C# developers going back to vb.net

[Adam Tibi]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for this nice reply and thank you for defending me.

Have a nice weekend

"Kevin Spencer" wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hi Adm,
>
> Peronally, I understood your remark about "the mother of all languages." It
> was beside the point to point out the minor technical issue. In fact, C was
> written to look more or less like Pascal, so one might argue, with
> Lillipution intent, that Pascal was the "mother of all languages." Still, it
> would indeed be pointless to do so.
>
> I appreciated your enthusiasm, and, regardless of the occasional
> technicality, I found your arguments for the most part quite understandable.
> In fact, as it was an expression of opinion, and not a factual answer to a
> question, I considered it less important that it should be "absolutely
> factually correct" (if that is possible, considering the vagaries of
> language).
>
> It irritates me to see people publicly correct others without some
> valid/helpful reason for doing so. If, for example a person asks a question,
> and a person responding speaks without knowledge, and therefore leads the OP
> down the wrong path to a solution, I feel it necessary to correct the person
> responding, and provide the correct information. This helps the OP to find
> the solution they seek. On the other hand, when a person is asked for an
> opinion and gives it, and is incorrect on some minor technical point, who is
> harmed by it? Why should the person venturing the opinion be publicly
> corrected for their perceived and minor error? Who is helped by it? The only
> conclusion I can draw from such behavior is that ther person doing the
> correcting is attempting to elevate public perception of their knowledge at
> another person's expense. And that is both unnecessary and uncalled-for.
>
> It took 4 years for Microsoft to develop the first version of the .Net
> platform. I will be the first person to admit that I don't know everything
> about it. I do, however, know how to research, and am quite good at that.
> When I first began to program, I relied heavily on help from others who were
> farther along the path than I. Now I feel a sense of responsibility to do
> the same. That is my motivation. I help when I can, and keep silent when I
> can not.
>
> I did feel a certain need to step in to your defense. I don't like to see
> people bullied. And I can hold my own in a scuffle. I don't mind a knock or
> two here and there. I can give as good as I get. I am confident in my
> professional life, and not afraid of the opinions of others. They cannot
> harm me professionally, and I have a thick skin. So, from time to time I
> will step in to defend someone else. Call me a glutton for punishment.
>
> But don't feel bad that you may have somehow embarassed yourself with your
> contribution. I found it quite refreshing! :)
>
> --
> HTH,
>
> Kevin Spencer
> Microsoft MVP
> ..Net Developer
> Ambiguity has a certain quality to it.
>
> "Adam Tibi" <AdamTibi@discu ssions.microsof t.com> wrote in message
> news:DDFB43F5-1DF7-4F6E-9E5D-D9675070159C@mi crosoft.com...[color=green]
> > Thanks for explaining pal, maybe I needed to ask more before I reply back
> > and
> > maybe your first reply should have included the "mother of all languages"
> > thing so I would have understood what is going on.
> > What I meant by saying that C++ is the mother of all languages is that C#,
> > PHP, Java, JavaScript and others that I don't know tried to follow the
> > syntax
> > of C/C++! Well, how far they went varies between one language and another
> > and
> > undoubtly C# was the pioneer.
> > My comments comparing C# versus VB.NET is emotional, I agree on that, and
> > such topic requires emotional rather than logical answers.
> > Sorry for being unpolite, this is a lesson for me to listen more than I
> > speak and believe me I am working on it :)
> >
> > "Cor Ligthert [MVP]" wrote:
> >[color=darkred]
> >> Adam,
> >>
> >> > Actually, I think that it would unprofessional to comment on my style
> >> > of
> >> > writing or language versus the actual content.
> >>
> >> Can you tell me where I wrote that in my reply to Kevin? I will be
> >> probably
> >> the last one who not completely agrees about that with you. In fact it
> >> was
> >> Kevin who did that.
> >>
> >> My reply had nothing to do with your style of writing it had to do with
> >> the
> >> fact that Kevin gave me the idea that he had not even read your message
> >> and
> >> therefore was only trolling my reply to you.
> >>
> >> In my opinion are there some things in the content of your original
> >> answer
> >> that makes that probably not much people will read it after they have
> >> seen
> >> this starting sentence.
> >>
> >> >>C# syntex is derived from the mother of all languages C++
> >>
> >> AFAIK is C# the only language derived from C++.
> >>
> >> I had read your message completely and had the idea that I understood
> >> everything you wrote. I had the idea that most maybe came from your hart
> >> but
> >> is not based on much investigation
> >>
> >> Therefore I gave you the link to Wikepedi, I assume that you would not be
> >> glad when I was only copying the content of that in a message.
> >>
> >> Cor
> >>
> >>
> >>[/color][/color]
>
>
>[/color]

