[RESOLVED] I'm starting over. Which language should I choose?

This is not meant to be a loaded question (posted on a VB forum; I just don't belong to any others.) It has been a long time since college when I had to learn VB, and I have forgotten a lot of what I learned. The only other coding that I ever did with any seriousness were scripts for IRC channels, but that too was a decade ago. I have looked over code through other languages like JavaScript, but in the end never really took time to sink my teeth in.

In other words, I did learn, but I've never done anything too complex outside of one project where I received a lot of help from tutorials and examples.

Now, I have several small projects (very small) that have been running through my head for a while now, and it's getting on my nerves not doing anything about them. The software that I was using before is far outdated (It probably would not even run in Windows 7,) so I am technically starting fresh.


I would like recommendations on the language that would be best for me. Of course it means hoping for relatively simple syntax (again, I do have knowledge; this isn't all foreign not me), and as I said before I am speaking only of little projects (automatic countdown, special calculators, maybe macro design as a little more complex.) Naturally, it needs to be free software if possible, if it means getting an older free version over a paid newer version since the projects are almost exclusively for me anyway.


So... if you wouldn't mind helping me, fire away!


And, of course, thank you in advance.

Unless you have a reason to do otherwise, I would suggest using either VB.NET or C#. If you have any VB6, VBA or VBScript experience then VB.NET will be at least partly familiar to you and the syntax is probably a bit easier for beginners to comes to terms with. The two languages are basically equivalent so either will do the job. If you want to be a professional developer then there are probably more opportunities in C# but, for the hobbyist, it makes almost no difference.

You can get the Express editions of the VB and C# IDEs for free from Microsoft. They are fully functional and place no limitations on what you can do with the software you produce with them. They are missing some of the bells and whistles of the paid-for editions but they are quite enough for your average hobbyist. Even some professionals use them. You can also get SQL Server Express for free, so you have a rather powerful database to work with too. I'd suggest the 2012 version in all cases.

Well there is always Microsoft's other .Net Basic too: http://smallbasic.com/


Macros? If you mean in Office that still limits you to VBA and VBScript. I'm not sure they'll ever get a serious number of people to wade through the labyrinth of .Net as an Office macro language. .Net's inherent planned obsolescene a.k.a. version churn gets in the way if nothing else. See:

Visual Studio Tools for Office FAQ Entry List

Question #1 is: "How many versions of Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) are there, and what are the differences between them?"

The VSTA/VSTO fiasco will probably die off and go away before too much longer.


I have no idea how suggesting SQL Server Express helps one bit. It's a snarly beast in its own right, sucks up PC resources, and deployment problems abound. For the kinds of things you mention doing Jet 4.0 (part of Windows) is probably far more than adequate.


Metro (now being called "Windows Store") makes a big push for JavaScript using HTML/HTML5 as a GUI:

Create your first Windows Store app using JavaScript

There are free tools right now, though I don't recall where Microsoft plans to go in this regard. I'm ignoring Metro after a few bouts with it, and if things go well it'll die out by the time Windows 9 rolls around. It is entirely fad-driven anyway, based on trying to compete in the phone/tablet/consumer market more than anything else.

One other consideration would be the projects that are running through your head. Are they projects intended for a desktop computer? For a web-based system? For a smartphone app? In the first two cases, I think some flavor of .NET would give you the most power and support for your dollars (of which there would be $0.00 if you stick with the pretty good Express versions). However, in the latter case, I would say that something like Java would currently be superior. I'm not entirely sure about that, though. Win8 could change things. It's hard to bet on a horse that is starting so late in the race, but the concept of having such a tight link between desktop and mobile does make a fair amount of sense, so it might work. Basically, any choice you make for a mobile platform will probably turn out to be wrong in a couple years, whatever choice you make. .NET for the desktop seems like it will have a slightly longer shelf-life, but even there you can't be sure.

C# is pretty nice

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Originally Posted by jmcilhinney

Unless you have a reason to do otherwise, I would suggest using either VB.NET or C#. If you have any VB6, VBA or VBScript experience then VB.NET will be at least partly familiar to you and the syntax is probably a bit easier for beginners to comes to terms with.

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VB6 is what I had been using. It suited my needs with the belief that some things I wanted to create but couldn't were not due to limitations of the language or program.

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Originally Posted by jmcilhinney

If you want to be a professional developer...

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Nope... minimal hobbiest.

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Originally Posted by jmcilhinney

You can get the Express edition of the VB for free from Microsoft. I'd suggest the 2012 version in all cases.

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Thanks. I ran across them right before creating this topic. Seeing different editions was in part what conviced me to create it.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

Well there is always Microsoft's other .Net Basic too: http://smallbasic.com/

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Hmm.... I had never heard of that one before. It's probably worth a once-through.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

Macros? If you mean in Office that still limits you to VBA and VBScript.

