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Caught Up In a Language War

Alas, C#/VB language bigotry rears its ugly head again. My book, ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies got its first negative review from a purchaser on Amazon.com solely because I used VB instead of C# in the examples. As I stated in the book's introduction, I chose VB because the book targets beginners who generally find VB easier.

Actually, C# fans are using the book quite successfully as evidenced by the way they've exchanged conversion tips on my support site. (I've posted C# versions of the source code for three chapters - with more to come.)

Interesting to note that Anand Narayanaswamy of ASPAlliance has posted a glowing review. He's a professional developer and reviewer who focuses on the book's content and is obviously not perturbed by my choice of language.

Okay, let's settle this language war the easy way - we'll all get right down to the metal by adopting to machine language!

Ken

Posted: Jul 25 2008, 04:00 PM by Ken Cox [MVP] | with 7 comment(s)
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# July 25, 2008 4:12 PM

Grant Palin said:

Yeah, the VB vs C# thing is rather tiresome. And giving the book a low review because it was written in VB was really lame.

# July 25, 2008 5:43 PM

AndrewSeven said:

What a dummy ;)

If it matters to you (and it would matter to me), you check the book to make sure its in the language(s) you want.

# July 25, 2008 6:02 PM

Speednet said:

You'd think that with practically every .NET book these days being written with C# exclusively that these language bigots would be satisfied.

I think the problem is that the language bigots think they are smarter than the rest of us.  Conversely, it broadcasts their ignorance quite powerfully.

Don't take that negative comment to heart; people who are seriously considering your book with see such a comment for what it is.

# July 26, 2008 12:12 AM

Jeff said:

Was the publisher opposed to using both languages? When I did my book in 2004, when VB seemed to be more widely used, they nearly insisted on it.

# July 26, 2008 3:49 PM

Ken Cox [MVP] said:

@Grant: Yup, 'lame' is a good word for it.

@Andrew: Absolutely. With free excerpts and  Amazon.com's "Look Inside" feature, a prospective purchaser can flip through enough pages to get an idea.

@Speednet: Thanks for the kind words. I hope people will pay attention to what was said in the review and not just the numbers in the rating.

@Jeff: I chose VB as the language for the book. I don't recall any discussion about it with the publisher. I still think it's the right choice for beginners. As I mentioned, I'm making the C# code available. It uses the same variable names and structure (where possibled) to line up with the book's VB walkthroughs.

# July 27, 2008 12:01 AM

JMPNavy said:

I look to see what language the book centers on. But, I buy both C# and VB based books. I'm in a shop where we do so much more than program and I need all the tips and tricks I can find. I find neat tricks in one language and can usually figure out how to get it to work in the other. I gave up on the language war thing way back in the 80's. Before then, there was the "Instruction Set War" in the late 70's and 80's when I was dealing with "machine language". God help us.

# July 29, 2008 9:46 AM
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