How is VB.NET Doing?

re: How is VB.NET Doing?

Chacogi — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:38:16 GMT

My bad .net experiece is with the .net generation, not the language.

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It is sad to mention: The only two c# .net projects that I know cancelled after 5 years of developement. They failed on same problem:

1. Young/fresh 'programmers' from college learn new .net stuff faster than vb6 folks like us - they make us looked like antiques in the meeting - so managers listen to them.

2. Problem is after those youngters heros bring jumped in the project: all they have are new .net syntax. nothing else. In their classroom projects, software support was not a requirement.

3. After 5 years their managers said: Oh, maybe we need some experiences and some design too.

re: How is VB.NET Doing?

MarcelDevG — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:29:55 GMT

I agree there are a lot of so called hobby programmers who did not make the switch to vb.net. But hobbyists is the wrong name (pardon my spelling), but I don't have a better word also.

And the thought of making something 'easier' to make programs as in the VB6 days, yes that's bugging me also the last couple of years. Something like DBase.NET with VB as the programming language.

But VB.Net is generally a better language than VB6 ever was. Yes, to make fully use of VB.Net you have to be somewhat like a c++ of C# programmer. But I think the language, and maybe more important the IDE, can be extended to fullfil the need of those programmers. Where is VBA.NET for Office. I get more and more customers who cannot cope anymore with their own made macro's and VBA code. There is an other audience/market going away. Not there is an viable alternative, but maybe google or adobe will step up with Openoffice and a good scripting environment.

But I believe VB is the comeback kid. Statistics aside, the learning step is big, but it's coming around.

Marcel

re: How is VB.NET Doing?

Kathleen — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:53:51 GMT

Absoutely correct.

You can see why I appreciate my editors when I get caught up in the idea and screw up the English usage.

re: How is VB.NET Doing?

Anonymous — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:14:08 GMT

I'm afraid that your last paragraph has a grammar error. "planet their using" should be "planet they're using"

re: How is VB.NET Doing?

Dan Howard — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:03:26 GMT

Yup. IMO Microsoft blew it with VB.NET. They lost a mountain of developers to PHP/Ruby/Python etc. which - sadly for Microsoft are technologies completely outside their control. Most of the VB6 guys I know are all Linux junkies now.

What Microsoft should have done was focus .NET on the C# language and left VB as it's own stand alone product with the eventual goal of having VB compile to the CLR.

That way the migration path for all those developers would have been smoother and fewer of them would have abandoned Microsoft.

re: How is VB.NET Doing?

Leigh — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:30:09 GMT

In terms of C# being prevalent in community audiences doesn't surprise me.

At client sites, what is "common"? 50/50 or 80/20 C#/VB?? Are you able to be more specific on that?

It does seem that C# is the new VB Classic and that VB.NET has been relegated to a much less prominent role - say like FoxPro in terms of use and respect.

re: How is VB.NET Doing?

chrissie1 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:01:15 GMT

Have you ever considered writing a novel. Just to say I like the way you write. Keep up the good work. And I think you are 100% correct about VB.Net.