[Michael A. Covington]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

>> Peronally, I understood your remark about "the mother of all languages."[color=blue][color=green]
>> It
>> was beside the point to point out the minor technical issue. In fact, C
>> was
>> written to look more or less like Pascal, so one might argue, with
>> Lillipution intent, that Pascal was the "mother of all languages." Still,
>> it
>> would indeed be pointless to do so.[/color][/color]

And ALGOL 60 is the mother of Pascal. Does that mean ALGOL is C#'s
great-grandmother?

Or that Delphi is C#'s great-aunt? :)

[Doug H]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

Here's how it will look in boo, just for comparison:

http://boo.codehaus.org/

i = 42
given i:
when 1,5,7,19,39:
print "first form"
when 11,9,10,24,28:
print "second form"
otherwise:
print "not on a form"

or your other example:

i = 42
given i:
when 0 <= i <= 10
print "10s"
when 11 <= i <= 42
print "rest"

http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/BOO-136

I'm not saying it's better or worse or anything.

To the guy who's deciding about what language to use for new hires, I'd
probably recommend C# if they are already familiar with java or C++
(which is likely if they are CS grads).

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

Michael,

[color=blue]
> And ALGOL 60 is the mother of Pascal. Does that mean ALGOL is C#'s
> great-grandmother?
>
> Or that Delphi is C#'s great-aunt? :)
>[/color]
I think that you are right, however in my opinion is Algol not completely
the mother of all languages.

I think that it can be called that for all by mainly Beta's used languages.
The sister Cobol can in my opinion be seen as a mother of all languages for
the "Alpha's".

Strange enough are that much less while they have AFAIK a very broad public
that uses them.

Cor

[igouy@yahoo.com]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net


Cor Ligthert [MVP] wrote:[color=blue]
> Michael,
>
>[color=green]
> > And ALGOL 60 is the mother of Pascal. Does that mean ALGOL is C#'s
> > great-grandmother?
> >
> > Or that Delphi is C#'s great-aunt? :)
> >[/color]
> I think that you are right, however in my opinion is Algol not completely
> the mother of all languages.
>
> I think that it can be called that for all by mainly Beta's used languages.
> The sister Cobol can in my opinion be seen as a mother of all languages for
> the "Alpha's".
>
> Strange enough are that much less while they have AFAIK a very broad public
> that uses them.
>
> Cor[/color]

http://www.levenez.com/lang/history.html#01

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

Hi,

Thanks,
[color=blue]
>
> http://www.levenez.com/lang/history.html#01
>[/color]

Very interesting.

Cor

[Bruce Wood]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

Sigh. Some months back I was waging a battle on this front... I guess
it didn't have much effect. :-)

Yes, in a few situations, structs offer performance benefits. You can
see typical uses in this regard in System.Drawing. Point and
System.Drawing. Rectangle, among others. They're things that by rights
ought to have reference semantics that were made into structs for
performance reasons, I think. At least, I can't think of any other
reason to create _mutable_ value types and suffer the resulting
confusion among programmers using your class library.

That said, value types are incredibly... um, valuable... when it comes
to modeling things that are _values_. I'm going to try very, very hard
not to believe that you're honestly suggesting that ints should have
been reference types. Do you really believe that this code:

int a = 5;
int b = a;
a = 16;
Console.Writeli ne("{0}", b);

should write 16? Can you imagine how difficult it would be wrap your
mind around programming in a language with only reference semantics?
Just imagining the mayhem makes my head hurt. :) If memory serves,
even venerable LISP, the everything-is-a-reference-type language, took
pains to avoid this.

