VB is rubbish? rubbish.

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Published Friday, June 04, 2004 3:38 PM by RoyOsherove
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Comments

Friday, June 04, 2004 12:02 PM by AndrewSeven

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

Simplexity.

It definitely rubs me the wrong way ;)
Friday, June 04, 2004 12:04 PM by kevin white

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

Case insensitivity isn't such a big deal as long as you only ever program in VB. That's the big risk. One nice usage of case sensitivity I've seen is to use initial lower for private variables and initial upper for public methods...

private int foo
public int Foo()

While I'm generally against embedding any sort of type information in a name. I do find the above usage of case sensitivity super handy. I can't do that VB but I can in just about any other OO language.
Friday, June 04, 2004 12:05 PM by Richard Dudley

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

Bah! Gimme some more of those curly brackets and a side of semicolons, too, because I just love extra typing for formatting purposes only! VB may need line continuation characters on a few lines to readability, but miss one semicolon or curly bracket in C-anything, and you're toast.
Friday, June 04, 2004 12:40 PM by Dave

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

I just love how the C-types see nothing wrong with typing an extra character for each of the tens of thousands of statements that fit reasonable on one line of code -- and are the only statements on that line of code -- rather than the handful of cases where you actually want a single stament to span multiple lines of code. It seems fundamently absurd.
Friday, June 04, 2004 12:45 PM by Alex Papadimoulis

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

I suppose I could say some of the same thing about C#.

... The crummy thing has case sensitive names so POINT != Point != point which is totally ridiculous! Why would you name two variables the same thing, but use different case? Last time I checked, Peanut Butter and peanut butter are both identical (and consequently, both delicious). Why should it be different in code?

... Statement Termination Characthers?! ARRGGGHH! Rarely do your statements span multiple lines, so why make them the rule instead of the exeception.

But honestly, why care so much about the language. Everything that can be done in C# (save operator overloading and volitle members) can be done in Basic. I happen to be more productive in Basic. I like the End If/While/Select. I dont like curly braces. One should be well versed in both instead of crying when he/she doesn't have a choice.
Friday, June 04, 2004 1:07 PM by Jerry Pisk

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

Case sensitivity becomes an issue once you start using characters other than plain ASCII. CLR allows Unicode identifiers and there are languages that don't have a simple one to one character case matching. That's why you want case sensitivity. It takes away the guessing about what exactly is the same identifier and what's not.
Friday, June 04, 2004 1:14 PM by Robert Brown

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

If you work on Unix systems for a while, you quickly become used to the importance of case-sensitivity everywhere. This is not something that Windows user have ever really had to deal with. Joel Spolsky does a nice little bit about this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Biculturalism.html

I grew up on Windows, then worked with Unix for a while. Now I'm back on Windows and having trained myself to think of case in the Unix way, I have no issues with C#'s case sensitivity. Yes, I prefer C# to VB.

Anyway, the whole VB vs. C# thing has become very, very boring. If people are so sure of their choice, why do they need everyone else to agree with them?
Friday, June 04, 2004 1:20 PM by Frans Bouma

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

"Bah! Gimme some more of those curly brackets and a side of semicolons, too, because I just love extra typing for formatting purposes only! "

If Not _myRefMember Is Nothing Then
' some code
End If

vs.

if(!_myRefMember==null)
{
// some code
}

well.. indeed C# is a hell of a lot more typing...
Friday, June 04, 2004 1:36 PM by Frans Bouma

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

Also, a nice exercise for the VB.NET lovers :)
- derive a class from DataTable
- add a member to that class and a property get/set combi
- add code to be able to serialize/deserialize your added member.

Good luck! :)

(hint: you can't do this in VB.NET, because VB.NET doesn't allow you to explicitly implement an interface again (DataTable implements ISerializable privately). You need C# for this. What a great language :))
Friday, June 04, 2004 2:35 PM by Jerry Pisk

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

About curlies - how exactly is {} more typing then End If? If I can count characters right it's 2 in C# versus 6 in VB. What am I missing? Same goes for ! vs. Not, null vs. Nothing, no characters vs. Then (ok, maybe two, () vs. Then), switch vs. Select Case and so on...
Friday, June 04, 2004 3:28 PM by Josh

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

Well have a look here and judge for yourself.
http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/grant.killian/archive/2004/06/01/14946.aspx
Friday, June 04, 2004 3:44 PM by stroup

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

VB is for second class programmers and losers like you.
Friday, June 04, 2004 4:30 PM by denny

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

Folks this is a case of "Your both right" or "Your Both wrong"
or like the idea of time distrotion as you enter a black hole.... it will just go on for ever.............
Saturday, June 05, 2004 10:58 AM by Avner Kashtan

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

I'll just point out that { or } are indeed one character each, but they need a two-keystroke combination to write.

(Oh, do ignore me. I'm just an amused observer fanning the flames a bit. :)
Monday, June 07, 2004 10:52 AM by Guy S

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

The most annoying things about VB.NET is its language style. Lots of texts as if u trying to be a writer instead of a programmer.

VB.NET programmers will have difficulties to join a C#, Java or C++ project (and I saw it happened to programmers)
But C# programmer will find himself comfortable in a JAVA and/or C++ project

I wonder why Microsoft does not stop from supporting this language. C# and its equivalent (Java, C++) are enough.
Monday, June 07, 2004 11:19 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

Guy S: boy - you're so wrong it hurts!
I'll need to talk some sense in to you in the next blogger dinner! :)
Friday, June 02, 2006 9:34 PM by ScottJ

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

"VB is for second class programmers and losers like you."

Another reason I hate the curly-bracket languages is boorish jerks like you tend to gravitate to them.
Monday, July 10, 2006 11:15 AM by Ben

# re: VB is rubbish? rubbish.

I've developed code approximately half in VB.net and half in java and C. When I first started using VB, I was just as aggrivated... it took me a while to sort the night-and-day syntax. However, I've realized that there IS a trade-off. The verbose nature of VB code requires less documentation in general. (I guess you can choose to forego documentation, if so, never work on the same project as me plz.) Then again, curly brace code is also good because of it's global definition and quick adaptation. Yet, I think syntax, etc. of a language is a moot argument. Sure, it will annoy you for a bit, but you shouldn't decide not to use VB.net because "OMG I hate writing End If." Languages were created to accomplish a goal, not to torture programmers. Don't go fishing with a stick of dynamite, pick the right tool for the job.