I'm A VB!

Comments

# tonyremay said on June 27, 2009 12:11 PM:

Awesome interviews!  I'm finding fewer & fewer VB programmers these days!

# jepee said on June 30, 2009 9:44 AM:

can u help me how to use vb.net. a program that can make a simple system .. like record system.. adding a person and save it to the database..

tnx. i hope your kind and consideration.. i need your help... god bless

# Ed Lance said on June 30, 2009 12:54 PM:

Thanks for doing this.  I think this is coming about 6 or 7 years too late.  Microsoft really failed the VB community during the .Net transition.  It has become more and more obvious that MS wants C# to be their language of choice.  A simple look at the code samples on MSDN, and sites like ASP.Net and Silverlight.net show where MS reallly is.

I am a proud VB developer.  VB is every bit as 'professional' a language as any curly brace language.  In fact, I routinely find that a lot of the C# code I look at really isn't that great and I end up optimizing it.

I hope this campaign gets things going, but I really think you need help from the top to get VB back to where it should be.  Get Bill Gates to come out of retirement long enough to announce that he is a VB (he was the original MS VB!).  Then get Ballmer behind this effort.  Then you will have something.

# Jim McDevitt said on July 1, 2009 11:17 AM:

I need the code to print the immediate page which contains text and graphics. I.E. To print out a bank statrement. I know how to print graphics and a text file. I want to be able to let the user print the current page. Thanks Reply to bagroom01@msn.com

# Karl E. Peterson said on July 1, 2009 4:33 PM:

Agree with Ed - MSFT *totally* failed the VB community with the .NET transition.  The first comment by Tony sums up the result pretty well.  It's over, folks.  Some saw that back in 2001.  Others, it seems, are only now coming to that conclusion.  And poor Jim, what can we say?  The newsgroups are [over there].  Better hustle along before MSFT destroys NNTP as well.  

# Ibrahim said on July 1, 2009 9:16 PM:

VB Over? Don’t know about that.  I do know that VB.Net opportunities are far outweighed by C# ones.  But I also know that there are still a lot of organizations still developing enterprise level applications in VB.  But VB is not a popular language among hordes of H1B and L1 workers who are swarming over the US IT industry. They much prefer the Java like syntax of C# (since many of them are converts from the Java-J2EE crowd).

Think it’s a joke?  Here’s an example of what is going on, in a Large National School Bus operating company in Cincinnati (won’t mention any names) they had a large enterprise wide billing application they where rewriting from VB6 to VB.Net.  The company was a long term VB6 shop and wanted to stay with VB. They were not getting the application done on time (very seasonal) and they contracted me to come in and look over their Architecture, Implementation and to suggest remedies. They where even expressing reservations about staying with VB.Net if it was so troublesome to develop.  Their IT department heads all thought they had a VB.Net application. They had entrusted the implementation to onsite H1B developers. The only American there who was hands on was the project manager, and he was 2 weeks new because they had just fired the H1B project manager.

As it turned out, everything had been done in C#, not VB.Net as the company’s specifications declared.  I actually had to display on the wall the differences between VB and C# to management to get it into their heads that they did not have a VB.Net application that the crew they had hired had taken it upon themselves to switch to C# without any upper level management approval.  What a hoot!  On another project I had some IT managers push for C# because it is a more object oriented and a truly compiled language unlike VB.Net. (I had real fun with them)

C# is on a roll that it is on because of the change in who comprises the IT work force in America. I have been a Basic programmer since the early 80s up until now. I love the VB.Net environment. But as Ed and Karl are observing, Microsoft has not done a very good job in supporting the VB Community. Anyone with any comprehension can see clearly that MSFT provides the C# community with unbounded resources while it starves the VB community with a dearth of laughable support.  There still are a lot of VB developers out there but they are dropping like flies.  As for the VB Team? C’mon what are you doing?  Why didn’t we have unsigned integers in the first version of Vb.Net? C# had it.  How could you cripple VB with single line Lambdas while letting the C# community write multiple line Lambdas? What was your thinking on these and other such short comings?

# Dan Barclay said on July 2, 2009 1:38 AM:

Yes, Ibrahim, having to rewrite your application in order to "upgrade" <cough> qualifies as "has not done a very good job in supporting the VB Community".  My bet is that this behavior is not over.  While I still have a large portion of my app in VB, all my new features are in Delphi as I calmly transition the entire app to Delphi.  It is what VB could have been, should have been, and would have been had it been driven by developer demand instead of being on some other mission.  Worse, they failed the mission to get these developers and apps to DotNet.  My move out of VB has been relatively painless, and I've been constantly surprised at what I find in Delphi (it's a lot more VB like than anyone on either side of that fence wants to admit).   With regard to the VB team, we really tried hard to get their attention, and failed spectacularly.  Sad deal all around.  

