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Look Who's Got a Language Crush!

I just read Don Box's Languages and Beauty Contests post and was surprised to see him praising the aesthetic value of VB.NET.

Am I mistaken or has the collective self-esteem of millions of VB.NET programmers just risen considerably?

Perhaps the word 'just' is a bit of a stretch since the post was actually written several weeks ago. I would have come across it sooner, but I am currently living in mortal fear of my RSS Reader which has somehow managed to swell in size to a couple of hundred subscriptions and now spends all of my computer's spare CPU cycles calculating evil plots to take over the world. But I digress...

For those of you who have never worshiped at the alter of Don, here are his wiki-street creds. Besides being one of the original designers of SOAP, he's also authored of a few books in the DevelopMentor "Essential" series that I wasn't quite smart enough to fully grok the last time I tried reading them. If you've been around long enough to have had the pleasure of working with COM, then you probably recognize the "COM is Love" phrase that he coined.

To put it in historical context, he was a full-fledged geek rock-star when Ayende was still busy popping zits.

Back in the .NET beta days when I was still fairly new to the industry, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend a DevelopMentor sponsored .NET conference that he led. Don had the unbeatable combination of being scary smart, extremely articulate, and wildly charismatic in front of crowds (at least by tech standards). If I remember correctly, he also seemed to have a cult following of wide-eyed tech groupies who hung on his every word. I was obviously a little awe struck by him myself.

He was also a self-avowed CSharpophile with deep C++/Java roots. I'm sure I heard him poke fun at his fellow DevelopMentor cohort, Ted Pattison, who was the premier VB guru of the day.

Now you understand my surprise at his post. It is sort of like the most popular kid in school suddenly putting the moves on the 300 pound pimply band chick with braces that walks around mumbling to herself.  Having him pick VB.NET as the Language beauty contest winner was just... well ...unexpected.

So move over Ruby, a new long-legged programming language super model is in town. Let the creepy code crushes and disturbing language lust begin!
 
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Print | posted on Thursday, December 06, 2007 8:21 AM

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# re: Look Who's Got a Language Crush!

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Remember that this is the guy that unleashed SOAP on the world and has a bizarre angle bracket fetish. I'm not too sure I'd be taking his sense of aesthetics too seriously.
Left by Jeremy on Dec 06, 2007 8:42 PM

# re: Look Who's Got a Language Crush!

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@Jeremy - Congratulations! By the power of google I hereby bequeath you the soon-to-be famous phrase "angle bracket fetish". It sounded so perfect that I figured I would get a million hits on it, but I came up with zilcho. I'm sure it's been said a million times, but reality is google and google is reality so it's officially all yours. Too bad you can't collect royalties on phrases because I plan to fit this one in every conversation I can from now on.

By the way, if VB.NET is the 300 pound pimply faced band girl, then what does that make XML?
Left by Russell Ball on Dec 06, 2007 10:57 PM

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