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My first paid programming job while in college was writing VB5 (then VB6) Windows CRUD apps. Given the built in controls and controls packs one could purchase,

My first paid programming job while in college was writing VB5 (then VB6) Windows CRUD apps. Given the built in controls and controls packs one could purchase, I made some amazing looking GUIs that were pixel perfect. I think even now, it's hard to find something better for that narrow use case. VB.Net IMO was a step back. VB wasn't some great language, but the entire system was very productive and worked well with other MS technology of the time like MSSQL and Access.

jenscow 5y ago
VB.net was just awful. Only existed for a migration path, but the learning curve from VB6->VB.net is roughly the same as going to C#.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  They improved it later with some VB6 compatibility packs, but yes, that should have been there from the beginning. Or as I mention on another thread, .NET should have been what was later WinRT, by improving COM tooling and that was it, but now we are 20 years too late to fix that.
  - 7thaccount 5y ago
    Can you be more specific on the 2nd paragraph for someone ignorant like myself?
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      You can start here for a complete picture, https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt-everything-old-is-new-again/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt...
  - jenscow 5y ago
    You're right, WinRT should have been much sooner. However, there wouldn't have been much hope for a cross-platform .NET if it were COM based... and cross-platform is one of the things keeping .NET relevant - Personally, I was (reluctantly) about to ditch .net until that.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      The cross-platform story is still half hearted, as many tools are VS only, and who knows if they ever going to land on VSCode or VS4 Mac. Also see MAUI versus Swing/Qt, one needs to go for Uno/Avalonia instead.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Well, VB.NET was little more than a variety of C# without curly brackets and with more keywords. AIUI, it was quite possible to transpile from one to the other at will. Though I think that some convenience features went the VB.NET to C# direction, so it wasn't totally without consequence.
  - projektfu 5y ago
    Yeah IIRC there was a tool that would produce an AST that would generate C#, VB.Net and J#. It was used for writing examples.
  - Jaruzel 5y ago
    Both vb.net and C# compile to the same bytecode. So fundamentally, if you code for a hobby or are a lone coder, it's down to what you prefer (I prefer vb.net over C#), however organisations made it clear early on that C# was much preferred so that's what prevailed. If I'm quickly knocking up a small GUI utility then the drag-drop building nature of a vb.net forms app is a real time saver - but in contrast you have more flexibility if you build controls via code like C# does.... horses for courses really. Bizarrely, I've recently started exploring using C# as a CGI back-end via .NET core on Linux... for the simple reason that I can. Apparently it can be quite performant.
    - ycuser2 5y ago
      Microsoft does not develop VB.NET further.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        Isn't the Roslyn compiler open source? It might be possible to maintain a fork and bring the language to parity with upcoming C#/.NET features.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        They do, but not adding features to please us language geeks, rather what makes sense to interop with .NET libraries, CLS compliant. Roslyn for VB.NET still gets more love than F# across .NET workloads. Now it is true that they could rename CLR into C# Language Runtime, given the extent of effort that C# gets, versus VB.NET, F# and C++/CLI.

jenscow 5y ago

VB.net was just awful. Only existed for a migration path, but the learning curve from VB6->VB.net is roughly the same as going to C#.

pjmlp 5y ago
They improved it later with some VB6 compatibility packs, but yes, that should have been there from the beginning. Or as I mention on another thread, .NET should have been what was later WinRT, by improving COM tooling and that was it, but now we are 20 years too late to fix that.
- 7thaccount 5y ago
  Can you be more specific on the 2nd paragraph for someone ignorant like myself?
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    You can start here for a complete picture, https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt-everything-old-is-new-again/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt...
- jenscow 5y ago
  You're right, WinRT should have been much sooner. However, there wouldn't have been much hope for a cross-platform .NET if it were COM based... and cross-platform is one of the things keeping .NET relevant - Personally, I was (reluctantly) about to ditch .net until that.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    The cross-platform story is still half hearted, as many tools are VS only, and who knows if they ever going to land on VSCode or VS4 Mac. Also see MAUI versus Swing/Qt, one needs to go for Uno/Avalonia instead.
zozbot234 5y ago
Well, VB.NET was little more than a variety of C# without curly brackets and with more keywords. AIUI, it was quite possible to transpile from one to the other at will. Though I think that some convenience features went the VB.NET to C# direction, so it wasn't totally without consequence.
- projektfu 5y ago
  Yeah IIRC there was a tool that would produce an AST that would generate C#, VB.Net and J#. It was used for writing examples.
- Jaruzel 5y ago
  Both vb.net and C# compile to the same bytecode. So fundamentally, if you code for a hobby or are a lone coder, it's down to what you prefer (I prefer vb.net over C#), however organisations made it clear early on that C# was much preferred so that's what prevailed. If I'm quickly knocking up a small GUI utility then the drag-drop building nature of a vb.net forms app is a real time saver - but in contrast you have more flexibility if you build controls via code like C# does.... horses for courses really. Bizarrely, I've recently started exploring using C# as a CGI back-end via .NET core on Linux... for the simple reason that I can. Apparently it can be quite performant.
  - ycuser2 5y ago
    Microsoft does not develop VB.NET further.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      Isn't the Roslyn compiler open source? It might be possible to maintain a fork and bring the language to parity with upcoming C#/.NET features.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      They do, but not adding features to please us language geeks, rather what makes sense to interop with .NET libraries, CLS compliant. Roslyn for VB.NET still gets more love than F# across .NET workloads. Now it is true that they could rename CLR into C# Language Runtime, given the extent of effort that C# gets, versus VB.NET, F# and C++/CLI.