay better. I've been lucky. All of my jobs over the last 20 years have all been VB, starting with VB3. That said, there's a common theme through all of the jobs that's made me sought after as a resource... Oddly, it's SQL. While I don't think my SQL skills are nearly as strong as my VB skills, it seems that I can pull data out of places where the data has no place being.

Ultimately, it's not if you know VB.NET or C#.NET (the framework is the framework, is the framework) ... but it's also the ancillary skills that can also make you an asset. Where I'm at now, it's been 90% SQL ... very little VB. Even if we were to switch to C# as a standard, I know enough to make the transition.

-tg

[Grunt]

I don't understand why a c# developer would get paid more than a vb .net developer. Doesn't make sense. Both languages are just as powerful as the other and they both get compiled down to the same MSIL. I don't think they would abandon vb .net, there are a lot of developers using it still. If they do though, I will just switch over to c#.

[Shaggy Hiker]

There has long been a perception, which I could document if needed, that VB was not a 'real' language, whereas C/C++ was. This perception has been coloring the industry for decades, and I expect that it is at the heart of the difference in pay between the two.

[Sitten Spynne]

Sometimes reality is irrational. Whether you think a VB position should have the same salary as a C# position doesn't matter; it comes down to what the person setting the salary believes.

Historically, VB is a victim of its own success. Its goal was to be much easier to use than C++, its dream was to be so easy people unfamiliar with programming concepts could pick it up. It excelled at both goals and the latter is its doom.

Programming's hard work. If you were choosing a brain surgeon, which would you prefer: a surgeon who has a detailed diagram of your brain and can describe every cut he'll make or the guy who responds to your questions by saying, "One minute..." and typing the question into a search engine? This is an accidental virtue of C++: you have to know what you're doing to get anything complex done therefore it culls the bad programmers fairly quickly. VB let these programmers fake it. And fake it they did. It doesn't take much thought to decide there's probably more bad programmers than good programmers, and VB's easy nature means the bad programmers flocked to it in unprecedented numbers.

So suppose you're shopping for racecars. Car A is an exotic Italian car that several famous race drivers have used to win races this year, but it's temperamental. You'll have to take a 4-month course before driving it. Car B is an exotic Italian car with no training requirements and 4 drivers have won consistently using it, but so far 25 drivers have suffered mechanical failures mid-race and did not finish. One was a fatal accident. Which do you want more, A or B? Does the extra cost of training for A seem acceptable compared to the failure rate of B? This is why C# commands a higher salary: C-style languages don't have the unfair history that VB has. A lot of employers see hiring a VB developer as a risk, and part of the risk mitigation is offering a lower salary. For the record, I feel like bad C# programmers are about as available as bad VB6 programmers used to be, but that's skewed considering most of the worst VB6 programmers are still using VB6.

It is my opinion if your goal is to learn one language for the entirety of your career you've already made a poor decision. Aim to learn a new language every year. It's fine to *specialize* in a language and have a job that uses only one, but you never know when something disruptive is going to change the game and pigeon-hole your career. My advice to people looking for employment in the next 3-5 years? You'll be sorry if you ignore HTML 5 and JavaScript, and it's very valuable to have Java/C# knowledge. Ruby's pretty sweet too. Everything else is gravy; once you've learned four languages you can pick up whatever you need to get a job. If you don't want to commit to continuous learning, then the answer is a thinly veiled insult: VB6 is the perfect language for you.

[techgnome]

"VB's easy nature means the bad programmers flocked to it in unprecedented numbers." -- I'm not sure if I want to agree with this or take offense at it... so I'll agree with it and be offended at the same time. When it comes to bad habits, there's a fair amount of blame to go around... it's not just the fault of the language. Any language can be abused. It just so happens that the verbosity and looseness of VB facilitates these bad habits. At the same time, VB is perfectly capably of running very tight, highly efficient code.

there is nothing wrong with focusing on a single language... most of us generally have to do that... but don't focus on one to the exclusion of all others. Conversely, don't try to take on so many that you can't focus on one when you need to. That's why my javascript skills are so shoddy sometimes - OH speaking of which... I know I've written some pretty bad JS code before that could probably rival some of the worst VB code too... -- I've chosen to concentrate on VB as my primary language... it's not that I can't do JS, it's just that it's super ancillary to me... it's something I use in my own time on my own websites... same with PHP too... but ask me to try to build something with a shopping cart or forums, or security... ummm, yeah, I can't do it... but need a check book system or an A/R system in VB? Done... THAT I can do.