# Bryan Stafford said on July 2, 2009 11:16 AM:

Nothing has changed in the last five years.  Microsoft still doesn't give a rat's tale about anything but *their* bottom line and apparently never will.  To entrust any intellectual assets to a vehicle to which they are the sole vendor is pure folly given the track record.  As has been said, there are alternatives to MS languages and the wise developer doesn't walk the path where the rug might at any time be pulled from beneath their feet at the whim of "some team" at MS.  Microsoft's message to VB developers:  “Go forth and prosper but don't do it in VB.”

# kpat said on July 5, 2009 10:18 PM:

we use vb and vb.net in our school....hope this language last!! ^^

# Chris said on July 6, 2009 9:44 AM:

Wow. I am a bit taken aback by some of the posts in reply to this topic. From the comments here, you would think that VB was Foxpro.

I dont know what else Microsoft is supposed to be doing in addition to the language upgrades, detailed documentation, free videos, free IDE (VS Express), free code, Code Plex itself, etc. etc. etc. There in no pleasing some people, I guess, but to claim that VB as a language is dead is silly. I dont see any indication whatsoever that Microsoft intends to pull the plug on it.

Its a very powerful language with huge following which has a syntax that is easily accesible to beginner programmers (unlike C#, I would add).

Can one of you list an example where Microsoft has forsaken VB in favor of C#? I must have missed it. They owe us another powerpack, but I dont know what else I can demand except Amanda Silvers cell phone number and some swag : -)

Lighten up, people.

# sam said on July 6, 2009 12:33 PM:

VB PROGRAMMERS ARE LIKE PARASITE TO THE CODING> ANY DUMB MORON CAN CODE IN VB

# Toby said on July 6, 2009 12:53 PM:

Sam: Not to start a flame war, but I would say the same about C# (and PHP).

Any dumb moron can program in VB.NET, C#, or PHP.  Are they not tools that are used by totally n000bs?  Are they also all used to create large, enterprise applications?  Yes.

Does VB need an upgrade?  I dunno.  The only feature I would like is a multiline string input:

Dim str as String = "This is line 1

this is line 2

this is line 3"

without having to break my string and use underscores.  Even better would be Perl style input like

Dim str as String = q(This is line 1 "and it has quote"

this is line 2

this is line '3')

which is great for HTML and JS.  Or:

Dim str as String = <<"EOS"

This is line 1

This is line 2

this is line 3

EOS

...[code continues]

And as for C#, and lambdas, bahhh.  I'll take optional parameters over that crap any day.  Not to mention AddHandler instead of += (why reuse a math operator to do a totally different operation?)

Long live VB!

# ace said on July 6, 2009 7:25 PM:

It is bad of Microsoft to dump all of those VB developers that have championed Microsoft develpment tools in the past in favour of C#.  Some gratitude !

# Peter Simpel said on July 7, 2009 4:37 PM:

"Can one of you list an example where Microsoft has forsaken VB in favor of C#? I must have missed it ?"

XNA and game programming

# Waleed El-Badry said on July 10, 2009 4:10 AM:

Hey guys, we are supposed to be a "Visual Studio family". So no hard feelings between developers of Visual Basic and C# or any member of the family.

Speaking personally, yes it was so much easier to embrace VB a hundred times more than C# (which I comprehended later). With VB, not only making traditional code (database connection, networking etc), but also a very sophisticated applications like home automation, machine vision systems and SCADA monitoring.

If VB made me do my job as a first class automation engineer, then I'm proud to be VB. C# is awesome, but sorry guys, none can compete with me when it comes to Mechanical Automation and Machine Vision.

Cheers Guys

# VBTeam said on July 10, 2009 5:18 PM:

@sam

Putting down VB because it's easy is just silly. If complexity is your goal, then I should ask - why aren't you using assembly language? The goal is to get the job done and to solve your business problems. When assessing the quality of VB, you should instead look at the *power* of the language. Today, VB has the power of, and the innovations of a first class programming language. If things like case insensitivity and the My namespace make VB "easier", and that means VB developers can get the job done faster, then who do you think I should hire?

