4 ms·

Early on in .net history VB was just as popular as c# if not more. There was a huge difference in skill set of the programmers for each though, the VB camp were

by flukus 8y ago

Early on in .net history VB was just as popular as c# if not more. There was a huge difference in skill set of the programmers for each though, the VB camp were mostly the drag'n'drop type of developer, essentially using VB.net like an access developer would. On the c# side were the "real programmers" that often had a background in java and c++, just look at any of the OSS software from the era and nearly all of it was in c#. As frameworks churned away from tools amenable to drag'n'drop programming with MVC on the web side and XAML on the desktop the VB developers seem to have either moved to c# or dropped out of the industry, I occasionally talk to people that were programmers in the late 90's/early 2000's that left the industry and they are pretty much all VB programmers of one dialect or the other. As for what it's being used for, it works just as well as c# everywhere that works, web desktop and mobile, there's no technical reason to avoid it (but a few less technical ones). What I can't explain is it's recent resurgence. I haven't seen this in the boring business programming world, this is where VB thrived but from my experience it's all in c# or java these days. If I had to guess it would be tools like unity responsible for VB's second coming... or errors in tiobe methodology.

peteforde 8y ago
Just to be clear, before I was the Ruby guy, I was the VB guy. I owned boxed copies of every version from 1.0 onwards - including VB Dos - and was even the Mining Company (later about.com) guide for VB. I was one of the signatories of a petition by over 120 Microsoft MVPs that asked them to maintain a COM branch long enough to release a proper VB7 release that could serve as a viable transition pathway. They told us in no uncertain terms that we were farting into a hurricane. There were initially more VB.NET developers - more of us - than C# developers only because there were millions of casual VB6 developers that had a massive investment in the tools. It's my position that they really fucked up by telling us that our only choice was to get with the program. At least in my case, it was not. I left the VB world and started the first Rails consultancy in the world in fall 2004. This proved to be a rather excellent move. I'm curious about your comment about how all OSS software from the 2002 era was VB.NET. I could be missing something, but... what? :) Do you have any good examples?

by flukus 8y ago

peteforde 8y ago

Just to be clear, before I was the Ruby guy, I was the VB guy. I owned boxed copies of every version from 1.0 onwards - including VB Dos - and was even the Mining Company (later about.com) guide for VB. I was one of the signatories of a petition by over 120 Microsoft MVPs that asked them to maintain a COM branch long enough to release a proper VB7 release that could serve as a viable transition pathway. They told us in no uncertain terms that we were farting into a hurricane. There were initially more VB.NET developers - more of us - than C# developers only because there were millions of casual VB6 developers that had a massive investment in the tools. It's my position that they really fucked up by telling us that our only choice was to get with the program. At least in my case, it was not. I left the VB world and started the first Rails consultancy in the world in fall 2004. This proved to be a rather excellent move. I'm curious about your comment about how all OSS software from the 2002 era was VB.NET. I could be missing something, but... what? :) Do you have any good examples?