-tg

[Shaggy Hiker]

One other point is that MS used VBA for Office macros beginning with Excel95. Since VBA was the same syntax as VB4-5-6, there was nearly interchangeable knowledge between macro coders and stand alone windows app coders. This greatly increased the drawing pool for VB. I, myself, moved to VB5 after writing some macros in Excel95 (which were re-writes of macros written in Quattro Pro, which resembled ASM of all things, but that's another story). I learned C++ on my own as a hobby. Had I more normal hobbies, it is possible that I would only know VB.

[Sitten Spynne]

"VB's easy nature means the bad programmers flocked to it in unprecedented numbers." -- I'm not sure if I want to agree with this or take offense at it... so I'll agree with it and be offended at the same time. When it comes to bad habits, there's a fair amount of blame to go around... it's not just the fault of the language. Any language can be abused. It just so happens that the verbosity and looseness of VB facilitates these bad habits. At the same time, VB is perfectly capably of running very tight, highly efficient code.

VB6 is probably a better language than C++ for most tasks in the long run. What I meant by "bad programmers flocked" is more easily explained with analogy (boy I love those!)

Suppose there are two chisels available. The first is a plain old chisel: spend years perfecting your craft and you can produce art on the level of the great masters. The second is a magic chisel: tell it what you want it to make and it carves out a rough facsimile for you that pales in comparison to a master's work. The magic chisel can be used as a normal chisel as well; a master can work much faster by starting from the rough outline produced by the magic and refining it. Much argument exists as to whether the end result is tainted by use of the magic.

Now consider a project that needs 10,000 statues. You've got 10,000 workmen available: perfect! Statistically, you know there's only about 100 master craftsmen within the crowd but you can't tell them from the others. If you hand out 10,000 plain old chisels, you're going to get 100 masterpieces and 9,900 abominations. Hand out 10,000 magic chisels, and you'll get 100 masterpieces and 9,900 passable statues. Let people choose their chisel, and I bet you'll hand out at least 9,900 magic chisels. The masters know the tool doesn't matter so much as the technique; the journeymen believe the tool holds power.

That's the comparison of C++ to VB in my view. Both are capable of art when wielded by an expert with discipline. Both are capable of atrocities when wielded recklessly. But the average person is going to get a heck of a lot farther with VB (the magic chisel) than they will with C++ over any period of time. That doesn't mean the end result of a novice with VB is as desirable as the results of an expert. If you ask random Joe programmer if he'd rather write an app in VB or C++, he's going to pick VB. This is why I feel like there was a high density of low-quality VB code: only a true fool would choose a project he cannot deliver *and* a tool he cannot use. Had VB been as unapproachable as C++ I feel these people would have not taken up programming at all. Whether this was good or bad is debatable and strongly influenced by whether you've encountered the results of a talentless hack.

there is nothing wrong with focusing on a single language... most of us generally have to do that... but don't focus on one to the exclusion of all others. Conversely, don't try to take on so many that you can't focus on one when you need to.

I agree so long as you agree that excluding all other languages is folly.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Nice analogy. Where did you ever pull THAT one out of? Chisels?

Still, it IS a good analogy.

[David Anton]

Just hedge your bets and be proficient in both.
They are only different in style - apart from style, there is very little that you can do in one that you can't do in the other.

Also, be aware that historically programming languages are at most only really popular for about 10-20 years before interest begins to drop off. In 10 years from now I'd be surprised if either C# or VB were very popular. If you keep your chops up it doesn't matter.