What do you think of Visual Basic

[Cavin8]

What is your guys opinion on Visual Basic. My opinion is good for beginners but not very good for pros. 

[mightytech]

Same

[Totalschaden1997]

Same

[Heisenbleurgh]

It's what I used in college but I haven't really used it myself out of personal interest after that.

Feels a bit too large and clunky for me to want to use as my main work tool.

[madknight3]

I don't see why VB "isn't good for pros". VB and C# and do pretty much the same thing (excluding a few language specific features) and I expect most people would agree that C# is a "good language for pros". Most of it is just syntax preference.

 

You can get a job with VB and I'm sure there are many amazing VB programmers out there. That's enough to say that a pro can use it.

 

With that said, if you are choosing a .NET language to master, I would choose C# over VB (my thoughts about that matter).

[Nuluvius]

Based on what I have encountered so far in my career VB is considered a dead/dying language. There also seems to be a stigma that comes attached to it these days for just that reason. That said knowing VB will undoubtedly help one come to terms with good object oriented principles. Moreover one can easily make a transition to something more relevant such as C#.

 

@madknight3 I want to make my feelings on this clear to you especially in the interests of preventing any potential animosity. I don't hate the language by any means, in fact I choose to label myself as a true generalist, at least for the time being. As such in accordance with one of my core doctrines I am actually unable to hate or dislike a particular language, thus I respect it and see it's merits objectively. There are always situations one may encounter where knowledge of a particular language will lead to an definite advantage. There is also much beauty to be found in the well written, eloquent syntax of any given language.

 

To attempt to clarify then; my stance is simply to focus forwards towards progress and innovation. I feel that the argument for VB is the same as the argument for Delphi. It is an old well established language in which many great applications have been written. As such, yes there will always be a requirement for it thus a set of employment opportunities.

[madknight3]

@Nuluvius: Don't worry, there's no animosity, but I do understand your point better now. While I'm not on board with calling it a dead language (at least right now), I can certainly see the argument for it being a dying language. There's still the chance for recovery, however, because the industry seems to continue moving towards C#, it's not likely.

 

It'll be interesting to see if the old VB6 community will move to VB.NET when it loses support and if that will effect things at all. It doesn't seem like they want to though, so they may find another alternative.

[iamjsed]

I think VB is over its prime.  I would consider C# though for modern windows development.

[Opcode]

It's a waste of time in my opinion. There are better languages out there that not only share the same BASIC syntax but are also easier to learn. Not to mention not limited like Visual Basic.

[Cheesebaron]

VB is such a lame programming language with excessive reserved syntax keywords. It just look plain ugly and is a pain to write. Please just kill VB off. Pick a more relevant language.

[YellowDragon]

VB is cluttered and has far too many reserved words and has poor readability in my opinion. Microsoft's second go with C# however is a prime example of a higher level programming language, easy to read, bar none the best documentation ever of any language, not to mention relatively fast and pack with features especially if you plan on deployment in windows based environments.