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TakeNote...

Jim Duffy's (TakeNote Technologies) take on software development and assorted stuff - Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft MVP, INETA Speaker

<< Building Business Applications With Silverlight 2.0 (DevTeach post-con event) | Home | Notes From Computers 2K8 Radio Show! (April 27, 2008) >>

VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!

Ok, so VB.NET isn't in 1st place (see this report) but it is ahead of that "other" .NET language. You know, that "other" .NET language that starts with the letter "c". You guessed it, COBOL.NET!! Kidding aside, it looks like VB.NET is making a VERY STRONG showing against some solid competition. VB.NET is in 3rd place behind JAVA and C and I think that ROCKS! VB.NET is kickin' some COBOL (and c#) butt! Tell all your friends, they probably won't care, but tell 'em anyway.

Have a day. :-|

Monday, April 21, 2008 8:19 PM

Your Comments.

# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
That is entirely incorrect, C# that low? Lol

It is basically identical except syntax to VB.NET. I don't see how it could be so low and VB.NET so high. Not saying it should be higher than VB.NET but that is excuse my french but bullshit!

It is entirely dependent on the programmer.

Left by paul at 4/22/2008 12:13 AM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
Hi Paul,

I have to thank you. I haven't laughed so hard in weeks!! I mean, really, thanks!!! Its so funny to listen to the comments of the c# crowd when they realize that they are in the MINORITY of .NET software developers. Yes, MINORITY. Its obvious the VB.NET developers out number the c# developers. Now consider that a) VB.NET is a more productive development language/environment and b) there are more developers using VB.NET than c#, the overall amount of productivity attributed to VB.NET developers is quite impressive you must agree.

One last thing, please watch the language. If you're writing software in c# you're obviously intelligent enough to not have to resort to unacceptable and potentially offensive language. I look forward to your reply but clean it up alright?

Have a day. :-|

Left by Jim Duffy at 4/22/2008 10:59 AM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
It seems you think my comments were directed at you? Well they weren't. The language was towards the report.

In any case i ain't a C# coder, i am predominantly VB.NET but use C# with XNA. Yes VB.NET developers out number C# developers but that is just a rather useless fact, seeing as there were more VB6 developers than C++/Java developers (hobbyists and all sorts included) so in the end which path was the majority going to take? VB.NET of course.

As for productivity that again as i already mentioned is dependent on the programmer.

Left by paul at 4/22/2008 11:17 AM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
Hi Paul,

Well why didn't you say you're a VB.NET guy! :-)

Thanks for the follow up comments. Don't worry, my only concern with the language was its use. I didn't feel it was directed at me, no worries.

I agree that productivity is dependent on the programmer but I think if you take a quality developer (like yourself) equally comfortable in VB.NET and C# the productivy numbers will be higher when they use VB.NET. Just my $0.02 though, its not like I have a study or report to prove it, only evidense gathered from talking with people. Have you found this to be the case?

Left by Jim Duffy at 4/22/2008 11:27 AM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
Guys, i'd been a VB guy all my life. Began with VB3, then 4, 5, 6, and VB.Net.

I love the 'no worries, it will compile' attitude of VB, but now I am coding in C#. Why the hell!!

Why, Why, Oh Why!!!

Shit, my code won't compile again. There's a semicolon missing.

Cheers!

Left by Cyril Gupta at 4/22/2008 11:37 AM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
You assume that "(Visual) Basic" refers exclusively to dotnet.

I guess that much of that volume is still produced by classic VB. Either because we are tied by our unportable code base, or else because many of us resist to change, Classic VB programmers are "die hards".

In my personal, empirical stats, C# dominates the dotnet programming environments.

Left by Leonardo Azpurua at 4/23/2008 10:59 AM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
Many seminars that I attended used C# instead of VB. Also many books were written for C#. So based on my own observations, it appears to me that C# is MUCH more popular than VB or VB.Net.