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(I wonder why everyone first assumes M$ Office when you mention macros.) Macros are a way to complete pretty much any repetitive task in a much shorter way just with one or two key presses, a mouse jesture, a scheduled timer, or an easily-available button. The last is generally where my thinking lies.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

One other consideration would be the projects that are running through your head. Are they projects intended for a desktop computer? For a web-based system? For a smartphone app?

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All for desktop use. I barely use my smartphone even as a phone! LOL



I was already favoring .NET as my best option, but I didn't want to bias my topic by mentioning it right off. It sounds like the majority consensus (not just in this topic) agrees with me.

Other suggestions are still certainly welcome. I'll leave the topic open for a couple more days before "Resolving" it.

Thank you all for your suggestions and help.

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Originally Posted by VBDrone

(I wonder why everyone first assumes M$ Office when you mention macros.) Macros are a way to complete pretty much any repetitive task in a much shorter way just with one or two key presses, a mouse jesture, a scheduled timer, or an easily-available button. The last is generally where my thinking lies.

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Because you are on a VB-centric forum (though there are other languages discussed here). Macros are around in lots of things, but around here, whenever anybody mentions macros, they are generally talking about Office VBA macros. It's all just context.

Frankly, your definition of macro could also be a description of a program written in .NET. I would think that the definition would be better if you talked about a repetitive task within a certain piece of software, though that isn't strictly true, either, since a VBA macro can access things well outside the scope of the application it is running in. Still, I think that .NET is what you are looking for, and probably VB rather than C#, and you can call the result anything you want to, since the lines are decidedly blurred.

.Net FTW! Certainly if your doing basic desktop or web it's hard to see the argument for anything else. Java's a bit better at going cross platform but it doesn't sound like that's what you're after. C and it's derivatives are great if you want to get close to your hardware and squeeze every last cycle out of the cpu but, again, that's not what you're after from the sound of things. If you want to do mobile then you might as well flip a coin because none of us have a clue who's going to emerge as the leader there.

You haven't mentioned DBs but I would be inclined to agree with JM, I'd take SQL Express over Access (or Jet). Dilittante is right Jet is simpler to set up and, if used via access, readily gives you some simple tools to examine your data but SQLExpress isn't that dificult to get going with (not sure what Dilittante's experience was) and is more powerful and flexible in the long run. He's also right that it will suck a few more resources but at the level you're likely to use it I doubt that'll be a problem. At the end of the day, though, it will be reasonably easy to learn on one then switch to the other later so don't lose sleep over that decision.

There's always a possibility of creating another database at some point but it's highly unlikely. The last similar I created was just a text file using a delimiter, and I actually do need to recreate that program now that I think about it. That was easy in VB6.

Everything I have created has been for minimal use between me and some for a few friends.

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Originally Posted by VBDrone

VB6 is what I had been using. It suited my needs with the belief that some things I wanted to create but couldn't were not due to limitations of the language or program.

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I am qualified in C# (soon to be xcode and java as well), although, I still prefer to code in VB6

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All for desktop use. I barely use my smartphone even as a phone! LOL

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I use my android as a throwing tool.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

...I would be inclined to agree with JM, I'd take SQL Express over Access (or Jet).

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Don't kid yourself, SQL Server is far superior to Access.

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Originally Posted by Niya

Don't kid yourself, SQL Server is far superior to Access.

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You do realize he said the same thing as you. He said he would take Sql Server Express (Sql Express) over Access any day, which is what you're saying in that Sql Server is superior to Access.
Both of which I agree with to a point, there is 1 case where I would take Access over Sql Server but that is a very rare case.

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there is 1 case where I would take Access over Sql Server

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What case is that?

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SQL Server is far superior to Access

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As JB pointed out, that's what I said :) I would add, though, that we're often a bit too dissmissive of access round here, it does have a place. Look around your average business and you'll find dozens of non-programmer types banging out their own little utilities in Access and, generally , making a pretty good fist of it. Tell these guys they need to do it through Management Studio and they'd be utterly lost. What they want is a sort of super-excel and, in that role, Access is a damn good package. I think that's where Dillitante was coming from when he recommended it over SQL Server Express and, given the pretty simple nature of what the OP is trying to achieve, he might have been right.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

What case is that?

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One that it is well suited for, which means: A suit case. Access is somewhat more portable in lots of organizations. In my case, field computers all have Access, but if I went with SQL Server Express, which I really like, I'd have to install it via Click Once.

Actually I wasn't even talking about MS Access, though Access can serve as both a tool and another front-end development toolkit for either Jet or SQL Server.

