Blogus Maximus

Well, these are all good points. I think it is a terrible injustice not have support for VB.Net for emerging technologies like XNA. VB does seem to be considered sort of like a second-hand citizen, and definitely gets less support. I think it would a good practice for MS to wholly embrace VB as a real, serious programming language, and not merely pay lip service to this idea.

Hi! My name is John, and I am a VB programmer. Or I was. My father is also a VB/VB.NET programmer so I still stay in touch with the language. Because of this post, and my love for the language, I am going to start writing some XNA/VB.NET samples. You can find the first two (and more when I update) here: http://focusedgames.com/Downloads.aspx?id=26

Do you know that all your vb.net links go to http://vb.net which is some dutch computer store ;-) Great evangelism ;-)

My name is Andy and I USED to b a VB developer... in fact I still write Debug.Print all the time which is annoying because it doesn't work on the compact framework. I still think case sensitive variable names should be illegal and semi colons are annoying.

I do like {} instead of BEGIN and END though.

I have no idea how the vb.net links happened. must be a weird cut and paste thing. LOL

Beautifully written post. Nice job!

I think you made some great points. I mean I don't necessarily agree (and I'm a VB.NET developer myself), but I do agree with the Microsoft thing. Microsoft needs to either drop VB or REALLY support it.

I just don't agree that VB should stick around. I'd be more in favor of them dropping it. There's VB developers and then there are developers who use VB. You happen to be a developer that uses VB. It's a whole different mindset
and because VB is easier to read and get into, it breeds the VB developers. Thus the superior attitude of many that snub their noses at VB developers.

So yeah, I'm with you. Microsoft either needs to throw their entire support behind VB or just come out an publicly say they're phasing it out. It's time for them to get off the fence.

It's either supported and fully supported or declared dead. And with all those VB developers out there. I can't see it making good business sense to kill it....

"I just don't agree that VB should stick around."

SCRATCH SCRATCH

(That was the sound of George being crossed off of Chris' Christmas card list)

;)

D

I do agree with the points about MS saying it would be a viable language, and then dropping it. I don't agree with anything about being a "VB.NET Developer". You are either a developer, or you aren't.

Being a developer is about knowing the right way to solve a problem, and, IMHO, means being somewhat language agnostic. Learning a new programming language is a fairly quick ordeal, really, if you understand the core concepts.

I would also support the death of VB, as it already has the 2nd class citizen stigma attached to it, and it will never go away. It will always be the language people just pick up to try, because it's syntax is easier for the average person to read. Being easier to use means more people start calling themselves Developers once they can write an If statement and a for loop.

Definitely agree that MS should "put up or shut up", so to speak. There is no technical reason that the content pipeline stuff couldn't be integrated into the VB Express IDE, as far as I know, and it really shouldn't be too terribly different, I wouldn't think.

Hi Chris,

Great blog! I too have been with various forms of Basic (BASIC) for many years. My first experience was a programming course taught in 1967by William F. Sharpe, Nobel Lauriat in Economics. He was using Dartmouth BASIC (the original) because he wanted his business students to be able to get things done with the computer without having to worry about typing systems, formatting output, and also to do it interactively via timesharing.

When I started teaching, I chose BASIC (HP 2000 BASIC) for the very same reasons. My students were not computer science and the focus was on the end result, not the elegance of the tool. Later I moved to VAX Basic and in the early 1990’s Visual Basic. I used to say that “the language should not get in the way of the concept”. Students would be hopelessly lost in the syntax, the pointers, and all the “stuff” of C and C++.

I cannot recount the number of students I taught who had taken their first programming course from the computer science people using C or C++ and who later took my course. They had left the C or C++ experience disappointed and discouraged. The excitement they displayed when they wrote programs in Basic with much less effort and much more confidence was rewarding.

Some criticize VB as a language because of its ease of use but I wonder how many really good developers who got started with VB would never have even been developers if they had a really bad initial experience with some other language. How can “ease of use” and “high productivity” be bait for criticism? As for the impression of VB as a language with “baggage” (this was publically stated by a MS product manager), what in the world does it have to do with anything?

