[AccessD] Moving to .Net (was Ded Moroz sends you ...)

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Sun Jan 2 14:37:53 CST 2011


 > I think the paragraph you quoted is for public consumption by people who will campaign hard for 
their chosen language.

The paragraph I quoted is from the web page you quoted.  ;)

I guess my question is really, if both languages are so easy to read / learn / move to, why not pick 
what is going to give you the advantage today and tomorrow switch to whatever will give you the 
advantage tomorrow.

The way I read the statistics, C# is the higher paid language *today*, and *today* there is still a 
perception that the C# language is more capable and that programmers are more... capable.

Beyond that, they both truly appear to be pretty capable languages.  I chose to learn C# today 
simply because when I talk to clients *today* and I say C# there is a perception that I am a "real" 
programmer.  VB *today* has the "Access is a toy" reputation.  I've been through that for the last 
15 years and I chose not to repeat that.  C# is a fine language (as is VB.Net), C# is not all that 
difficult to learn, and I felt that for my own situation I would do that.

 From what I hear as I cruise around out there, there is a lot of "every high school kid is a vb 
programmer" with a strong implication that they haven't gone after the formal training that assists 
a programmer in being more than a hobbyist.  Is that true?  Does it matter?  What matters is what 
the hiring manager believes.  Until the universities replace C# with VB in the CIS programs, VB will 
continue to have a bad rap.  If the universities teach C# and you don't now it, then you must not be 
educated.

My local community college teaches one VB language class (semester) which is an "intro to 
programming" level class.  After that they provide two semesters of C# where you learn more in depth 
things.  The VB class is a prerequisite to the C# class, not the other way around.

Universities are notoriously slow to change.  And forward thinking people such as yourself may force 
the issue.  ;)

In the end however, if VB "wins" some language war, it won't make any difference to me, I will switch.


John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com

On 1/2/2011 2:54 PM, Dan Waters wrote:
>> From MS: "This enables you to choose a language based on personal
> preferences because both languages are equally capable."  And that's the big
> picture.
>
> Does MS have motivation to maintain two languages, long term, that are
> equally capable?  Probably not - they don't have unlimited resources.
>
> And MS would never at this point publicly state that they have a plan to
> deprecate either C# or VB.Net.  It's going to be a long time coming, but I
> do think it will.
>
> I think the paragraph you quoted is for public consumption by people who
> will campaign hard for their chosen language.  It just makes everyone feel
> that their own skill won't be deprecated.  It's important for MS to do that
> to keep .Net developers as .Net developers, regardless of their choice of
> programming language.  In two or three years, MS will have a different story
> than what they said 9 months ago.
>
> As time goes on people will realize that they have value as a .Net
> developer, regardless of whether they are familiar with C# or VB.Net.  .Net
> programmers will know that because either language can do the work of the
> other, and they'll be able to easily read both, and maybe easily use both.
> But the programmers will eventually realize that they'll want to just use
> one of them, and since VB.Net is easier to learn and quicker to use, I think
> that's where we'll end up.
>
> My goal here is to look into the future - If you see future differently I'd
> like to understand what steps you took to get there.  But I've done all the
> predicting I can do - my next step is to see what the next version of VS
> brings us, and then I'll try predicting again.
>
> Dan



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