Left by Bobby at 4/23/2008 3:53 PM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
To Bobby:

C# is a "hot" language. It is "Java for the MS World". A *very* improved Java.

And yes, C# is probably the hottest language nowadays.

But "popularity" -as measured by Tiobe- is based on how many people is actually using a language for real work.

VB was very hot, lots of code were written for it (most of it lousy, but many commercial applications rely on it, and they are not easy to port or rewrite). And thousands of in-house applications were developed and are being maintained with VB.

In the dotnet world, I don't have a doubt that C# is first by far. But I guess that even today, five years after the "official slaughter" of the language, an important proportion of work being done for the Windows environment is still written with classic VB, and that it is to be accountable for the actual popularity of (Visual) Basic.

Left by Leonardo Azpurua at 4/24/2008 10:28 AM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
To Leonardo Azpurua:

Learn to read! At the bottom of the report in the FAQ it states:

Q: How are dialects of languages grouped?
A: Some languages are grouped together because they are very similar to each other. An example is the language entry Basic which covers Visual Basic, QBasic, Microsoft Basic, etc. VB.NET has been added as well to the Visual Basic entry because it is often referred to as Visual Basic. The ratings for a collection of languages is calculated by taking the maximum of all individual entries (not its sum!).

There you have it; VB6 and VB .Net developers are not summed. Instead the max is taken and used for the (Visual) Basic number.

Also note that the number of _SKILLED_ (read the report) VB devs has grown by 3.42% since one year ago. While the number of skilled C# devs grew by only 0.28%.

Left by One who can read. at 4/25/2008 4:42 PM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
To One who (allegedly) can read:

Althoug english is not my mother tongue, I understand it well enough to get that the (Visual) Basic group includes (groups together) VB, QB, Ms Basic AND VB.Net (that *has been added*).

According to the statement, the (Visual) Basic group includes at least those four versions of Basic (I guess the relative importance of QB or MsBasic should be minimal), and perhaps some other variants like Real Basic (which probably has more users nowadays than MsBasic or QB) and VBA (which is a Turing complete language, and widely used for in-house development of punctual solutions).

I understood that VFred is included in the pack. My point is that must of the Basic's bulk is still being provided by VB Classic.

I use to post in two Microsoft public spanish language NGs: public.es.vb -devoted to Classic VB- and public.es.dotnet.vb. I just counted the number of threads started since april 1st. 198 for VB Classic, and 133 for VFred (59.8%/40.2%). That, and my everyday experience (I do some work as consultant for architectures and development methods) lead me to think that currently there are more Classic VB developers than VFred developers.

Let's assume that VFred developers account for one half (which is an exageration) of the number of developers in the (Visual) Basic group. VFred would drop to a rating of 5.84, slightly less than PHP.

VFred is just starting to gain momentum. And I hope that it continues to do so, since I am adopting it (with *lots* of hesitation) as my primary development language, but adding the classic VB users to VFred's is kind of gross, in terms of reality.

And it hides the fact that, in spite of being out of market for more than 5 years, Classic VB is still a widely used programming language, whether they like it or not.

Salud!

Left by Leonardo Azpurua at 4/25/2008 11:09 PM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
To Leonardo Azpurua:

The rating of Basic grew by 3.42% since a year ago. (Realize Basic's rating is equal to the dialect of Basic with the highest rating (Visual Basic obviously)--the ratings of the dialects are not summed.) Therefore if, as you guessed, one half of the devs in the Visual Basic rating are from legacy VB, then VB .Net grew by nearly 6.84% since last year! (Realize that almost none of the growth would be from legacy VB).

I don't agree with your premise that half of all VB devs are legacy. Searching for job postings on careerbuilder.com that contain "VB" or "Visual Basic" returned 193 jobs in Phoenix, all of which I saw were for VB .Net. Searching for job postings that contain "C#" returned 47 postings. All VB jobs I saw were for VB .Net devs. Job metrics are a better way of determining how popular a language is than metrics on seminars and books.

