
Visual Basic .Net dead? No, it's fifth most popular programming language - myinnerbanjo
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-visual-basic-net-dead-no-its-fifth-most-popular-programming-language/
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ocdtrekkie
Visual Basic is still my preferred language for hobby code. It's the first
language I learned, and it's still where my headspace defaults to when I'm
writing code. Kinda like my personal native language. If I'm writing in
another language, for instance, I might go "I need a Select Case" in my head,
and then have to process what it is in that language, like "switch". So when
coding for myself, it often saves me a lot of time and effort to just write in
VB.

Now that VB .NET is moving towards being fully supported (it's own namespaces
like My, especially) in cross-platform contexts in .NET Core 3.0, there's
really no downside to using it.

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tabtab
There are some things about VB syntax over C# syntax that I like.

1) Having the type-name come after the variable name makes for more readable
code (in my opinion). The variable itself is more important than its type.
(Other languages use a colon. Example: "counter: int;")

2) Having the block "ender" name match the starting name makes for less
confusion and block-related IDE miss-matches. All the C# "}" look the same to
the IDE and human eye. However, I do wish VB's block naming were more
consistent, such as "while...end while" instead of "while...wend". (The later
versions mostly fixed this.) In other words, _always_ have the pattern be
"X...end X" so you don't have to think.

3) Better switch/case syntax, because it's set-oriented. Needing "break" is
silly.

4) Not needing parentheses in IF statements.

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sparkie
Most of these are all true for F# too.

On 2, most of the syntax is indentation sensitive, but for types you can
optionally annotate them with `class`/`struct`/`interface` and the keyword
`end` to finalize them.

Pattern matching in F# is more powerful than simple switch/case statements.

~~~
zapzupnz
TIL again! I've always wanted to try F#, so I might give it a whirl now. I
like learning about these little quality-of-life titbits before jumping into
something.

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jwkane
The language may not be dead -- just the souls of the people forced to use it.

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strikelaserclaw
unfortunately

~~~
aNoob7000
why?

