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Show HN: Thoreau BASIC – What if BASIC hadn't gone out of fashion?

92 points · 54 comments · Gorsefound

  1. qingcharles · · 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 · · focus · HN ↗
      It’s been 2nd class for a long time, but I loved it back in the early 2000s.
      1. pasc1878 · · 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 · · 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 · · 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 · · 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 · · focus · HN ↗
          .NET 2.0 introduced a few things back.

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

        3. bazoom42 · · 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#

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