I wish we could make VB easy enough that *anyone* could use it. I don't think we're quite there yet, but it wouldn't be a bad place to end up.

Lisa Feigenbaum

VB Program Manager

# Larry Linson said on July 13, 2009 3:50 PM:

Lisa,

You _had_ a VB easy enough that anyone could use it and someone in Redmond decided to drop it in favor of the new language to which you applied the same name. We used to have quite a number of "mom and pop developers", largely self-taught, who attended the classic VB (v 6 and earlier) sessions at our user group. That class of users just isn't in evidence at the VB.NET meetings.

I've heard Sinofsky's comments, back in his days as Grand Potentate of Office, on the vast majority of revenue coming from enterprise customers. On the other hand, there's some virtue in "dancing with the ones who brung ya".  I can remember it was not the enterprise folk, but the commoners in user offices who brought Windows and Windows apps in to the corporate world, displacing OS/2, sometimes at "their own peril".  

Who's going to be bringing what into the workplace now, if it requires a computer scientist to use your development tools?  Thank goodness for Office and VBA... that community has resisted efforts to force them away from VBA, so far successfully.

<CHUCKLE> If I were to be subverted into a 'marketing auxiliary', maybe I should proudly proclaim, "I'm a VBA!"?

Larry Linson

Microsoft Office Access MVP

# Karl E. Peterson said on July 13, 2009 4:25 PM:

@Lisa - You're funny. I was chuckling out loud, reading your response to Sam. No kidding.

The need to declare one's tool to be "first class" is just *screaming* out insecurity, if not outright inferiority, for all the world to see. True "first class" speaks for itself. 'Nuf said on that?

I too wish you could make VB "easy enough for *anyone* to use" (again). I have some ideas, if you care to look me up. You know about The Google, right?

# Brian K Boggess said on July 14, 2009 9:51 AM:

Regardless of how powerful or useful VB (in any flavor) is or was, the problem I have always run into has been how the business world perceives the tool.  VB people are now running into what Access people starting running into years ago.  Since the language syntax is primarily in simple english, it can't possibly be powerful enough to build true applications.  With Access, you had so many non-DB people build with it and leave behind a legacy of crappy builds that apparently Access was not powerful.  The problem is not always with the tool.  There is such a thing as a bad programmer or an idiot DB admin.  

My current employer has a handful of apps in Access 2003 and is very afraid to move them out of VBA & Access and into true VB.  My manager did a check and could not find any VB developers in our entire IT dept; 1000+ people mind you.  So, it stays in Access.  I suggested maybe C++ or C# in conjunction with SQL server.  Still afraid to budge.  Causes me to just shake my head and wonder.

I have developed in Access Basic, VBA, VB6, and now VB-2005.  All fine tools, helped to get the job done.  Are the tools the best answer for all needs?  Of course not.  Best answers rely on things such as need, scope, budget, developer skills, etc.  I really do not see any one langauge as the end-all because all programmers are not the same.    I don't let a vendor determine what works best for me anyway.  Right now it is VB.  Maybe next year it will be C#.  It matters not to me what Microsoft does with any of their packages in the way of support because anything I buy today will come attached with an already ticking clock marching it's way to being obsolete.

# LightStamp said on August 17, 2009 12:10 PM:

I learned VB at VB3 and wrote several enginnering applications which i sold worldwide.  A one man software shop is tough and i went to work as a consultant and MCT trainer teaching VB6 courses too.

When C# came out i saw many of the new developers hop on that bandwagon since it seemed sexier at the time and had the real programming language "C" in the name. I tried to rise above the glam.  Then Microsoft supported a new VS user group to compete with the VB user group i had run for years instead of supporting my group which they never really did.  This VS group was started to support C# users primarily.  You either went to my VB.NET group or the VS group if you were a C# user.  MS poured resources into the VS group so i shut down the VB.NET group and declared MS the winner.

Then I worked for a company that hired me to rewrite and develop new software using .NET.  Not C#, VB.NET, etc - just .NET.  Well five years ago i tried to get the company to switch to C# for all new development but the answer was no.

I was laid off from this job in March where I made in the mid eighties writing VB.NET code.....I worked up to a Senior Programmer level. Now that I'm looking again for another developer position, I'm finding that all jobs require C# and they act like my 9+ years of VB.NET is worthless....I am looking at having to take a 13k+ cut in salary and enter the market as a junior programmer if that is even possible.

