Visual Basic is Dead!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Marcus
  • Start date Start date
Tom Shelton said:
vanderghast wrote:
C# won't use an array of string, but a list of string, in the first
place:

I think you missed the point, ReDim Preserve does have a direct
equivalent
(Array.Resize). It's the indexed property that's more challenging in C#
(you need to return a helper object).
Click to expand...

Why would you need a helper object - it's simple index property:

public string this[int index]
{
get{...}
set{...}
}
Click to expand...

You've lost the property name. C# indexes objects, not properties. So you
need the property to return a helper object that is in turn indexed (using
the code you showed) to achieve the syntax of a property with an index
argument.
Click to expand...

Ah... I see - that's true in this code snipit because the author of the
original didn't declare the Item property as default, which is hte usual
convention. In fact, I just read it that way without noticing that Default
was not there :) In other words, I really read this as:

Default Public Property Item (ByVal index As Integer) As String
....
End Property

Which would be exactly the same as my C# code. So, it comes down to - did
they mean Default or not :)
 
Michael Covington said:
One other thought... Something that worked against Prolog is that in the
late 1980s and 1990s, there was a movement to do everything in one
programming language (first C++, then Java) and kill off all the other
languages. Prolog got no respect simply because it wasn't a dialect of C.
Maybe F# will catch on and will raise people's consciousness about
alternative programming methodologies.
Click to expand...


Maybe, maybe not. If I compare Prolog to SQL, both are about what we want
rather than how to get it, right? but SQL is still quite alive and well,
even got it nobility recognition by being copied (such as for LINQ).


Vanderghast, Access MVP
 
Michael Covington wrote:

That's me. Michael Covington of "Natural Language Processing for Prolog
Programmers" and other books.
Click to expand...


Very cool!
Well, I don't know about that. A good typist can do 75-100 words per
minute, which is comparable to the speed of speech (100-180 wpm). The
keyboard is likely to be a lot more concise in many ways.
Click to expand...


Interesting. Didn't know the correlation. I think people who grew up
type writers, teletypes machines, punch cards, etc, are fast typist
and possible "power" software programmers. Yes, I can see the more
concise "output" although of recent, my keyboard replacement
selections have been sucking and maybe a little of aging and dyslexia
is kicking in. :-)
If only you can get them to THINK! :)
Click to expand...


Right! which brings me to a surprising twist of a society axiom I
recently saw which I will further twist and apply here:

Give a man an answer, and he will solve his
problem for that day.

Teach a man how to think and find his own solutions,
and we will lose a great business opportunity!

<g>
 
Michael said:
One other thought... Something that worked against Prolog is that in the
late 1980s and 1990s, there was a movement to do everything in one
programming language (first C++, then Java) and kill off all the other
languages. Prolog got no respect simply because it wasn't a dialect of
C. Maybe F# will catch on and will raise people's consciousness about
alternative programming methodologies.
Click to expand...


Thats a very good point. In fact, if I recall, there was a movement to
have one OS - Pink? Or something else? Brain is fading. :-) But
that was the promise of the then big people in control, IBM,
Microsoft, Sun and others who have a sake in all this. It never
really materialized.

The axiom I stated in the last post applies. The socialist method (a
monopoly is really a form of socialism) only benefits one capitalist.

So having different ways of doing the same things, some easier than
others, some more powerful than others, etc, with a never-ending
expansion capability allows for more businesses and competition to exist.

I recall in a PDC I attended a while back, arriving tired to the hotel
in Seattle, getting to my room, turning on the TV where there was a
local news channel interviewing Bill Gates about the important PDC
starting the next day. When asked, "How do you keep with your
competitors?", he surprisingly said:

"Change the standards every two years."

It shocked the crap out of me! Of course, he was thinking of then #1
competitor Borland (before he get a record breaking multi-million
signing bonus to steal Anders from Borland), including every MS
developer and business who to depend on Microsoft and could never keep
up with them.

In other words, there is less profits in a stable technology, market
place and it helps competitors to keep them 1 or 2 steps behind always
trying to keep up.

Got to admire Bill Gates. :-) Ray Ozzie? I am not too thrill about him.

--
 
I did not mean to imply that C# was VB 6 with some sugary syntax overtop.
By 'spirit' I was trying to convey that, in a broad, general sense, C# and
the .NET framework in general, adopted the sort of RAD, abstracted, IDE
approach that VB 6 made so ubiquitous.
 
