
Visual Basic: Not as Shiny, Still as Viable - dotnetdemon
https://bootstrap.life/2019/06/23/visual-basic-not-as-shiny-still-as-viable/
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jasode
_> The point is, a language’s popularity should not determine its usefulness.
[...] More importantly, we need to stop treating them as fads, religions, or
special memberships to the cool kids clubs._

I think a lot of debate about "popularity" boils down to 2 different meanings
of "popular".

The folks defending a language that's losing "popularity" are thinking of
"popular" like a high-school prom queen type of popularity. E.g. Maybe the
language is no longer the prettiest girl at the dance but I don't care and
nothing you can say will change my mind!

But as I tried to explain in my previous message about ColdFusion
popularity[1], others are using the word "popular" as an imprecise proxy for
_up-to-date-language-I-can-easily-get-a-job-in_. E.g. Is this language widely
used enough where I can tap a vast community's help to solve problems? In this
2nd meaning, "popularity" does indeed determine its usefulness.

An example is Python being "more popular" than Lisp. Again, don't think of
"prom queen popular" to trigger defensive essays; instead think of "ecosystem
popular". Here's an excerpt[2] from Steve Huffman about migrating Reddit from
Lisp to Python:

 _> If Lisp is so great, why did we stop using it? One of the biggest issues
was the lack of widely used and tested libraries. Sure, there is a CL library
for basically any task, but there is rarely more than one, and often the
libraries are not widely used or well documented. Since we’re building a site
largely by standing on the shoulders of others, this made things a little
tougher. There just aren’t as many shoulders on which to stand._

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19992813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19992813)

[2] [https://redditblog.com/2005/12/05/on-
lisp/](https://redditblog.com/2005/12/05/on-lisp/)

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Davertron
> _Node.js, as a language, is almost worthless without its immense open-source
> ecosystem. You won’t find any real-world applications running on Node
> without the use of dozens or hundreds of npm libraries simply because Node
> is not useful in and of itself._

Nonsense. It's a general-purpose programming language like any other.
JavaScript isn't my favorite language in the world, and I agree that there are
a lot of packages that make working in it a lot nicer, but come on.

~~~
gridlockd
If the ecosystem doesn't matter at least as much the language, why isn't Deno
taking the world by storm, given that it fixes a lot of Node's problems and
that it supports Typescript natively, which is a "better Javascript"?

Deno by itself isn't useless, but without an ecosystem, it clearly isn't that
useful either.

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floki999
Great to see several articles on Basic and Visual Basic in the space of a few
days. I think VB and VB.Net (Pre WPF) as well as the ubiquitous VBA were very
popular with that population of coders that is often ignored I.e. folks whose
primary job is not programming but need to develop tools to facilitate their
job. Many of these folks live on trading floors and investment teams, where
either they cannot rely on timely solutions from their IT group, or simply
smaller shops that have no developers on-hand. Many such folks have switched
to Python, which unfortunately lacks easy GUI design tools. I had a lot of fun
with VB6 and VB.NET, which I used to code quant apps, relying on compiled
matlab DLL’s for the computational bits.

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hybrids
From what I recall, Malwarebytes (which is more or less _the_ antivirus
package to use if you're on Windows) is written in VB .NET. It using .NET in
lieu of a native language gave it a leg up on certain other insecurely
designed C++ based AV packages where it was possible for malware to exploit
the AV scanning engine as a vector for arbitrary code execution.

~~~
scarface74
There is no antivirus package worth using with Windows. They are all horrible.
Just use Windows Defender and good hygiene.

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protomyth
Visual Basic got torpedoed by Microsoft during the .NET introduction. VB.NET
and Visual Basic just aren't the same language. Visual Basic would have been
much better off not to be included and remained a separate product. Microsoft
wanted it as part of .NET but not enough to make it anything but a C# skins.

~~~
kgwxd
VB would have died immediately, as it should have, if MS didn't bring it along
on the .NET ride. I've spent thousands of hours maintaining code I knew (with
100% accuracy) would be dead in less than 5 years, simply because it was VB,
because of MS' choice. Anyone that chose to be an eternal beginner didn't
deserve to keep being a professional developer, but MS handed them that
opportunity for a few years. I'm glad it's over.

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kgwxd
General purpose programming language is general purpose programming language.
There's nothing unique about VB other than it's kinda looks like English to
the reader. Just the reader. Yes, the programmer is often the reader, but the
reader is often not the programmer. The English-like reading gets people over
one relatively small barrier to entry which is "this looks foreign to me, I'll
never understand it". Day 2 of VB is "this looks like English, but it's
clearly not". At that point, it should be obvious that the language is
optimized for the beginner, not the intermediate and certainly not the expert.
When most people can qualify as intermediate in any language in less than a
year, it should be obvious the design choices are terribly skewed in the wrong
direction.

