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There's nothing wrong with copy-paste programming. It's perfectly OK to copy some code of a blog/SO/github/etc. And there are online businesses worth hundreds o

There's nothing wrong with copy-paste programming. It's perfectly OK to copy some code of a blog/SO/github/etc. And there are online businesses worth hundreds of millions built on copy/paste as the method of code reuse. You may not like it, it may be harder to maintain, but it works in the real world.

lt 16y ago
I know, I'm from the real world too. It's a perfectly valid argument - there's a vast amount of C# samples and examples out there. It's also pretty much directly mapable to VB.NET given they share a runtime and type system, so it only really matters if you really don't want to make the effort to understand the code you are pasting. It just striked me as a not so good priority to have when evaluating your choices for that particular decision.
- jasongullickson 16y ago
  Right, I think it just underscores how small the number of differences are between the two languages. I've worked on many projects in both languages and I guess I can see why VB programmers transitioned to VB.NET but I don't understand why anyone without a VB background would use it (it's certainly not easier; I've been bit so many times by VB.NET's strange idiosyncrasies).
- eftpotrm 16y ago
  Why not, though? I've had to work in both and can personally work in either interchangeably. When I switch between projects and move languages I spend a short while forgetfully mixing the syntaxes, but otherwise no biggie - and I do that when jumping in and out of SQL anyway. Given that, when I was getting a project in a new domain started a while ago, it felt sensible to do it in C# even though I'd done more VB.Net at the time. We all use code samples that illustrate how different tasks are done, then adapt them for our purposes; it didn't take long to see that the samples were predominantly in C# and conversion was something of a hassle and not quite as simple as things made out. Most code worked straight away, but.... If it doesn't matter which you use for your own reasons, I don't see any advantage to not going with the herd of public samples.
ldh 16y ago
It's one thing to take advantage of a large corpus of examples and using those to understand concepts and tailor them to your needs. That's fine. But I think it's important to distinguish that from blindly copying and pasting code throughout your codebase, complete with sections you don't even understand, are probably unnecessary, and are probably duplicated throughout the codebase. There's nothing okay about that. And there are online businesses worth hundreds of millions built on copy/paste as the method of code reuse. Source?

lt 16y ago

I know, I'm from the real world too. It's a perfectly valid argument - there's a vast amount of C# samples and examples out there. It's also pretty much directly mapable to VB.NET given they share a runtime and type system, so it only really matters if you really don't want to make the effort to understand the code you are pasting. It just striked me as a not so good priority to have when evaluating your choices for that particular decision.

jasongullickson 16y ago
Right, I think it just underscores how small the number of differences are between the two languages. I've worked on many projects in both languages and I guess I can see why VB programmers transitioned to VB.NET but I don't understand why anyone without a VB background would use it (it's certainly not easier; I've been bit so many times by VB.NET's strange idiosyncrasies).
eftpotrm 16y ago
Why not, though? I've had to work in both and can personally work in either interchangeably. When I switch between projects and move languages I spend a short while forgetfully mixing the syntaxes, but otherwise no biggie - and I do that when jumping in and out of SQL anyway. Given that, when I was getting a project in a new domain started a while ago, it felt sensible to do it in C# even though I'd done more VB.Net at the time. We all use code samples that illustrate how different tasks are done, then adapt them for our purposes; it didn't take long to see that the samples were predominantly in C# and conversion was something of a hassle and not quite as simple as things made out. Most code worked straight away, but.... If it doesn't matter which you use for your own reasons, I don't see any advantage to not going with the herd of public samples.

ldh 16y ago

It's one thing to take advantage of a large corpus of examples and using those to understand concepts and tailor them to your needs. That's fine. But I think it's important to distinguish that from blindly copying and pasting code throughout your codebase, complete with sections you don't even understand, are probably unnecessary, and are probably duplicated throughout the codebase. There's nothing okay about that. And there are online businesses worth hundreds of millions built on copy/paste as the method of code reuse. Source?