Sharpening my skills.

I've been a VB programmer for a long time. Therefore, I took to VB.NET pretty easily. I can pound out code pretty quickly in VB.NET, and I'm familiar enough with C# syntax that I can read C# code fluently. But the past year at my current job has involved a little bit of Java coding. Curly braces and semi-colons don't scare me, although I'm not a big fan of case-sensitivity. I've done a little bit of C# coding here and there, but I mainly use VB.NET.

However, one of the things that I like doing is getting down into the details of what .NET is doing. I use ILDASM a lot as it's a great tool for just that. What I'm not crazy about is all the "extra stuff" that I see in VB.NET executables. Granted, I've been a big supporter of VB.NET for a long time and I think it's a great language. But I had a little ASP.NET project to do the other night so I made the commitment to do it in C# and take it for a real test-drive.

Well, I really liked it! It took a little getting used to, but after a couple of hours working in it, you really forget about the differences in language -- you're justing expressing your .NET intentions differently. While I can't say I'm a convert at this point, I'll probably start doing more and more in C#.

3 Comments

  • I'm actually thinking of the same, except I'm wanting to learn the VB.NET syntax. I say go for it man! It's just another skill that should be pretty easy to pick up.

  • Patrick - THis is a great perspective from a vb developer. I know when just comparing the compiled code of a vb.net Hello World app to a c# hello world app, the only noticable difference was that VB set up a much bigger stack than C# did. I wonder if that's in prepratation for all the extra stuff you are seeing?

  • julie,



    VB.NET continues the VB tradition of being an easy to use language. And for the compiler, that means doing a bit more work to protect the developer from errors. Some of that is evident in the "extra" things in a VB.NET application. Not sure why VB.NET uses a bigger stack. Interesting... :)

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