Paul Vick (an architect for VB) posted in his blog (panopticoncentral.com) that total VB express edition downloads where greater than any other language. Not only that but VB beat the next language by over 20%! The next language was C++ by the way.

The legacy VB devs will have to move on to a new language as it is not supported by MS at all. The majority of them will move to VB .Net.

Consider the growth rate of VB .Net, the legacy VB devs moving to VB .Net, and the job data about VB vs C#.

Left by Elijah at 4/26/2008 9:37 PM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
To Elijah,

Perhaps job metrics should be the parameters for determining the popularity of a language. However, your statistic in just one job market is not sufficient to draw a conclusion and does not tell the whole story. You may be correct that AT THE MOMENT the demand for VB programmers is bigger than the demand for C# programmers. Considering the current adoption rate for C# language (based on the number of books, training classes, seminars, and trade shows that are devoting to C#), VB could become "extinct" soon.

Luckily VB still has strong support by the software giant Microsoft -- so don't worry that VB become a dinosaur anytime soon. IMO, without the strong support from Microsoft, VB would follow the footsteps of Fortran, Ada, Cobol ... to the museum Computer and Science History.

Left by Bobby at 4/28/2008 1:33 PM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
VB has alwasy been popular simply because it's easier to read. Writing in a non-intuitive language does not a smarter developer make. I find the C family of syntax disturbing and obtuse.
But no matter my feelings, its important to undertand that at this point, its an argument of syntax. When I'm asked what language I prefer, I say "the syntax I prefer to manipulate the .NET framework with, is VB." At some point, executives who were ignorant of this, figured that since it started with the letter "C", it must be better. I wonder now, if those people have heard of f#, Boo.net, LOL.net? Hell, MS is kicking around a D#.

Left by JB at 4/28/2008 8:28 PM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
Meh. Think yourselves lucky whether it's VB.net OR c#! I used to use VB many moons ago (pre-v6), and was a master with the olde school BASIC on other systems. I recently decided to get back into the game, and found they made it complicated lol.

Is GOSUB really dead? :D

Man have I got some reading to do.....

Left by Conscience at 5/6/2008 5:42 PM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
Jim,
A regional director and INETA speaker that's actually pro-VB? Never thought I'd see it.
The report is encouraging, but I don't really see it. Nearly every .Net job I see postings for requires C#. All the junior devs I know think they need to learn C# to get a job. All the MSDN content seems to be C# these days (e.g. WPF samples). Every time I hear about a VB 6 project being upgraded, they are moving to C#! (Dumb, I know)
I hear that C# is 'better' or more 'professional'. But I've worked with enough C# people to know better. I will take well written, efficient VB.Net code over lazy C# code any day.
Glad to see at least some in Microsoft are still VB fans. But I still think you need to support it on MSDN better.

Left by Ed at 5/12/2008 3:13 AM
# Yup he's damn right
Yup damn right, cuz VB.NET is a very smart and initiative language which will help you in either case or what ever you want........!!! Simply I LOVE VB.NET,
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Regards Majid Khan

Left by Majid Khan at 5/12/2008 5:37 AM
# re: VB.NET is Kickin' Some Butt!
To Ed,

Let's all write letters to Bill Gates and demand that Microsoft heavily promote VB.

In today's high tech world, marketing and/or corporate alliance play very big roles in establishing the product market share, popularity or standard. Remember the Mac vs. Windows, VHS vs. Beta, MS Office vs. Lotus Notes battles of the past, and most recently the battle between Sony's Blue-ray and Toshiba's HD DVD standard? My point is regardless of whether VB (before or after .Net era) is better than C# or any other programming language or not, VB's future greatly depends on the marketing and support from Microsoft. Microsoft has very big influence in the C# vs. VB battle, and at this moment in time appears to me that Microsoft is favoring C#, and therefore C# is winning the popularity contest.

Left by Bobby at 5/12/2008 3:26 PM

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