Complex numbers, money (quantity plus currency), measures (quantity
plus unit of measure) and other such things are natural value types.
For the complex numbers example,

int a = new Complex(5, 1);
int b = a;
a *= a;

should leave b containing [5, 1] as before, not [-25, 0], which is what
a would contain (pardon if I made an error there... I haven't worked
with complex numbers in 20 years). In other words, the thing should act
like a value, not like an object with reference semantics. As Steve
Walker pointed out, when I add $5.00 and $0.25 and put the result back
in the original variable, I really don't want every $5.00 quantity in
my system to change to $5.25. That would be nasty.

Sorry for the rant, but it drives me nuts when people start building
Customer structs, saying that it's "more efficient", and then wonder
why their code does all these weird things. It drives me even crazier
to know that Microsoft has a (VB) example of how to use structs in
their knowledge base that shows a Customer struct with a half-dozen
fields. Aaaargh!

[Bjorn Abelli]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

"Bruce Wood" wrote...
[color=blue]
> That said, value types are incredibly... um, valuable... when it comes
> to modeling things that are _values_. I'm going to try very, very hard
> not to believe that you're honestly suggesting that ints should have
> been reference types. Do you really believe that this code:
>
> int a = 5;
> int b = a;
> a = 16;
> Console.Writeli ne("{0}", b);
>
> should write 16? Can you imagine how difficult it would be wrap your
> mind around programming in a language with only reference semantics?
> Just imagining the mayhem makes my head hurt. :)[/color]

I don't see this as a good example on what you mean. Why should it write 16?
When you're assigning a literal to a variable, you could say you're
assigning another object, not changing the objects contents.

int a = 5;
int b = a; // Is now referencing 5
a = 16; // Is now referencing 16
Console.Writeli ne("{0}", b);

b is still referencing 5

Try this for comparison:

string a = "Hello";
string b = a; // Is now referencing "Hello"
a = "World"; // Is now referencing "World"
Console.Writeli ne("{0}", b);

b is still referencing "Hello".


This is really no different than:

Customer a = new Customer("Bill" );
Customer b = a; // Is now referencing Bill
a = new Customer("Bob") ; // Is now referencing Bob
Console.WriteLi ne("{0}", b);

b is still referencing "Bill"

So the traditional logic when using primitives or value types shouldn't
necessarily need to change just because they became reference types instead.
At least no changes that I can see at the moment. I think much lies in how
to define the behaviour of the operators.

But there still might be other issues with using only reference types rather
than having both value and reference types... ;-)

// Bjorn A

[Bruce Wood]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

Point taken. My examples weren't very good, as you pointed out. In
order to get into trouble with integers-as-reference-types, there would
have to be some quality of the integer itself that was mutable, so that
you could get into trouble by changing that mutable quality in one
place and having it change everywhere.

Anyway, the point was that I like value types. They're powerful when
used in the correct contexts, but a terrible pain when used in the
wrong contexts. Most complaints I've seen in this discussion group
about what a bad idea value types are arise from people using them for
the wrong reasons.

[apm]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

[color=blue]
> But I can't help wondering if ex vb6 developers now working in C# would
> be more productive going back to vb.net for this exact same reason. I
> know I am.
>[/color]

What about bugs. Isn't VB.NET different from VB? I know when I went from
Visual C/C++ to C# I had problems because I expected code that looked the
same would behave the same in the two languages.

Similarly, I had few problems with memory leaks with Visual C/C++ but
terrible problems with C++.NET, that is, until I learned how to use it.

[Kevin]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net


APM,

Yes, moving from one enviroment to another is always a problem no
matter what language is chosen on the framework. VB.Net is vastly
different from VB or VB 6, just getting used to some of the keywords in
the beginning can be a problem ie: NotInheritable (don't know how they
came up with this one, they probably thought that vb guys wouldn't be
able to pronounce the keyword sealed), and what about moving from Java
to C#, Final becomes Sealed. In the end you would end up with bugs if
you do not understand the enviroment as well as the syntactical issues.