Companies have bought the C# preference promoted by Microsoft and it's killing VB.NETers out here during this recession.  You are doing programmers a disservice by promoting "VB" (MS doesn't even call it by it's real name VB.NET).  Companies now only see C# as a viable programming language - and MS had a lot to do with that.

Now, i've got to get back to my C# Step-by-step book so i can get an entry level programmer position hopefully.

# Logan said on October 23, 2009 2:06 AM:

I'm a VB!!! lol

Here's my story:

I started out with development in high school on Delphi 7. I wasn't really that into it, but at the back of the book (as random as it seems), there was an intro to HTML. I was intrigued, so I went through it and had a blast!

After about a year or so playing with design ideas and learning more code, I thought to start freelancing, but I wanted more functionality from my website. I started learning asp.net, and quickly found sample vb code to use for email forms and the like.

That was around two years ago. I've been teaching myself vb ever since. It hasn't been easy, but as they say, nothing worth doing is easy, so I push on.

People tell me I don't have an aptitude for programming, but I maintain that passion for something like I have for VB is all you need. Self-raining material hasn't been very easy to come by (due to circumstances beyond my control). I have been fortunate enough to have come across Beth Massi's How To Videos which have pretty much been the cornerstone of my eduction such as it is.

I'll continue to learn VB until I'm old and grey. It's incredibly simple to understand and use, it's also fun to write code in. I see no reason why anybody wouldn't be able to use it.

In the very near future, I plan to achieve MCTS and MCPD certifications in Visual Basic and (maybe), one day join the VB development team.

Thanks for making something awesome that everyone can share.

Logan

# Logan said on October 23, 2009 3:27 AM:

@LightStamp

I agree that most companies nowadays seem to prefer to have C# developers on their staff, but that's got nothing to do with what anyone at Microsoft are doing. C# is superior to VB in a lot of ways, just as VB is superior to C# in a lot of ways.

@Karl

Why take shots at Lisa for promoting her product? All you sharks are here moaning on complaining about how crappy VB is, and no-one is taking a moment to look at this article from her point of view.

I've had my work badly critisized too, and I can tell you now, that you might as well walk up to her and slap her in the face and spit in her eye... Because that's the effect your critisism has on her.

@Lisa

Keep going and don't let these people bog you down. There are still those of use that think VB is the s*** and would wouldn't be caught dead using anything else.

If any of you people who're putting VB down read any news at all, you'd realise that Microsoft have realised the mistake they made when they pitted C# and VB against each other. That's why the two teams at MS are working closely together now to match features in both languages (where this would be advantageous).

I for one am going to continue to champion VB for a long time still with the kind of open-mindedness that Brian has. Even if my preference will always be with VB.

# Fduch said on October 25, 2009 8:08 PM:

I'm a VB for many years.

But I think that my patience if running out.

No anonymous methods (until .Net 3.5); no multiline lambdas; not being able to use Action(Of T).... No iterators (5 years+ passed)! The final straw for me was XNA. Isn't VB for fun and games? Aren't .Net languages born equal? Then why can't I create XNA games in VB.Net??! You left me no way but to use C#.

You know what? Looks like I no longer want VB.Net to finally implement many important features C# has. Now I rather want C# to implement a pair of useful features VB.Net has.

Sorry guys. I was really patient, but unrequited love turns to hate at some point.

# Jonathan Aneja said on October 26, 2009 10:46 PM:

Re: anonymous methods/statement lambdas/Action(Of T)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 addresses this, for more information please see the VB10 whitepaper at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vbfuture/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=1699

re:Iterators and XNA - I understand your frustration, and we're doing our best to address these areas.  Now that VB has statement lambdas there's some tricks you can use to simulate iterators:

http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2009/02/01/use-iterators-in-vb-now.aspx

For the Action(Of T) case it's possible to write a helper method to allow you to assign Function lambdas to Action - let me know if you're interested and I'll post the code.

Hope that helps,

Jonathan

# Fduch said on October 27, 2009 9:38 AM:

Hello, Jonathan

>For the Action(Of T) case it's possible to write a helper method to allow you to assign Function lambdas to Action - let me know if you're interested and I'll post the code.

This would be easy, but that doesn't solve the problem.

In VB.Net 9 you cannot create "Function lambdas" from anything not having return value.

You cannot write

Dim a1 = Function(s) Console.WriteLine(s)

Dim a2 = Function() someVar += 1

I know that VB.Net 10 fixes this with statement lambdas. But... C# has had the delegate keyword since .Net 2.0 released back in 2004.

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