Omer van Kloeten's .NET Zen

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Omer has been professionally developing applications over the past 8 years, both at the IDF’s IT corps and later at the Sela Technology Center, but has had the programming bug ever since he can remember himself.
As a senior developer at NuConomy, a leading web analytics and advertising startup, he leads a wide range of technologies for its flagship products.

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Eloquence of Language?

[ Please read the original post before reading this post ]

Bill McCarthy talks about the Eloquence of Language. I wanted to reply to his post, but it was just getting too long, so I decided to post this here.

"Are C# languages really only used because of outdated Computer Science courses, and are those students who use C style languages exhibiting signs of inability to evolve?"
Why is C# so popular?
Yeah, it might actually also be the fact that I learned C style languages when I was at school, but you know what? The first compiler I ever used was QBasic.
When I started working, I was assigned to a VB6 project. I had so much fun with it because it was a RAD tool and a good one at that. When I switched to .NET, I checked both languages and decided to use C#.
One of the reasons was that when using it, you have the ability to clearly identify code constructs, since they use different symbol types. It's not plainly obvious from a quick look where the "Begin" and "End" are, because they are made of letters, like almost everything else in VB. Syntax highlighting just isn't good enough to overcome this, in my opinion. "{" and "}" are easily found, since they 'jump out of the code at you'.

"So perhaps they should be asking why is it that fortune 500 companies choose VB over C style languages, that VB is so strong yet is not part of the Computer Science curriculum."
VB6 was one of the best RAD tools prior to the coming of .NET. VB.NET is used by many companies because they usually have the people who know VB and mistake the upgrade to simple language changes. It's not always like that. I don't have the statistics to claim I know how often it happens. I am sorry to say that I am witnessing another one of those, in my opinion, poor decisions.

VB might be the best choice for some developers, the same way C# is the best choice for others. Heck, there are some languages out there I have no idea why people still use to code.

But I don't go around calling their language primitive and that they should evolve to use my language. I don't like people telling me I'm too thick to evolve.

Posted: Jun 27 2004, 10:10 PM by Omer van Kloeten | with 5 comment(s)
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Comments

Chad Myers said:

The reason I use c-style languages now over VB-style is because I've had to do maintenance programming for VB-style projects before. Aside from all the usual stereotypes of poorly written and architected code, the main problem was that it so hard to see the trees from the forest, so to speak.

Having had to maintain several different projects both in VB.NET and C#, I've found that it's easier for your eye to snap to the CODE, the GUTS, the MEAT so to speak. Since the language constructs in C# are lower-case and terse, but the variable names and method names are PascalCased, they stand out quite vividly from the code. Contrast this to VB.NET where both the Code and the Language blend in together. I find I have to spend about 30-40% longer staring at a block of VB code to try to figure out exactly what's going on versus C# that does the same thing with the same number of actual-lines-of-code (i.e. language fluff removed).

It's just more economical to use C#.
# June 28, 2004 12:43 AM

Ido Samuelson said:

I wouldn't call anyone primitive, thats I agree with but dude, you have a p3-800 how the hell ya using c#???? :-D
# June 28, 2004 6:13 AM

E. said:

The main reason for not using VB.Net is the stupid syntax, aka DIM SUM and then sum.
Is Nothing ? Are we writing longhand or shorthand what is this crap? I believe the main reason for vb.net's rise was the backward compatibility for old legacy vb programmer, who have to adjust to a new way of thinking - Object Oriented.
# June 29, 2004 6:12 AM

Omer van Kloeten said:

E.,

I don't like inflammatery comments on my posts. This is not a post to make people diss VB.NET. It's a post to prevent VB.NET programmers from dissing C#.

Please, let's keep it cool. :)
# June 29, 2004 1:04 PM

Mike Schinkel said:

>> I find I have to spend about 30-40% longer staring at a block of VB code to try to figure out exactly what's going on versus C#

Funny, its the exact opposite for me.

But it really is what you get used to.

I have started doing some C# code (working with .Text source code) and I'm actually shocked by some of the things that are missing. A "WITH" construct, for example.

More importantly, the lack of flexibility that C# has when implementing multiple interfaces when compared to VB.NET. I would have assumed C# would provide more power on advanced concepts like interfaces, not less!

Also, and I can't believe I'm mentioning this, when declaring a variable intellisense works a lot better w/VB than C# (i.e. "as " triggers it in VB, but in C# I don't get intellisense when I start to declare a var; or am I doing something wrong?)

But in the final analysis, which language to use it primarily a matter of preference, assuming MS doesn't hamstring one or the other down the road (god I hope not!)
# July 14, 2004 5:48 AM
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