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Thread: Future of Visual Basic.NET - question

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    Addicted Member sweet_dreams's Avatar
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    Future of Visual Basic.NET - question

    Hi all,

    I would like to get to know your opinion about future of Visual Basic.NET. Do you think that in a foreseeable future Microsoft will stop developing this language? I ask this because I came to conclusion that MS is making effort to popularize it's new language C#. What's more company where I am working is starting using this language instead of VB.NET. My boss said that VB.NET is not worth learning because soon this language will not be supported by MS.
    Whats your opinion on this subject?

    regards,
    sweet_dreams

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    Re: Future of Visual Basic.NET - question

    Tell your Boss to check with MS.

    With the release of VB.NET 2005 you will see that MS has introduced so many new features in the langauge that it will reduce development time drastically. The tasks that you used to do using hard to understand APIs is now built into MY object. And this MY is not available in C#.

    I don't think that MS is trying to take VB.NET out of the market. MS has invested so much effort into VB.NET, why would they not support it. And what else, VB.NET 2005 is now fully CLS compliant like C#. It supports unsigned integers. It has Using Blocks. So many more things have been added to VB.NET 2005 that it is really hard to beleive what your Boss is saying.
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    Super Moderator jmcilhinney's Avatar
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    Re: Future of Visual Basic.NET - question

    Microsoft have no intention of letting VB.NET slide. In the early years the majority of effort was put inot geting languages to work coherently with the .NET Framework, which is why VB.NET and C# became so alike. Now that that is all pretty much taken care of Microsoft are positioning VB.NET and C# as a RAD tool and a power-language respectively, although with an enormous area of overlap in the middle. C# is much easier to use than C++ ever was and VB.NET is more powerful than VB6 and before, so the two languages have a lot in common but also distinguishing features. This will become even more evident in the next release of each. The canny .NET developer will keep abreast of developments in both.

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    Re: Future of Visual Basic.NET - question

    Quote Originally Posted by jmcilhinney
    (...) The canny .NET developer will keep abreast of developments in both.
    Ok, but is it possible to distuinguish which applications are better to write in C# and which in VB.NET? I mean is it possible to indicate appliations that for some reasons should be written in C# or VB.NET.
    I ask this question because I don't have any experience in C#.

    regards,
    sweet_dreams

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    Super Moderator jmcilhinney's Avatar
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    Re: Future of Visual Basic.NET - question

    For the vast majority of applications it doesn't matter. If there are parts of your app that would benefit from the use of pointers then C# is the way to go. There are various things that can be sped up by several orders of magnitude by using pointers, so if that's important then C# is a good bet. That's not an issue for most GUI apps though as they usually sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for the user. Both languages have certain conveniences over the other but none so that I would recommend anyone to switch from one to the other.

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    Re: Future of Visual Basic.NET - question

    Also as JM has mentioned in his previous post. It also depends on from which background the team is. If team has been comfortably coding in C++/Java for years then I guess C# would be the language of choice. Or else If they have been coding in VB then VB.NET will be the language of choice.

    Also C# supports unmanaged/unsafe code to som extent. So if you are going to do anything that is not managed then C# would be the choice.
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