Lest we forget

Posted Fri, Jul 23 2004 3:38 by bill

What was … was.  But sometimes old habits die hard, and it seems pretty reasonable to me that VB.NET should at least try to honor the VB that went before it.  Some progress has been made: E&C is back; Zero Impact projects are back; and apparently at my request, the “0 To “ in array declarations is also back J 

But what would a blog entry be without some bitchin’ hey ?

Well, I created a Winform’s application, and in a method I wrote :
  Caption = “my cool application”

So probably half of you know what that is meant to do, and probably half of you once knew and have since forgotten, (and if you have absolutely no idea what it is meant to do then you are reading the wrong blog.. so bugger off).

Now the big question is why doesn’t the VB.NET smart tag error correction thingy ma jig know what that code is trying to do, and why does it not offer to fix it ? 

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Comments

# re: Lest we forget

Friday, July 23, 2004 8:50 AM by bill

+1

I think the "VB.NET smart tag error correction thingy ma jig" is where the VB team should focus its efforts in its attempt to bring VB6'ers into the .NET world. I wish they would do so instead of essentially breaking the language in the name of backwards compatability.

Take for exaple the "default form variable instance" "feature" in VB 2005. Wouldn't it be *waaaaay* better to utilize the VB STECTMJ rather than allow the following?

Form1.Show()

Lots of developers are really balking at the default form instance stuff just on principal [1]. It's obviously sending a very bad message to developers who want their language to do things correctly.

[1] http://discuss.develop.com/archives/wa.exe?A2=ind0407c&L=vbdotnet&D=0&T=0&P=8469

# re: Lest we forget

Friday, July 23, 2004 10:36 AM by bill

I'm planning to talk about the whole default instance thing, but to get back to the original subject -- this is something that we wanted to do something about but didn't have time this time around. We've got to leave something to do next time... :-)

# re: Lest we forget

Friday, July 23, 2004 3:18 PM by bill

Hey Paul,

Uhm, like you do realize that by the time the next version after Whidbey comes out, we are probably looking at 5 or more years since the first release of VB.NET. So if we are talking about migration facilities, that sure is putting them off, hence impacting on more customers in the meanwhile. Seriously, by then, you have to ask what's the point ;)

Realistically just how hard can it be to hook into the memeber not found, check the type, and then see if it was Label.Caption, or Form.Caption, or Debug.Print

It's not like there are thousand or even hundred of them,. geez, just add the top ten. Anything would be better than the do nothing till next time 'tude.







# re: Lest we forget

Friday, July 23, 2004 3:22 PM by bill

Hey Stuart,

Yep ! STECTMJ should be part of an integrated approach.

And yes, Form1.Show is evil ! But that does not mean they have to remove it, just tame it. Keep it in the dungeon with all the other "un dead" creatures. Actually this is worth a blog entry of it's own :)