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Microsoft throws a bone to those unable to leave the past behind: .NET 5 support on the way for Visual Basic

serendipity

Richard Speed joins a long line of IT commentators who talk utter bollocks about VB.Net because 18 years after it was launched they still don't understand how it is fundamentally different to VB6!! (Nobody who knows anything about VB.Net would put a picture of Visual Studio with VB6 at the top of their article!!)

VB.Net and VB6 share some language syntax it is true but other than that they are totally different. As a fully fledged .Net language, VB.Net is much closer to C# than it is VB6. It would be relatively trivial to convert an application from C# to VB.Net and visa versa but it's much more difficult to convert VB6 apps to VB.Net as the architecture is fundamentally object orientated and a world away from VB6. As for feature parity between C# and VB.Net, personally I don't care. C# is aimed at geek types who think 100 line anonymous methods are great and code comments are bad smells. VB.Net is a nice environment for LOB applications with it's English like syntax and most VB.Net coders don't mind adding a few comments to let you know what the code might be trying to achieve.

So RS, explain please why if I can compile my VB.Net code to virtually identical .Net Byte code as I could if I coded the same thing in C#, why is the VB.Net produced code legacy and the C# code isn't, particularly as the fundamental architecture of the two languages is all but identical?

And while we are at it, I code in both and I don't mind C# but I wouldn't call the syntax 'modern'. The whole industry seems to be burdened with languages that need semi-colons and squiggly brackets to tell the compiler what the developer means - it's so 1970's! And I also find the VS experience with VB.Net just that little bit more productive than with C#, there seem to be fewer of those annoying framework/compiler glitches to deal with.

And as for popularity, VB.Net has shot up the TIOBE index in recent years and in some months has ranked higher than C#! Last time I looked C# was 5th and and VB.Net was only just behind in 6th. Yes okay, I take the TIOBE index with a pinch of salt but at the very least it looks like somebody is still interested in this 'legacy' language that we apparently should of all stopped using years a go! ;))

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