[dba-VB] Recent Discussion from MS on VB.Net and C# in VS 2010

Drew Wutka DWUTKA at Marlow.com
Tue Mar 16 10:16:53 CDT 2010


Understand and agree with everything you said, except one item.  I don't
have ANY experience with C#, only C++, so I am agreeing on principle
with your statements of learning curves.

However, my exception is to the ; and _ issue.  You have to put ; at the
end of each line, where as in VB, you only have to put _ at the end of a
line that you want to extend to the next physical line.  The is just no
way, that you would end up typing more _ then you would type ;.
Personally, the only times I use an underscore is when I create a long
SQL string, something more then select x from y where z=1.  Then I will
break it up into something more readable with _.  But other than that, I
almost never 'extend' a line.  From my POV, I just think that it's silly
that the compiler won't recognize a CRLF as the execution point, except
when it sees an underscore before it.

Just my opinion though.  Not that I would never use C# or C++ because of
the ;, just find it annoying.

Drew



-----Original Message-----
From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 5:26 PM
To: Discussion concerning Visual Basic and related programming issues.
Subject: Re: [dba-VB] Recent Discussion from MS on VB.Net and C# in VS
2010

 >Why do I need to put ; at the end of a line?

Because now you don't need the  _ nonsense to continue code to the next
line.

 From the beginning of the line to the first ; is all a line of code.
C# really is nice in that 
regard.  White space is white space whether it is a space, tab or CRLF.

 >It just makes no sense to me to have strtemp and strTemp represent two
different values.

I don't particularly like case sensitivity, I would PREFER case
insensitivity, but now with modern 
coding editors it is dead easy to find and fix such things.  I still
don't LIKE it though.  In fact 
C# coders tend to use a convention where the variable has UC all words
and the function has a LC 
first character (or VV).

And you can declare class fields public and do away with the get/set if
you wish.  I don't recommend 
that, whether in VB or C#.

It is a fact that VB was designed to be easier to read, but again
"easier" is relative to what?  Try 
reading a medical article.  Holy crap.  But it is perfectly easy to a
doctor.  Trying to read VB if 
you come from C# is NOT easy, trying to read C# if you come from VB is
NOT easy.  Both syntax 
require learning.  Writing code in VB is actually a tad harder once you
are good at both, and that 
from a person that comes from VB.  Typing Begin instead of { is more
keystrokes.  It just is, and it 
takes longer and allows this "keyboard dyslexic" lots of opportunities
to mis-spell.  OTOH nowadays 
the editor tends to do the "auto-finish" thing anyway.

I think it is instructive to notice that the VB crowd says VB is easier
and the C crowd says C# is 
easier.  I think at the core, both are pretty much equally hard / easy
and whichever you do first 
and / or longest is which is "easiest".

I tend to believe that, over the long haul, the "extra" time it takes to
become familiar with C# 
over VB is lost in the noise of the time to learn the .net framework.
IOW the total time to learn 
either syntax is under 5% of the time to learn "dot net".  Learning VB
syntax might be 4.5% as 
opposed to 5% for C#.  In either case learning all of the classes and
other stuff of .Net is going 
to be 95% (or more!).

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


Drew Wutka wrote:
>  I hate to chime in here, cause I haven't done any serious development
> in about 2 years now.  I still use VB 6, simply because I have so many
> tools that I have built for that, and I have so much code already
> written that it's not worth the effort to dig into anything new since
> I'm not doing it full time anyways.
> 
> However, JWC posted a link from a "coder's" blog where he made a
comment
> in one of his posts about having to deal with 'sloppy code' where he
> clarified that with 'other peoples code'.  LOL.  So dead on the mark.
> There are standards, none of which are universally applied.  So pretty
> much every 'coder' out there thinks their code is the best written.
But
> it makes sense, since code, in a way, is an artistic output, that we
> create, therefore the creator understands it the best.
> 
> However, as a 'semi-retired' developer, back in the days, I dabbled in
> C++, php, even a little Java.  And I always preferred VB 6, VBA and
ASP.
> One of my hang-ups with the C style languages is the case sensitive
> parts.  I remember having an argument with my sister years ago (about
9
> years ago) about this very topic.  It just makes no sense to me to
have
> strtemp and strTemp represent two different values.  No I googled, and
> found out that C# is still case sensitive.  And one of the links had a
> vivid discussion about this.  The C world pointed out that with case
> sensitivity, you could create a class called Foo, and then have an
> instance of the class called foo.  Sure, great, wouldn't want to work
on
> that code if my life depended on it.  But then again, it's a style
> difference.  And as Max just posted, there is all the structure
> nomenclature that, to me, just seems like just a hassle.  Why do I
need
> to put ; at the end of a line?  
> 
> Another issue I have had is that .Net requires much larger 'support'
> files.  And when it first hit, there were versioning issues with them.
> I don't think this is much of an issue today, especially with the size
> of available media (hard drives, DVDs, etc) and the wide spread use of
> broadband.  But I still like the simple 1.4 megs for VB6.... ;)
> 
> Dan, specifically to your post, however, I had to look up the word
> laconic.  I find that kind of odd to be used with C code:
> 
> class SomeClass  
> { 
>     private int someField; 
>  
>     public int SomeField 
>     { 
>         get { return SomeField; }  
>     } 
> }
> 
> Versus:
> 
> Option Explicit
> Public SomeField as Integer
> 
> Can you really say that the C version is really more concise?
> 
> Drew
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Shamil
> Salakhetdinov
> Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 3:52 PM
> To: 'Discussion concerning Visual Basic and related programming
issues.'
> Subject: Re: [dba-VB] Recent Discussion from MS on VB.Net and C# in VS
> 2010
> 
> Hi Dan --
> 
> <<<
> ...because it's easier to read...
> Well what of the following code lines is easier to
read/understand/code
> for
> a (beginner) programmer?:
> 
> string line = "test";
> 
> or
> 
> dim line as string = "test"
> 
> IMO (just IMO) defining a string variable named 'line' with initial
> value
> equal to "test" is directly translated to C#'s code line:
> 
> string line = "test";
> 
> but not to a VB.NET one...
> 
> And there could be found many samples like that one above, more
> complicated
> samples, which will highlight "one-to-one" correspondence between C#
> coding
> and algorithmic specifications...
> 
> IMO (just IMO, I'm not trying to start a discussion here) C# is more
> straightforward and laconic, and is expected to become "preferred"
> programming language over time...
> 
> Thank you :)
> 
> --
> Shamil
> 
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