I wrote my first complete computer program on a Vic 20 in Commodore BASIC 2, in 1986. My first paid program in 1990, using Thoroughbred BASIC on a PC. Since the

I wrote my first complete computer program on a Vic 20 in Commodore BASIC 2, in 1986. My first paid program in 1990, using Thoroughbred BASIC on a PC. Since then I've programmed (or scripted) in Assembler, BASIC, C, C#, C++, COBOL, F#, HTML, Java, JavaScript, LOGO, Pascal, SQL, VBA and XAML. I don't mind C#. Or Java. I stopped programming for my income around 2005 when I moved into architecture and then went the CTO route. Did take on another programming contract in 2011 though, because it was Nokia. Still write a lot of my own code though, and now exclusively in VB.NET because - VB.NET supports both static and dynamic typing. - VB.NET is a functional language, supporting local type inference, anonymous functions, monads, and language integrated comonads. - VB.NET does project-wide namespace imports. C# doesn't. - I like creating native client apps, and dislike the constraints and fragility of web apps. - I've always found the Java developer environment to be brittle in comparison. There are also a metric ton of readability issues in JS, Java and C# that VB.NET doesn't have (braces, == and =, ! instead of Not, separate keywords for inheritance and interface implementation, and so on). I also concede that I learnt Pascal before learning C (and prefer Pascal to C). The fact that Pascal and VB.NET share syntactical similarities (type declarations follow variable and function names, the Not keyword is probably not an insignificant factor. And to be fair none of the above matter – the rationale came long after the fact that I use BASIC simply because I like BASIC. The amount of disapproval, verbal abuse, ridicule and actual anger I've received for this over the years (and to this day) is insane. But you learn to deal with it. PS. Did you know that the first prototype of Nokia Maps for Windows Phone was written in VB.NET? Nokia didn't know either, because they had like zero Windows Phone skills at the time.