I did not mean to imply that C# was VB 6 with some sugary syntax overtop.
By 'spirit' I was trying to convey that, in a broad, general sense, C# and
the .NET framework in general, adopted the sort of RAD, abstracted, IDE
approach that VB 6 made so ubiquitous.
Click to expand...

I'd say C# and VB.NET are more like Delphi than VB6. Don't they also share a
common developer?
 
Hello Tom,
Here is a pretty good translation...  Nothing difficult there...
Click to expand...

Yes, it is pretty good. However, you just index the whole class. If you
replace "this" with a different name - e.g. "TestMe" - it does not work.

Best regards,

Martin
public class TestCs
{
   private string[] ar;
Click to expand...
   public void Add(string value)
   {
           Array.Resize (ref ar, ar.Length + 1)           
           ar[ar.Length - 1] = value;
   }
Click to expand...
   public string this[int index]
   {
           get{return ar[index];}
           set{ar[index] = value;}
   }
}
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

If you really want to do this, then you can - it just requires an
intermediary step. So, a bit more code in that case. Still, I'm not
sure why it matters. VB and C# are different languages with different
symantics. Index properties are declared as this in C#.

How 'bout something like this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ConsoleApplication22
{
class Program
{
static void Main ( string[] args )
{
foreach ( int value in GetRandomNumbers ( 10 ) )
{
Console.WriteLine ( value );
}
}

public static IEnumerable<int> GetRandomNumbers ( int count )
{
if ( count < 1 ) throw new ArgumentException ( "count must
be greater then 0" );
Random rnd = new Random ();

for ( int i = 0; i < count; i++ )
{
yield return rnd.Next ( 1, 101 );
}
}
}
}
 
I agree and it only furthers my point. Either way... C# is much closer to
those platforms, in a sense, than to C.
 
Patrice said:
Try :
http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archiv...c-by-anders-hejlsberg-and-jonathan-aneja.aspx

And the article you talked about is 2 years old...

I doubt it will shorten this thread but at least you'll be able to make
your own mind...
Click to expand...

This is from the horses mouth, not a bunch of conjecture. Perhaps the truth
will put this to rest.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=htt...1866969b89&h=9854d3d78e589b6153631e6b2ddd5324

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=htt...hall-Meet/&h=9854d3d78e589b6153631e6b2ddd5324

Sorry if is from Facebook but there is a group in Facebook devoted to VB.NET
hosted by those who should know what is really happening with VB.

LS
 
That's a good one. A person wants to know
whether they should continue investing time
in VB.Net, and the two "most dependable"
answers are a Microsoft marketing video and
a signup-required Facebook chat. :)
 
Michael Covington said:
If English were the ideal language for expressing technical concepts,
there would be no formulas or diagrams in engineering books.
Human languages are not designed for expressing algorithms and data
structures precisely and concisely.
I do NLP research for a living. This is not what it's good for.
Click to expand...

That depends on specification. I too have an NLP research program, which I
started several years ago. What I am working on will eventually be
adaptable to turning specifications into code - unless the specifications
are incomplete, vague, or misleading (which renders the specification a
meagre pretence).
 
Marcus said:
I found this: http://du2.in/VBDead
It means that C# will completely replace Visual Basic. What dou you think
about this, is VB dead?
Click to expand...

Latin is dead. So are Simula 67 and GML!

VB is very much in use. Many happy users and possibly many unhappy users.
Either way, VB is very much alive, kicking, screaming, and disemboweling the
incautious.

People who opine that VB is a dead language either fail to understand the
role of usage as a determiner of language or they are a little out of touch
with the real world, or both.

VB can be used to produce applications that work. Period. So, whether you
'should' invest in VB all boils down to what *you* need from a programming
language. If you need employment as a coder, the more languages you acquire
the more customers can include you in their project development teams, and
the more contracts you can choose from. If you need to write an antivirus
application, neither VB nor C, nor any language other than Assembler or raw
machine code are up to the task. If you need to write ASP and SaaS then
VB.NET is also accompanied by VC and a bevy of other visualised language
interfaces, so the choice is yours. If you need to put a desktop app onto a
286 VB4 does an admirable job, although any C or Basic compiler should do
the trick with a little more work, but neither VB5, VB6, VB.NET, VB2005, or
VB2008 are capable. If it's desktop applications for modern PCs, then VB6
works securely for shareware vendors, while VB .NET has a fantastic IDE &
CASE. Once again, there are always plenty of other programming languages to
choose from.

