VB Enhancements

"Looking over the new features planned for C#  and then for VB.NET  it seems (at least at first glance) that C# programmers are getting lots of new goodies which the VB guys aren't.  So far MSFT has gone to great lengths to keep both languages equivalent, but it seems that either the VB team is one release behind the C# team in 2003, or that the language specifications are beginning to diverge...Opinions anyone?"

[Andy Santo]

<StreamOfConsciousness VisibleToVBFanatics="False">
Yah, the problem is that so many of the the VB guys complained because they didn't want the new features. They didn't want inheritance, they didn't wan't a real language, they just wanted a better IDE for VB 6. Yes, there are a lot of cool VB guys out there who actually like having a real language now, but they are few and far between. VB is supposed to be easy, which means it has to be simple, and therefore it can't have all the cool, confusing features. Why? Because all people like being experts, but VB developers are lazy, so if it is complex they will be upset because they "don't have time" to learn it all. So, the key is to give them enough tools to make them feel powerful, but not so many tools that they feel like idiots (because idiots are not very powerful people unless they are traveling in large groups). Your average VB developer would rather have automatic code generation for his collection classes than support for generics anyway.
</StreamOfConsciousness>

Update (March 19th, 2003) : I just found out that VB.NET will have support for Generics too...

3 Comments

  • Based on my experience traing VB6 developers for .NET, I'd say only about 10% of all VB6 developers who are moving to .NET don't think all the new features of .NET are cool. Many of them are shocked to learn all the stuff they could have been doing in COM (interfaces and the such) and wish that they new about them earlier.





    Now, of course, these are the VB6 developers who got their company or out of their own pocket dropped $1000+ to learn some .NET stuff, so they might not be representive of the whole. But, with the right training and pointers VB developers can easily adopt all the new features.

  • I am not going to question your conclusions, certainly that is up to the community to judge, but I would like to point out the that C# article is about our Whidbey release and the VB article is about our Everett release. That alone explains a big difference... What's new in C# for Everett?? I'll give you a hint: not much.





    ..brad


  • So, maybe VB will have some cool features that make us C# guys jealous. I do admit that as much as I loved C++ back in the day, my VB friends definately did find enough cool features that C++ didn't have that it did make me wish I had VB with C++ syntax...but isn't that what C# is anyway ;-).

Comments have been disabled for this content.