Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Update to the .NET language strategy

devblogs.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 151 posts

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#4

Post by ripley12 »

clouddrover wrote: post #2

Sounds like Visual Basic will be a second-class citizen going forward.

It has been for a very long time, and that's a reasonable approach IMO.

I say this as someone without most of the usual prejudice against VB; I used to work in a large codebase that was half VB.NET and half C#, and didn't mind VB. VB was a little more verbose for some things, but after getting used to the syntax the developer experience was basically the same in each language (yes, with a few small exceptions like XML literals).

Ultimately, that's the problem with VB; it's not different enough from C# to really justify significant investments in 2023. There are some die-hards who really like the VB syntax but they're growing ever rarer.

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#5

Post by marssaxman »

clouddrover wrote: post #2

Sounds like Visual Basic will be a second-class citizen going forward.

Visual Basic had already become a second-class citizen fifteen years ago, when I worked on its compiler team. All the actual design work happened in the C# world, and our job was just to tag along and mimic whatever they had come up with.

I had taken the talk of "co-evolution" at face value before going to work there, but after seeing where devdiv actually put its time and attention, that was clearly just a PR story meant to keep VB users comfortable while their language faded away.

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#6

Post by ricksmith1962 »

lockhouse wrote: post #3
clouddrover wrote: post #2

Sounds like Visual Basic will be a second-class citizen going forward.

Honestly, most people still using Visual Basic at this point probably aren’t itching for new features. Stability is a feature itself when it comes to legacy code.

Absolutely. Saying this as someone who codes 100% in VB supporting applications that are 25+ years old.

Honestly, I couldn't be happier with the language strategy as I was wholly expecting VB to be discontinued.

Re: Update to the .NET language strategy

#9

Post by Someone1234 »

curiousgal wrote: post #8

2022 I started a new job where we mainly use C# and I have to say, this is my favorite language now, especially with Visual Studio and Reshaper. I've never felt so productive and at ease while coding!

I, too, like C#.

What language did you come from? Java?

Post reply on HN