In this post http://community.softteq.com/blogs/nick/archive/2007/10/21/vb-guys-can-be-zealots-too.aspx, Nick Randolph makes reference to Bill McCarthy's unfortunate choice of words in his blog and on a VB community list about how Microsoft treats VB.
The short version is, Bill dropped the N word, and got rightfully smacked around for it, and he wrote up a blog post attempting to explain his choice of the word in a more politically correct context.
and now lots of folks are talking about what a shame it is that he got in trouble, and cant we all just get along? The real shame is that an allegedly intelligent man couldn't find a more appropriate way of expressing himself, not to mention opening the list owners to potential liability if they didnt take action to remove him. so they did.
The right decision was made.
However...
Bill is right about one thing, no matter what some folks at Microsoft like to tell us, VB.NET is not treated equally to C#. Not even close.
We're just the little brother that makes good grades and stays out of trouble and gets completely ignored. Meanwhile big brother C# is the prodigal son who gets all the attention and quite frankly it is unacceptable.
In fact, it totally sucks and I've been tolerating it so long I had forgotten just how much it really annoys me. So thanks Bill, for the reminder.
How many more SDKs and toolkits and frameworks (XNA anyone?? Micro Framework anyone?? Health SDK?? Windows Search SDK??) will VB.NET get excluded from?
When is the last time we got samples in VB first and C# had to wait? What happened to VB.NET being a "first class citizen" right alongside C#?
How many more times will we be told about "VB support in the next release" of something, only for it never to happen? (XNA comes to mind, again)
If you (MS) are willing to acknowledge there are more VB developers than C#, and you have, why are we taking a permanent backseat to C#?
I was there, at the MVP Summit, when a Microsoft employee stated XNA was too hard for VB'ers. She actually had the audacity to say it to a room full of VB.NET MVPs. I swear I can't make this stuff up.
Don't treat us like we're stupid, and don't just tell us what you think we want to hear. Try actually fixing the problem. Good grief, I'm an MVP... you already had my loyalty, now try deserving it.
There is precious little that C# can do that VB can't. We're not asking for the moon. We just want some damn code samples and equal support.