{"id":1540,"date":"2009-06-19T18:11:28","date_gmt":"2009-06-19T17:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1540-does-visual-basic-have-a-future.html"},"modified":"2009-06-19T18:11:28","modified_gmt":"2009-06-19T17:11:28","slug":"does-visual-basic-have-a-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1540-does-visual-basic-have-a-future.html","title":{"rendered":"Does Visual Basic have a future?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was interested in this podcast<\/a> with a member of the Visual Basic team at Microsoft, Lisa Feigenbaum, as I ask myself the same question.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately the questioning from Joe Stagner (who also works for Microsoft) is tame. Nevertheless, there are a few points of interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe things that come out of Microsoft, it is C# biased\u201d admits Feigenbaum, which she says is because so many at Microsoft have a C or Java background.<\/p>\n

That is part of the reason (though more C than Java) but I doubt it is that simple. If you go back to the beginnings of .NET, Microsoft designed C# and what was then the new framework and runtime together. VB on the other hand was hauled into the new world and still bears the scars.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s answer the question first. Microsoft cannot afford to abandon VB, which remains popular, especially (though certainly not exclusively) at the less professional end of the market. VB isn\u2019t going away.<\/p>\n

Further, there\u2019s really very little difference in the capabilities of the two languages, so there is little incentive for anyone to switch. Microsoft has attempted to differentiate them, but these attempts generally fail. \u201cAny time we do something cool in one language, the other folks want it\u201d says Stagner in the podcast.<\/p>\n

As I see it, that\u2019s part of the problem. It begs the question: what is the point of VB, other than to keep existing VB developers happy? In what circumstances would you advise a new programmer to learn VB rather than C#?<\/p>\n

I dip in and out of both VB and C#, and of the two I prefer C#. I find VB\u2019s slightly increased verbosity annoying, and I dislike the statement continuation character which is unnecessary in C#, because statements end with semicolons. I prefer case-sensitive languages, which give more flexibility when naming variables. If you want to do XNA games programming, currently only C# is supported.  <\/p>\n

VB\u2019s dynamic features are useful in some scenarios, particularly Office automation, though this advantage is removed in C# 4.0 which has dynamic variables.<\/p>\n

The original attraction of BASIC, its English-like syntax, is nearly lost in today\u2019s VB.<\/p>\n

Well, choice is good; and the existence of VB alongside C# proved the cross-language credentials of the \u201ccommon language\u201d runtime from the get-go. <\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I\u2019m expecting VB usage to decline gradually. An external factor is the rise of the JavaScript family, which is more like C# than VB.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, Feigenbaum threw in a comment about Visual Studio that I found interesting. After talking about the managed code editor in Visual Studio 2010, she remarks \u201cIn the release after 1010 we\u2019re rewriting the compilers in managed code.\u201d <\/p>\n

Technorati Tags: vb<\/a>,c#<\/a>,visual studio<\/a>,.net<\/a>,microsoft<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was interested in this podcast with a member of the Visual Basic team at Microsoft, Lisa Feigenbaum, as I ask myself the same question. Unfortunately the questioning from Joe Stagner (who also works for Microsoft) is tame. Nevertheless, there are a few points of interest. \u201cThe things that come out of Microsoft, it is … Continue reading Does Visual Basic have a future?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,55,80,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-net","category-microsoft","category-software-development","category-visual-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}