Quote Originally Posted by SJWhiteley View Post
the .NET (Express) opened up 'real' programming practices to the non-programmers. Those without programming training, education or skills would find .NET very daunting and overly complex. Much like any other skill, just because you have the tools, doesn't make one a craftsman in that field. This is where VB6 was lauded as an amateur language; it didn't have the rite of passage that the real programming languages demanded.
This is so true. This is half the reason that VB is so despised by programmers with a non-BASIC background. It is considered a toy language and one only has to look at languages like C, C++, ASM, hell even Pascal to understand why. However, this is not a bad thing, the language is called BASIC for a reason, its meant to be basic. And while back in the day I used to scoff at the elitist attitudes of C/C++ programmers towards VB, it wasn't until I started writing C++ code myself that I understood just how justified they were. VB.Net tries to correct this and while it succeeds, its far too late. QuickBasic and earlier incarnations of VB have already cemented the status of any thing based on BASIC to be amateur.