This is actually what I was getting at in my original post.
Why the move from vb 6 to c# in the first place? This just adds more
complexity, not only a new enviroment but a new language syntax as
well, can you imagine the buggy code in this situation. I think this is
why ex vb developers are moving back to vb.net from c# for this exact
same reason. Looks like you made the right decision moving from Visual
C/C++ to C++.Net or C#, at least you are familiar and enjoy the c style
syntax and all that needs to be done is to learn the enviroment and
framework. Imagine if you had to go to VB.Net because you got paid more
or your manager was under the impression that VB.Net is the native
language on the .Net framework.

Kevin

[alYsa]

RE: C# developers going back to vb.net

I think people that were developing with VB should not be developers at all.
:)
There is some truth in that - cause they are rooted so much in bad
methodologies and crap code - that they are very useless in understanding
proper OO programming. So if they use vb.net - then nothing changes - they do
the same crap procedural code - just they think that they are programming OO
cause vb.net supposed to be OO language.
So in my opinion every VB developer should go to C# - so they would forget
everything they knew about VB - it does not work that way as it used to.
And who says that this:

if VB Is Nothing then
csharp = "great"
end if

is easier on eyes than this:

if (VB == null) {
csharp = "great";
}


Any adult and kid understands that reading symbol (bracket) is much easier
to spot than reading a word . So you do not even have to read C# sytax - it
is obviuos from a glance - and you HAVE TO read VB.Net syntax and it takes
longer to understand.
So VB developers - it is time to grow up for you.

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

Alysa,

There is in my opinion enough told in this thread that has a higher value
than your probably try to create a trolling thread (just asking others not
to react on this).

Just read what is written and you have replies enough with a higer value no
matter if I agree with what is written or not.

Whatever that you write as reply on this, you get no reply on that from me

Cor

[alYsa]

Re: C# developers going back to vb.net

I am expressing my oppinion and not looking for values.
Are you sure you do not want to grow up?

"Cor Ligthert [MVP]" wrote:
[color=blue]
> Alysa,
>
> There is in my opinion enough told in this thread that has a higher value
> than your probably try to create a trolling thread (just asking others not
> to react on this).
>
> Just read what is written and you have replies enough with a higer value no
> matter if I agree with what is written or not.
>
> Whatever that you write as reply on this, you get no reply on that from me
>
> Cor
>
>
>[/color]

[rsboze]

RE: C# developers going back to vb.net

While I do think there is room in this world for VB Developers, I have to
agree with alYsa that many of them like to think that using an OO language is
the same as applying OO principles. I can't tell you the number of VB.Net
developers we interviewed at my company that had the phrase "Object Oriented"
all over their resume, but when they were asked to give a basic example of OO
in action, they couldn't do it. I think C# lends itself more to good
programming disciplines than VB does. That's not to say that all (or even
most) VB developers are undisciplined, just that it takes a more conscious
effort to be disciplined when using VB than it does with C#.




"alYsa" wrote:
[color=blue]
> I think people that were developing with VB should not be developers at all.
> :)
> There is some truth in that - cause they are rooted so much in bad
> methodologies and crap code - that they are very useless in understanding
> proper OO programming. So if they use vb.net - then nothing changes - they do
> the same crap procedural code - just they think that they are programming OO
> cause vb.net supposed to be OO language.
> So in my opinion every VB developer should go to C# - so they would forget
> everything they knew about VB - it does not work that way as it used to.
> And who says that this:
>
> if VB Is Nothing then
> csharp = "great"
> end if
>
> is easier on eyes than this:
>
> if (VB == null) {
> csharp = "great";
> }
>
>
> Any adult and kid understands that reading symbol (bracket) is much easier
> to spot than reading a word . So you do not even have to read C# sytax - it
> is obviuos from a glance - and you HAVE TO read VB.Net syntax and it takes
> longer to understand.
> So VB developers - it is time to grow up for you.[/color]