This isn't intended to be a VB vs C# flame war (although by about page 2 I guess it might end up that way). I'm interested in perceptions about developers, especially .Net. Insert "PHP > all" here.

Personally, I have a heavy bias towards C-based languages. I am able to quickly jump between C++, C#, PHP and Java due to the similarities in syntax. I know that a good PHP guy can probably be bludgeoned into a good C# guy and vice versa.

But VB developers - those with no C background, or a preference against C-based syntax - just plain freak me out.

I'm a .Net developer - I can read and write in VB.Net - but the language has never struck me as appealing. From a pure productivity standpoint the syntactic sugar of VB can produce code faster than C# (although improvemets in the C# IDE continue to chip away at this).

Is this an irrational prejudice? I tend to immediately consider code written in VB when a flavour of C was an option suspiciously. At the moment I am performing a code review of a slightly dodgy product for a client, and the fact that its all in VB isn't helping.

What do you reckon?

vb programmers are dirty

also, i dont like windows programmers

That's OK, everyone thinks Perl programmers are odd.

s/odd/awesome/;

IMO, like all things, there are good VB programmers and bad C* programmers. It's not the language that's the problem as a whole, it's how they wrote the code. Sure VB has its limitations but then nothing is perfect. I think you are being prejudice, not irrational though as you'd obviously have bias towards C(*) style syntax and obviously seen a lot of bad VB code (why else you they get you to audit the code if they product is working flawlessly?).

I find VB gets a bit annoying sometimes when I used non-microsoft editors especially with the compound statements/iteration trying to match them when the code is long is very annoying as you can just match brackets like you can with other C Style syntax (like in VI I could just go to the open bracket and press shift-5 and it'll find the matching close bracket for me).

Also like anything it's a right tool for the right job. Obviously you wouldn't use VB for say, flight navigation system :) as you wouldn't use standard C to write Windows Apps. (You can but man it'll be a royal pain in the asssss).

I think that this is just an older perception of how things were prior to .NET. VB programmers were generally seen as worse to a large extent, but there are a few factors for this. VB was used for more frontend stuff and didn't suit large applications (even though many large applications were written in it).

As .NET came around people were still split into VB/C# camps, so the older VB programmers tended towards VB.NET and the more C-ish developers moved towards C#.NET. And hence you will probably find the C-ish devs produce cleaner and easier to maintain code. I have seen apps written by old VB6 developers and it's not pretty.

Mind you as time goes on this will slowly fade out and it will be just a matter of syntax preference. It's all the same CIL in the end anyway, with some minor difference between languages.

Yeah I have unfortunately had to deal with PHP/C code written by old men with VB backgrounds and it is like reading literature from the illiterate. There is no elegance, structure, legibility, or consistency to the code - and the typical response when you make a comment is along the lines of "I'm a veteran engineer - a logical person - I don't care about the fancy bulls***".

Now imagine that these people are providing you an API for an interface you have to write :(

Yeh its totally about experience and bias built on historical s***.

I've had to unravel or rewrite so many VB apps its not funny, particularly half-baked Access apps. This one is actually better than most but still only 3/4 baked!

particularly half-baked Access apps

I feel for you :(

Hogfather are you talking about VB.NET versus C# , or just VB-like versus C-like languages?

I definitely have a prejudice against VB.NET code because I tend to feel that any developer worth their salt will be more comfortable with C style syntax and so wouldn't want to use VB.NET

There are obviously some excellent VB.NET programmers out there, but when you can't know one way or the other if thats the case, its easy to assume that given some random program written in that language it will not be very good.

In terms of productivity, I think VB.NET occupies a pretty useless middle-point between C# and some of the scripting languages available on .NET now

I definitely have a prejudice against VB.NET code because I tend to feel that any developer worth their salt will be more comfortable with C style syntax and so wouldn't want to use VB.NET

Yeh that's pretty much what I was trying to articulate, which is why I tend to get a bit suss when I see VB.Net.

ive just found c# so... qwerky; like overloads etc;

There are obviously some excellent VB.NET programmers out there

this is a stupid comment. we are talking about differences in syntax here. the language doesnt make an OO coder good or bad!

last edited by mooby at 21:14:55 18/Aug/08

for me there's no appreciable difference between C# and the equivalent version of VB.NET

C# has some things like unsafe code regions that you probably won't use

as a VB.NET developer I can program in anything I set my mind to, that's just the language my employer chooses to use

What do you reckon?

I reckon only poofters review VB code.

infact, i cant belive im getting sucked into this thread. unsubscribe.

infact, i cant belive im getting sucked into this thread. unsubscribe.

Oh that's no fun. I'm curious though, did you have a C background before you started VB.Net?

most of the c# developers i know, are wankers. make stupid comments like "my code is better than yours" without even benchmarking.

to be honest, id rather talk about tits and beer and footy and dont give a rats ass aslong as my £ comes in to the bank each week.

yeah, no passion...

That's OK, everyone thinks Perl programmers are odd.

Anyone whos language of choice looks like an explosion in an ascii factory has to be on some serious, serious drugs.

There's nothing wrong with VB, though it does get uglier the more complex statements become. The problem is that on the basic side of things the learning curve is very low, so it attracts a lot of idiots who can't get even intermediate topics, and when they attempt them, well... it ain't pretty.

argh my eyes

here are obviously some excellent VB.NET programmers out there

this is a stupid comment. we are talking about differences in syntax here. the language doesnt make an OO coder good or bad!

Get your pedanticism on: I meant "there are obviously some excellent programmers who use VB.NET"


I think Hogfather's comment really gets to "why would a good developer choose to use VB.NET?". One reason given here is "my employer chose it", which for me just sets off alarm bells about the employer but clearly not everyone shares that opinion.

Any other reasons?

which for me just sets off alarm bells about the employer

there are alot of vb.net jobs going as people are upscaling from vb6 and asp classic. before you go on about how s*** vb6 is, something like 60-80% of busniess apps 10years ago where all vb6.

now, before you go on about 10years is along time ago in computer industries, alot of real world clients (such as UK & US top 5 law firms) are just deploying windows xp and office 2003.

other reasons... thres no difference in performance between c# and vb.net. so if an application needs to be built then theres no reason not to choose vb.net.

Worth a re-run!
http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/steverowe/WindowsLiveWriter/ProgrammingLanguageHierarchy_1489F/programmer_hierarchy[7].gif

there is a little box at the top of that chart above all of them that is missing

it's called 'everyone else'

That chart is missing a few links. There's a fair C#/Java rivalary mid way up there, and you could probably extend that to being Java/C#/PHP.

I think the other problem is that there's two types of Java programmers: Ones who use enterprise frameworks like EE, Hibernate and Spring etc, and ones who deal with 'true' Java and stuff like SWT.

Flex seems to be altogether omitted from that chart, and can frankly be anywhere from VB level Multimedia dropouts to Enterprise Java people.

raven: it's not supposed to be a serious chart

I think raven exists in the third dimension of that chart which is perpendicular to his screen wherein he is even better than its creator

:(
how come my camels got nuked?

ASCII camel toe?

jim: it's not supposed to be a serious reply

raven: it's not supposed to be a serious chart

Really? Then why do so many programmers seem to actually follow it? :)

raven: g'day

LOL Ruby programmers...