EmailedEventHandler and EmailingEventHandler signatures

[Mike.Sheen]

Ewww... why would anyone want to do THAT?

That statement was tongue-in-cheek, but I know the icsharpcode/CodeConverter wiki says this about their C# to VB conversion capability:

Source: https://github.com/icsharpcode/CodeConverter/wiki

So I'd say there is less amount of effort in supporting VB code generation or conversion from the community in general.

[SBarnes]

Well I was not going to comment to avoid an old argument but since Microsoft abandoned keeping the languages in sync in about 2018, like Mike said I could not see why you would want to do that if Microsoft don't.

[Scott.Pearce]

I remember back when Visual Basic was the darling of programming languages. A visual form editor! Develop a rich GUI application in minutes!

Ironically, fresh out of University I was all across C++. But then I got a job in the business applications world and everything was of course done in VB6 - I had to very quickly bone up. It has only been during the last few years that I bit the bullet and forced myself to use c#. However, I'll never look back - c# is a far superior language/syntax, even before Microsoft stopped syncing features between the two languages.

[SBarnes]

If you look at the latest tools put out by Microsoft there is not a sub or end sub in sight anywhere near Blazor or Maui, for commercial reasons alone I would think c# will be the path, likewise I avoided c# for a long time but now I actually have to work stuff out in visual basic where the c# is fairly instinctive, we all go with what we know best usually.

Likewise the new .net framework with dependency injection everywhere whilst taking a bit of getting used to is a lot easier once you get you head around it.

[pricerc]

I've been hanging out for COBOL support in Plugin Maintenance.

I wouldn't be toooooo quick to knock COBOL... I mean, it is a fully functional .NET language integrated with Visual Studio, with refactoring and code analyzers just like C#, F#, and VB.

It even has 'native' support for REST APIs, including OpenAPI/Swagger (apparently)...

And it can do iterators, which the plugin editor still complains about (but at least compiles).

It's not my language of choice, but at least there's little confusion about what the code means:

Code: Select all

class-id MicroFocus.Examples.HelloWorld.

method-id Main static(args as string occurs any).
    declare nam as string = "COBOL"
    if size of args > 0
        set nam to args[0]
    end-if
    display "Hello " & nam & "!"
end method.

end class.


Of course, a large % of the world's financial business is still conducted in COBOL.

On a side-note: I actually had to do an ICL mainframe COBOL course and pass an exam to get a promotion back in 1989... and never used it again (that's government departments for you). Comparing that COBOL to modern COBOL is like comparing the original BASIC to Visual BASIC. The compiler still required 6-digit line numbers.

[pricerc]

That statement was tongue-in-cheek, but I know the icsharpcode/CodeConverter wiki says this about their C# to VB conversion capability:

CStoVB.png

Source: https://github.com/icsharpcode/CodeConverter/wiki

I don't know that I'd agree with most of their assertions about VB, they look more like 'myths' to me... especially:

"subtle quirks which can hide issues and make it very hard to write reliable, maintainable, performant code".

One could say that about just about any language, because dealing with those is about code style and standards within an organisation, and little to do with the language itself - I mean most entries into the "Obfuscated C" competition (https://github.com/ioccc-src) can be trivally converted to C# and be very "quirky, with hidden issues, hard to maintain....".

As for the future of VB. There have been some stirrings in the VB community, and the former 'boss' of VB at Microsoft, Anthony Green, is hinting at a 'community takeover' of the language, since it is largely an orphan at Microsoft (although there is still some development being done, it's mostly just bug fixing). There is a significant backlog of feature requests that would be quite trivial to implement for an open-source community, but within the corporate behemoth that is Microsoft, "bug compatibility" and "not breaking old code" takes precedence over enhancing the language.

As for old "parity with C#", there's a lot of understandable misunderstanding about what that means (or meant), but it never meant both languages always doing the same thing but with different syntax tokens - that same Anthony Green wrote about it recently on his blog at https://anthonydgreen.net/

[SBarnes]

girl-boy-girl-meme.jpg (67.62 KiB) Viewed 5820 times

[Mike.Sheen]

I don't know that I'd agree with most of their assertions about VB, they look more like 'myths' to me...

Whilst that may very well be true, their wiki shows a reflection of the attitude of the community in general towards VB. You pondered yourself in a post in this topic why ILSpy didn't have a decompile to VB option - and now you know why.

[pricerc]

shows a reflection of the attitude of the community in general towards VB.

One that I've never been able to comprehend.

I mean, it's just a programming language.

I could kind-of understand why ye olde C/C++ developers were critical of VB6, which was deliberately targeted at "casual" developers.

But I cannot fathom the vitriol I've seen directed at VB.NET from some members of the C# 'community'; some of it is completely unhinged. And their complaints almost always boil down to "it doesn't work the way C# does", to which the natural response would have to be "Well, duh!".

[Scott.Pearce]

girl-boy-girl-meme.jpg