So I am a believer in Basic and its design principles. The only time I wondered from Basic was an OOP course I taught and where I went first with THINK Pascal, then Delphi, and finally Java. I left VB because, until the .NET release, it was not a very good OO programming language. Of course with .NET, this is no longer the case.

So here we are now with Microsoft keeping VB, the language, up to date, and in the case of Linq, ahead of C#. But this is not enough; MS also needs to release SDKs with full VB support (samples, etc.) and they are not doing this. This sends a really bad message to CTO and developers which basically says, “We do not see the value in making our SDKs VB friendly.” If the MS insiders see no value, how can we sell the value outside the company?

This needs to change or else VB will fade away and this would be a real tragedy.
bill burrows

I think it is definitely helpful to have source in both. ASP.NET has done a great job with this in their QuickStart application. I am a C# guy by default, but I code in both regularly and I hate doing conversions when I am in the other language.

Chris,

I hope you can keep up the list of SDKs without VB examples and that VB developers will use it to give Microsoft feedback.

The more feedback we VB customers give Microsoft the better.

Just keep sending me examples as we find them or hear about them.

Well I agree is all i can say, microsoft , honour VB.net it has made my future and your,
as proof I have been using XNA vb.net since beta1 and awaiting 2.0,

I have been writing a winforms 3D level ediotr as proof!!!!

works without a glitch 70fps persecond with all kinda stuff running!!!

... Tridex, Honour VB.NET ...

Chris, first off, great post!

"I am a teacher. I am a trainer. I am a software developer. I am a technology evangelist. I am a hobbyist. I am a code camp speaker. I am a VB.NET MVP."

Yep, we're cut from the same cloth alright. Although I think I was created first, you know before they added all those illustrations to the cloth and made you. :-)

Secondly, how about I give you some good news? I just downloaded the Office Accounting 2007 Software Development Kit (SDK) and YES, it does come with VB and C# samples.

You'll find it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1b7c5f43-2bae-4103-9457-66b49ef6799a&displaylang=en

or this shortcut: http://tinyurl.com/ynqxl2

For those who don't know, Microsoft offers a couple accounting solutions for small business that compete directly with QuickBooks from Intuit.

Accounting Express 2007 (FREE!)

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/accountingexpress/FX101729681033.aspx?pid=CL102052401033

Accounting Professional 2007 ($149)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/accounting/FX100518171033.aspx

Just thought I'd pass along information about where Microsoft IS paying attention to VB developers.

Jim Duffy
TakeNote Technologies
www.takenote.com

Hey that is great news. I played with Office Accounting some last year, with the beta, but never checked out the SDK. THanks for the comment.

Good news, WHS will in fact be supporting VB.NET.

Hi Chris:

I'm a VB developer and have been for a long time. I've even written a number of books and articles on VB over the years. I spent several years working on a VB6 graphics engine based on the old DirectX 8 VB interface. Talk about nightmares. At least with the new XNA interfaces you can translate the C# code to VB.NET. Translating from C++ to VB is a whole lot harder assuming it can be done at all.

While I agree Microsoft should release examples in both VB and C#, I'd rather see them address some of the limitations of XNA first. The first generation is great since it opens up lots of opportunities, but they need to make it easier for people to develop both casual games and business applications using 3D graphics.

There's nothing stopping anyone from converting the examples to VB and making them public. I'd do it myself as I've worked through a lot of the issues in my new XNA engine, but I'm not allowed to share code I developed at my day job.
{sigh}

I wish you luck in your quest.

Take care............Wayne

In response to the following comments:

"Do you know that all your vb.net links go to http://vb.net which is some dutch computer store ;-) Great evangelism ;-)"

"I have no idea how the vb.net links happened. must be a weird cut and paste thing. LOL"

The http://vb.net address has been inserted in place of http://www.mindcenter.net all throughout the web and on directories. When I have tried to correct the information, it is listed correctly for a day or two, and then our listed web address reappears as http://vb.net.

I just wanted to give you all a heads up, and was also wondering if anyone had any solutions. This is really starting to bug me because our clients are really starting to get confused and frustrated.

Thanks Wendi
MindCenter
http://www.mindcenter.net