The big question has always been whether the language suits *you*.
The best way to find out is to try it and see.

Good luck...
 
That's a good one. A person wants to know
whether they should continue investing time
in VB.Net, and the two "most dependable"
answers are a Microsoft marketing video and
a signup-required Facebook chat. :)
Click to expand...

It's a very effective spam strategy.
Post something like "is vb dead" or "Why Abortion is Good" - and you can
harvest a bunch of ID's from the responses.
 
Sanders said:
It's a very effective spam strategy.
Post something like "is vb dead" or "Why Abortion is Good" - and you can
harvest a bunch of ID's from the responses.
Click to expand...

It only works against people who use their (or a real) email address here.

Look at mime! <g>

--
 
mayayana said:
That's a good one. A person wants to know
whether they should continue investing time
in VB.Net, and the two "most dependable"
answers are a Microsoft marketing video and
a signup-required Facebook chat. :)
Click to expand...
Since you think that way , I guess you have no reason to troll here.

LS
 
That's a good one. A person wants to know
Since you think that way , I guess you have no reason to troll here.
Click to expand...

Actually I think it's an interesting issue
that's clearly of interest to a lot of people.
I'm interested in what the old hands here
have to say. And I'd be interested in opinions
from Joel Spolsy or similar people. But what
people don't need is more Microsoft marketing
gibberish. Would you go to Ford to find out
whether Ford is the best car to buy?

And as for Facebook... I don't consider it
a valid link if I have to sign up to become
a member in a spyware teen chat site in order
to read what you're linking.

As far as I can tell your top link is actually
the same link that Patrice posted (a 143 MB
video download of MS marketing) except that
it's routed through Facebook. Why would you
"Facebook" the link?! Your second link returns
"Bad Request" when the Facebook prepend is
removed.
 
mayayana said:
Actually I think it's an interesting issue
that's clearly of interest to a lot of people.
I'm interested in what the old hands here
have to say. And I'd be interested in opinions
from Joel Spolsy or similar people. But what
people don't need is more Microsoft marketing
gibberish. Would you go to Ford to find out
whether Ford is the best car to buy?

And as for Facebook... I don't consider it
a valid link if I have to sign up to become
a member in a spyware teen chat site in order
to read what you're linking.

As far as I can tell your top link is actually
the same link that Patrice posted (a 143 MB
video download of MS marketing) except that
it's routed through Facebook. Why would you
"Facebook" the link?! Your second link returns
"Bad Request" when the Facebook prepend is
removed.
Click to expand...

If you read the title of this long long posting, it is Visual Basic is dead.
I would think that a rational person would ask those in charge before
rambling on. I'm not saying it is good , bad or other, just that instead of
rumors I thought some truth might help this thread. I guess you don't but
that is your prerogative.

How you seem to view most things from your post would indicate that you
don't really care what others think so I will leave this alone.

LS
 
Lloyd said:
If you read the title of this long long posting, it is Visual Basic is
dead. I would think that a rational person would ask those in charge
before rambling on. I'm not saying it is good , bad or other, just that
instead of rumors I thought some truth might help this thread. I guess
you don't but that is your prerogative.

How you seem to view most things from your post would indicate that you
don't really care what others think so I will leave this alone.

LS
Click to expand...


As most people know, this is an long time sensitive issue for VB
people including those that use mix languages. Regardless if this
was a sneaky spam ploy or the OP had an interest in VB future and
intentionally used a subject topic that maximizes input, is the really
besides the point, but to show how deep the subject really is across
many disciplines of people.

Practically speaking, MS will never abandon "VB" in whatever mutations
it comes. Would it be in positions where it might be a step or two
behind C# development? Well, there is some indication from MS that C#
seems to be getting first dibs. The question will then be, how fall
will VB.NET fall behind?

My opinion is how far can you really take a VB.NET and blend it with
so many C++/C# dialect that it loses a value of being "easy" to use,
which whether we want to hear it or not, VB/VB.NET is a more simpler
language to use, even for the best C++/C# people out there. So
VB/VB.NET will always continue to have an marketing position as a
'entry point' or "easy to program" RAD environment that doesn't
required highly trained C/C++ people.

--
 
If you read the title of this long long posting, it is Visual
Basic is dead. I would think that a rational person would
ask those in charge before rambling on.
Click to expand...

Are you really suggesting that the best person to ask about the longevity of
a product is the person who wants to sell it to you? Sheesh!

Mike
 
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