Jet has its disadvantages of course as a file-based non-client/server technology but on Windows it's a natural step beyond flat files. It's a rare Windows machine where you won't find it preinstalled (Win95 maybe, or unpatched Win98), it is very lightweight, it doesn't require the careful management of "instances," and it has zero footprint when not actively in use.

When you just need more than flat files Jet offers clean random access to multiple tables with or without indexing, flexible text import/export, table relations, check constraints, views and simple stored procedures, page- or row-level locking, a user-security model, pretty much all of the basics.

You can use it in places you can't consider SQL Server. And it's a zero-deployment tool, a fundamental Windows feature.


There are things it can be poor at.

It really doesn't do well in multi-user/multi-machine applications because network interruptions or program crashes can corrupt data, it involves shuffling a lot of data back and forth across networks, it doesn't offload crunching onto a separate server, doesn't offer some of the powerful tools available for working with SQL Server, etc.


However when your programs just need a more sophisticated alternative to sequential or simple random files it's kind of hard to beat. And if you avoid DAO the SQL involved is quite similar to the SQL used by SQL Server, making it easy to transfer your skills or "upsize" applications to SQL Server later on.

Jet's great when your application needs to create databases on the fly with no user configuration, discard them at will, and create more. Its fits in a single file characteristic even lets you treat a database as a "document" making it easy to pass around as a data exchange format.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

WI would add, though, that we're often a bit too dissmissive of access round here, it does have a place. Look around your average business and you'll find dozens of non-programmer types banging out their own little utilities in Access and, generally , making a pretty good fist of it. Tell these guys they need to do it through Management Studio and they'd be utterly lost. What they want is a sort of super-excel and, in that role, Access is a damn good package. I think that's where Dillitante was coming from when he recommended it over SQL Server Express and, given the pretty simple nature of what the OP is trying to achieve, he might have been right.

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I'd go along with that, which basically means that Access is good for non-programmers but if you're not relying on Access for the UI, i.e. you're a programmer creating an application and the database is simply a backend, then I'd not use it.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

What case is that?

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I have a couple of applications, not large at all, that a few people like to use and overall it's easier for me to be able to have the data for the app stored in a local, single-user-at-a-time database so I can use Sql to manipulate the data & since security is not an issue I figure it's much easier to have an Access 2003 database (the Jet engine is installed via the 2.0 FW anyways and I don't have to mess with the Ace 12 x86 vs x64 problem) than to deploy Sql Express with my app which would install on all of the end user's computers and could cause all kinds of issues.

Personally, when I make apps that interact with Sql Server, the server is always it's own server that all of the app's connect to and I don't deploy the database with the app at all. I should note that those apps are for the company and the end user's are the company's employees and it's all behind their firewall.

For my apps that connect to Sql Server I have on my domain, I create a WebService on my WebServer that connects to the DB directly and then my app that I distribute to friends & family will connect to the service for everything.

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Originally Posted by JuggaloBrotha

... (the Jet engine is installed via the 2.0 FW anyways and I don't have to mess with the Ace 12 x86 vs x64 problem) ...

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Um, no. Jet 4.0 is part of Windows and utterly unrelated to dotnet. Jet 4.0 has been a protected system component since at least Win2K SP2 and you'll find it on older systems that have been updated to MDAC 2.1.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

Um, no. Jet 4.0 is part of Windows and utterly unrelated to dotnet. Jet 4.0 has been a protected system component since at least Win2K SP2 and you'll find it on older systems that have been updated to MDAC 2.1.

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Did not know that, I never looked up what/how the Jet engine gets installed. I have seen a few times an XP SP3 computer where a friend's c++ program couldn't open an Access 2003 mdb using Jet 4.0, then I installed .Net 2.0 and his program could open it and so could my .Net program, so I just assumed Jet 4.0 was part of the .Net 2.0 distribution.

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Originally Posted by JuggaloBrotha

You do realize he said the same thing as you. He said he would take Sql Server Express (Sql Express) over Access any day, which is what you're saying in that Sql Server is superior to Access.

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I do realize that, I was simply amplifying it as he said he was inclined which implies a choice by preference. In effect I was saying that I more than prefer it, its the better choice. Of course I have no argument with anyone who prefer Access for any reason.

Gee.... thanks for confusing me even more! *dizzy* *laugh*

We're here to help.

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One that it is well suited for, which means: A suit case.

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I'm glad you kept it brief:wave:

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Gee.... thanks for confusing me even more! *dizzy* *laugh*

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Yeah, we kind of went off topic a bit there, didn't we? It's all good discussion, though. Databases are probably about the second most useful tech a programmer can have (in my opinion) right behind a programing language and it probably won't be that long before you start thinking about them. Just promise me this: no matter what debates us lot have in the thread you will never, EVER use Paraodox.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

Just promise me this: no matter what debates us lot have in the thread you will never, EVER use Paraodox.

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haha Ok, you have a deal.