VB6 migration (C# or VB.NET?)

[=?Utf-8?B?Tm9ybWFuIExldmluc29u?=]

....from a purely technical/benchmarking standpoint looking 10-15 years out.
The concern being to best preclude/mitigate the situation currently facing
VB6 migration issues right now. Concern is not with training $, existing
developer knowledge, etc.

If we are given two choices which language to upgrade to, again, from a
purely technical/scalable perspective, is it more responsible to pursue C#
given it is a standard with both ISO and ECMA?

I would appreciate any input you can provide.

Thank you very much.

[RobinS]

This question has been asked and answered a dozen times in this newsgroup
and in the VB newsgroup.

The languages are very similar, it's mostly a matter of taste. There are a
few things easier in one language than the other. For example, in VB, any
kind of Office programming is easier.

C# people think C# is better. VB people think VB is better.

If you're doing VB6, it will be a little bit less of a culture shock for
your programmers to migrate to VB.Net. (Been there, done that.)

Microsoft isn't going to drop the VB language if that's what you're worried
about. So I don't think it's "more responsible" to choose one over the
other in that regard.

If you want more info, search this newsgroup for "VB" and "C#".

Robin S.
Ts'i mahnu uterna ot twan ot geifur hingts uto.
---------------------------------------------------------
"Norman Levinson" <No************@discussions.microsoft.comwrote in
message news:34**********************************@microsof t.com...

...from a purely technical/benchmarking standpoint looking 10-15 years
out.
The concern being to best preclude/mitigate the situation currently
facing
VB6 migration issues right now. Concern is not with training $, existing
developer knowledge, etc.

If we are given two choices which language to upgrade to, again, from a
purely technical/scalable perspective, is it more responsible to pursue
C#
given it is a standard with both ISO and ECMA?

I would appreciate any input you can provide.

Thank you very much.

[Frank Rizzo]

Norman Levinson wrote:

...from a purely technical/benchmarking standpoint looking 10-15 years out.
The concern being to best preclude/mitigate the situation currently facing
VB6 migration issues right now. Concern is not with training $, existing
developer knowledge, etc.
If we are given two choices which language to upgrade to, again, from a
purely technical/scalable perspective, is it more responsible to pursue C#
given it is a standard with both ISO and ECMA?

While c# has been approved by standards bodies, it is not necessarily
better than vb.net in that respect. For instance, the Mono project has
implemented both c# and vb.net compilers (regardless of the standards
bodies), however, the difficult is porting windows apps to mono, not the
lack of standard. So as it stands now, there are 2 vendors for both c#
and vb.net (ms and mono).

Regards

[Mark Rae]

"Norman Levinson" <No************@discussions.microsoft.comwrote in
message news:34**********************************@microsof t.com...

I would appreciate any input you can provide.

Well, as you've posted in a C# newsgroup, I guess you won't get many replies
telling you to go for VB.NET because C# is rubbish...:-)

One of the founding design goals of the .NET Framework is that it shouldn't
matter which language is used to program against it... Apart from the
obvious differences in syntax, VB.NET and C# have only one significant
difference: C# supports pointers through unsafe code, VB.NET doesn't... If
you're coming from a VB background, there's a good chance that this will be
of no significance to you.

Speaking subjectively, prior to early 2002, I made my living programming
almost exclusively in languages based around Visual Basic, and would have
found it very difficult to believe that it would take less than a day with
C# to persuade me to abandon Basic totally, apart from in places where I
have little or no choice i.e. VBA in Excel etc...

Since that time, I have only ever used VB.NET on one occasion, and that was
to help an old friend out with a development project...

Therefore, both languages are equally good - it comes down to preference.

HOWEVER, if you do decide to go with VB.NET, the biggest mistake you could
possibly make is to consider VB.NET as somehow the next version of VB6.

It isn't - not even close...

[Ignacio Machin \( .NET/ C# MVP \)]

Hi,

"Norman Levinson" <No************@discussions.microsoft.comwrote in
message news:34**********************************@microsof t.com...
| ...from a purely technical/benchmarking standpoint looking 10-15 years
out.
| The concern being to best preclude/mitigate the situation currently facing
| VB6 migration issues right now. Concern is not with training $, existing
| developer knowledge, etc.

This is a monday's question , every week around 9 AM a new post like this
comes around. Take a look at the archives for a VERY EXTENSE discussion in
the matter
--
Ignacio Machin
machin AT laceupsolutions com

[=?UTF-8?B?QXJuZSBWYWpow7hq?=]

Norman Levinson wrote:

...from a purely technical/benchmarking standpoint looking 10-15 years out.
The concern being to best preclude/mitigate the situation currently facing
VB6 migration issues right now. Concern is not with training $, existing
developer knowledge, etc.

If we are given two choices which language to upgrade to, again, from a
purely technical/scalable perspective, is it more responsible to pursue C#
given it is a standard with both ISO and ECMA?

The way .NET is designed it is difficult to say C# is better
than VB.NET because the functionality of languages i 99.5% the
same. .NET provides class library and runtime. C# and VB.NET are
just two different syntaxes for using that.

The determining factor is more what the people like.
If you have VB6 developers they will probably like VB.NET
better than C#. If you have C++ or Java programmers they will
prefer C#.

With a 10-15 year perspective I would say C#, because I
believe that many more new developers will come out of
wherever they get their IT education from knowing C# than VB.NET.

Arne

[=?UTF-8?B?QXJuZSBWYWpow7hq?=]

Frank Rizzo wrote:

While c# has been approved by standards bodies, it is not necessarily
better than vb.net in that respect. For instance, the Mono project has
implemented both c# and vb.net compilers (regardless of the standards
bodies), however, the difficult is porting windows apps to mono, not the
lack of standard. So as it stands now, there are 2 vendors for both c#
and vb.net (ms and mono).

I agree with your conclusion, but I think you have
chosen a very bad argument.

The C# support in mono has been much much better
than for VB.NET !

Arne