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For a server-side language: First, I decided to use Windows for my operating system. Why? Because when I made the decision, my computing experience had been

by graycat 10y ago

For a server-side language: First, I decided to use Windows for my operating system. Why? Because when I made the decision, my computing experience had been on IBM mainframes, super-mini computers, PCs, and OS/2 with no Unix or Linux experience. Second, on Windows I wanted a language that was a main Microsoft language with their best integration with .NET, ADO.NET for access to SQL Server, ASP.NET for access to the Microsoft IIS (their Web server software, Internet Information Server), etc. I wanted Microsoft's best documentation. For performance, I wanted a compiled language. And I wanted a language with syntax and semantics that were traditional and easy to read, write, teach, and learn. I did want to avoid the deliberately idiosyncratic syntax of C also borrowed by C++ and C#. I have no interest in functional programming. So, I settled on the .NET version of Visual Basic .NET. For the language, I'm just thrilled with it. For my startup, for the on-line production code, I've typed in 80,000 lines of text with about 20,000 statements in Visual Basic .NET. I find the language syntax and semantics easy to work with. The compiler is nicely fast. I am not sure I have yet found a bug. How the language works with IIS for developing Web sites is just terrific and, apparently, not commonly, clearly explained. Oh, and I use no IDE (integrated development environment, e.g., Visual Studio) and, instead, just type into my favorite text editor and use some command line scripts. My main beefs with Microsoft are (1) I wish the quality of the technical writing in their documentation was much better and (2) I wish Windows was much less vulnerable to computer malware. But, for the question here, for a language, for me and my startup, it's Visual Basic .NET. I'm thrilled with it. For client side code: I use just some simple, old version of HTML with a little, simple CSS. For my Web pages, so far I have yet to write even a single line of JavaScript although Microsoft's ASP.NET writes a little for me. From what I've seen of more in client side programming in Web pages, I want as little as possible.

nanny 10y ago
>idiosyncratic syntax How is something like `Dim x as Integer` not idiosyncratic? >syntax and semantics that were traditional What's more traditional than C's syntax? I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't use VB, but those reasons are BS.
- rescbr 10y ago
  > What's more traditional than C's syntax? Not OP, but I see where he's coming from... He said his background is in IBM mainframes/minicomputers. VB's syntax is closer to the languages those systems commonly used, such as COBOL and RPG.
- graycat 10y ago
  "BS"? Ah, religious language wars again? To me traditional means more like Algol, Fortran, PL/I, the original Basic, and maybe some more. To me, the Visual Basic .NET (VB) Dim is, right, a bit obscure for now but, of course, back in the original Basic abbreviated Dimension for specifying bounds in arrays and was plenty clear. Microsoft may still be laughing at deciding to use Dim in VB. I regard Dim as a small mistake. Finally to me, the VB Dim is like the PL/I Declare or the Fortran Real, Integer, Logical, Character. For declaring (don't know a better term) in C, I can't gripe with just int i; IIRC that the syntax of C is idiosyncratic actually is somewhere in Kernighan and Ritchie. In the example in Kernighan and Ritchie with declaring functions, the arguments, the return values, pointers to functions, etc., I couldn't get through the syntax. I'm sure there are a lot of C function declarations I couldn't proof read. Maybe if I worked and worked and ran a lot of test cases, I could understand it -- I'd also forget it by next week. For loops I see Fortran's Do i = 1, 10 as okay. The PL/I loops I like much better. In total what VB .NET has in loops is better still. The C loop syntax I don't like. C wants to make a lot of use of their ++ idea, and I don't like it -- it's too sparse for me. One old excuse was that on some DEC computer being used at Bell Labs, there was an instruction for ++. I'm not impressed; to me, the most important reader of the code is me, not the processor! Then where C permits ++i+++++j++ which officially in the language it does, I just gave up. Actually, when I tried that statement, two different C compilers gave different results. So, the C compiler writers can't understand the semantics of such syntax either. I don't want to write, read, teach, debug, or bet my business on code with such syntax. I've written some C, and I'll write some more if I have to, but I don't have to like it. With C, having some syntax that is tricky to read seems too close to an actual objective. It may be that some programmers regard VB as not manly enough. To me, VB is Microsoft's best language for applications programming and the code of my startup.

by graycat 10y ago

nanny 10y ago

>idiosyncratic syntax How is something like `Dim x as Integer` not idiosyncratic? >syntax and semantics that were traditional What's more traditional than C's syntax? I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't use VB, but those reasons are BS.

rescbr 10y ago
> What's more traditional than C's syntax? Not OP, but I see where he's coming from... He said his background is in IBM mainframes/minicomputers. VB's syntax is closer to the languages those systems commonly used, such as COBOL and RPG.
graycat 10y ago
"BS"? Ah, religious language wars again? To me traditional means more like Algol, Fortran, PL/I, the original Basic, and maybe some more. To me, the Visual Basic .NET (VB) Dim is, right, a bit obscure for now but, of course, back in the original Basic abbreviated Dimension for specifying bounds in arrays and was plenty clear. Microsoft may still be laughing at deciding to use Dim in VB. I regard Dim as a small mistake. Finally to me, the VB Dim is like the PL/I Declare or the Fortran Real, Integer, Logical, Character. For declaring (don't know a better term) in C, I can't gripe with just int i; IIRC that the syntax of C is idiosyncratic actually is somewhere in Kernighan and Ritchie. In the example in Kernighan and Ritchie with declaring functions, the arguments, the return values, pointers to functions, etc., I couldn't get through the syntax. I'm sure there are a lot of C function declarations I couldn't proof read. Maybe if I worked and worked and ran a lot of test cases, I could understand it -- I'd also forget it by next week. For loops I see Fortran's Do i = 1, 10 as okay. The PL/I loops I like much better. In total what VB .NET has in loops is better still. The C loop syntax I don't like. C wants to make a lot of use of their ++ idea, and I don't like it -- it's too sparse for me. One old excuse was that on some DEC computer being used at Bell Labs, there was an instruction for ++. I'm not impressed; to me, the most important reader of the code is me, not the processor! Then where C permits ++i+++++j++ which officially in the language it does, I just gave up. Actually, when I tried that statement, two different C compilers gave different results. So, the C compiler writers can't understand the semantics of such syntax either. I don't want to write, read, teach, debug, or bet my business on code with such syntax. I've written some C, and I'll write some more if I have to, but I don't have to like it. With C, having some syntax that is tricky to read seems too close to an actual objective. It may be that some programmers regard VB as not manly enough. To me, VB is Microsoft's best language for applications programming and the code of my startup.