Thread

1. qingcharles · 1791075263 · focus · HN ↗

   I was writing BASIC code for everything until a few years ago -- VB.NET -- until it was really clear that it had become a totally second-class citizen and I switched to C#.

   I still think VB.NET is vastly more readable than C/C#/Java etc.

   1. christophilus · 1791079865 · focus · HN ↗

      It’s been 2nd class for a long time, but I loved it back in the early 2000s.

      1. pasc1878 · 1791098957 · focus · HN ↗

         VB.NET was always second class to c#.

         Unfortunately it was a one-to-one match to C#.

         It would have been much netter if it was based on Visual Basic 6

         1. kothurn-utopie2 · 1791100276 · focus · HN ↗

            Second class? Maybe in the perception of some C-loving programmers.

            VB.NET can do everything what you can do with C#. Saying that C# is better than VB.NET is like saying that French is better than Spanish.

            1. Scharkenberg · 1791119550 · focus · HN ↗

               C# has gained tons of features and improvements of existing ones, VB.NET has unfortunately been fully ignored. Not even put in the back burner, just left to die, apparently. Which is sad, because I find it more legible and beginner-friendly than any C-derived languages.

               1. pjmlp · 1791128791 · focus · HN ↗

                  Nowadays the official posture is to update the language only to be able to consume some of those features.

                  For example, the new async/await runtime model is also for VB.

         2. pjmlp · 1791101713 · focus · HN ↗

            .NET 2.0 introduced a few things back.

            VB 6 way to do COM still wins out, though.

         3. bazoom42 · 1791105464 · focus · HN ↗

            > VB.NET was always second class to c#

            VB.NET and C# was treated as equals for a long time. I believe MS initially expected VB.NET to be the mainstream .net language, while C# was a compromise to attract Java and Delphi users.

            But the transition from VB to VB.NET was not handled well. VB was very well liked by its users (even if non-users looked down on it) but VB.NET was worst of both worlds. Too different from VB to be smooth upgrade, and still nok considered as professional a language as C#

      2. FranOntanaya · 1791099789 · focus · HN ↗

         You really felt productive doing anything with Visual Basic 6, at least until things slowed to a crawl because it wasn't so performant or it was held back by the typical Access database. You didn't need 200 hours of YouTube tutorials about the front-ed UI framework du jour to get going.
   2. dalemhurley · 1791094839 · focus · HN ↗

      So much easier then JavaScript/typescript, Python, and many other languages.

      1. pjmlp · 1791128653 · focus · HN ↗

         And designed to be compiled from the start, the interpreters in 8 bit home computers were due to hardware limitations, after the 16 bit transition compilers were back in.
   3. kothurn-utopie2 · 1791096965 · focus · HN ↗

      "Visual Basic" is still actively developed, although not by Microsoft.

      <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.remobjects.com&#x2F;elements&#x2F;mercury&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.remobjects.com&#x2F;elements&#x2F;mercury&#x2F;

      1. avadodin · 1791103383 · focus · HN ↗

         Ah. A VB.NET clone.

         The real Visual Basic not by Microsoft is TwinBASIC(closed source).

      2. [deleted] · 1791192042 · focus · HN ↗

         [deleted]

   4. vunderba · 1791128780 · focus · HN ↗

      I never ended up trying VB.NET, but I spent a lot of time in middle school playing with VB3 and later VB6. Being able to drag and drop components to quickly scaffold out a WYSIWYG GUI which you could then double-click on to create premade handlers was the veritable cat&#x27;s meow.

      I feel like that kind of event-driven programming model was very intuitive, even for younger audiences.

      1. qingcharles · 1791131586 · focus · HN ↗

         All of that stuff is still in the latest Visual Studio 2026. VS2026 looks basically identical to VB6. It&#x27;s still great if you&#x27;re making little desktop apps by hand and you can back them with any .NET language, e.g. C# etc.

         1. pjmlp · 1791194312 · focus · HN ↗

            Some people love to complain in the whole VB vs VB.NET, because VB.NET dropped several VB 6 stuff on .NET 1.0, however .NET 2.0 re-introduced some stuff back, but they were no longer paying attention.

            <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.codemag.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;0505051&#x2F;What%27s-New-in-Visual-Basic-2005" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.codemag.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;0505051&#x2F;What%27s-New-in-Visu...

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.