Amanda Silver - Talking about Mort

"VB is now a great language to author your app framework in" ? Well, yeah! Now that it has "IsNot"! (OK, my last dig at IsNot inventors, I promise).

Orbit86 wrote:

they need to make regular vb open source but .net can only be programmed in windows making programmers restricted to a windows only environment....

You are looking at it from the wrong perspective. It is not that you can ONLY program for Windows, it is that you GET to program for Windows. Change a few words around and your whole attitude changes.

Orbit86 wrote:

they need to make regular vb open source but .net can only be programmed in windows making programmers restricted to a windows only environment....

With regards to this kind of comment it would only be fair to point out that Mono project (or some related to it) is building a vb.net support for that as well. So in future you can not only program .NET in C# for linux and mac, but in VB.net as well. Atleast if that project goes on well.

Given all the talk surrounding VB lately my guess is that something similar may happen with VB.NET as is happening/happened to C++.NET ..

Cause I am not very familiar with Mono, the following might be entirely incorrect: I believe that if the CLR is properly implemented in Mono it should run the VB.NET IL as well even if you had done it entirely in VS 2005 for example. But someone should verify me on this one..

You are correct; most programs written in VB.NET will run on the Mono project on Linux.  Currently the entire framework it’s not ported but it’s getting there. And the windows forms rendering is ok, but is getting better. There also working on a VB.NET compiler (the already have a C#) but its still I alpha. There is also a port of Sharp Develop IDE to use GTK as a rendering engine, but written all in C#, that you can use as an IDE for Linux. 

I must say that there are a lot of VB users that are not Morts. I believe most VB6 users will agree that trying to get multithreading to work in VB6 was fun. And now with .net there’s no real difference between C# and VB.NET. But there’s one feature that I personally would really like, has anyone else in VB.NET really wanted a asm{} command? or at least an unsafe directive?

VB.Net is the worst language is the history of the universe. It is a ugly mutated VB6 / C# cross bread that should have been shot at conception.

This video has just showed how bad the language design is.

VB6 Key Concepts:

- Event Driven
- Module Extensions (aka abstract class)
- Object Extensions

Microsoft has killed all the magic by giving the programmer complete control (and thus increasing the complexity 10 fold), that is NOT what VB was about. I asked for *more* power, I didn't ask for complete control. I liked the magic. I just wanted more toys to play with. If I want complete control I would use C++ with Win32 or access Win32 from VB and make the calls myself...

The syntax on the original VB was fine because you didn't have to write a lot but now you have to write out all this module / object code it becomes ugly and messy....

The original VB has transparent namespaces, where it finds them for you and adds them at run time.. This new one has insane things like namespace my, what the HELL is that?!

The entire current VB team should be fired...

Manip wrote:

VB.Net is the worst language is the history of the universe. It is a ugly mutated VB6 / C# cross bread that should have been shot at conception.

Well, as long as you're not overusing hyperboles & presenting well thoughtout argument like this, I guess you're right.

Manip wrote:

VB.Net is the worst language is the history of the universe. It is a ugly mutated VB6 / C# cross bread that should have been shot at conception.

This video has just showed how bad the language design is.

VB6 Key Concepts:

- Event Driven
- Module Extensions (aka abstract class)
- Object Extensions

Microsoft has killed all the magic by giving the programmer complete control (and thus increasing the complexity 10 fold), that is NOT what VB was about. I asked for *more* power, I didn't ask for complete control. I liked the magic. I just wanted more toys to play with. If I want complete control I would use C++ with Win32 or access Win32 from VB and make the calls myself...

The syntax on the original VB was fine because you didn't have to write a lot but now you have to write out all this module / object code it becomes ugly and messy....

The original VB has transparent namespaces, where it finds them for you and adds them at run time.. This new one has insane things like namespace my, what the HELL is that?!

The entire current VB team should be fired...

1) you can't please everyone
2) everyone has an opinion

my self I rather like VB.Net in .Net 2.0

it's not perfect true...

but show me any thing on earth that *is* perfect!

beyond that this could go on for ever....

I'd rather have vb.net than say "WebBase.Net"

http://www.webbase.com/webbase.htm

now if you want to see the absolute *WORST* programming environment on god's earth IMHO
go try that out....

after a while you will have nightmares and beg to have VB.... or even a job at a fast food joint.

http://www.webbase.com/expnwb.htm

I had to support an app in this for a while
and fanlly got the owner to let me port it to .asp
(before .net)
one of the reasons:  he could not find anyone but me who would learn the bloddy thing!

Did not understand the ref to Refactoring.  This is already in VS2005 - no?  Or is this something beyond that for VB?

there is no native refactor support for vb.net in vs2005 thus why devexpress built an add-in

"they shouldn't of rewrote VB. it was working, don't fix it if it ain't broke, they couldve updated it and add new parts to the language but not rewrite the whole thing..ugh microsoft..never thought they could control languages."

Next post.
"hey sorry, got my Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 discs today..ran vb.net..
love it, vb has matured into a real language and if people give it a shot it they would be proud to call themselves as vb.net dev."

I am confused.  In the 10 minutes between your first post (knocking VB.Net) and your second post you installed VS 2005 and figured out you now like VB.Net?  That is pretty fast.  And I don't think any version of VS2005 will be free.  I think even the Express products will cost like a 12pack of Bud Light or something.

figuerres wrote:

http://www.webbase.com/webbase.htm

now if you want to see the absolute *WORST* programming environment on god's earth IMHO
go try that out....

after a while you will have nightmares and beg to have VB.... or even a job at a fast food joint.

{ f= 'Hello' isString } —> true but { f= 123 isString } —> false


I'm already getting nightmares just looking at the samples

"I still don't like MS having the keys to the .net framework,"

Huh??  They created it. What are you talking about?

I'll grant that there was a big learning curve jumping from VB6 to .Net. But for those that haven't jumped yet because they're "missing that magic of VB6" they'll hopefully be happy with .Net 2. The biggest thing for me is the background worker thread object, quite possibly my favorite addition to the framework/language.

But also you can still use tons of old VB6 code. "Dim RS as New ADODB.RecordSet" still works if you add a reference to the ADO library (just as in VB). CInt, CDbl, CBool are all there. Sure, we lost control arrays, but we gained so much. There's tons of power available now, you don't need to use it if you don't want to, but its still there.

Harlequin wrote:

figuerres wrote: http://www.webbase.com/webbase.htm now if you want to see the absolute *WORST* programming environment on god's earth IMHO go try that out.... after a while you will have nightmares and beg to have VB.... or even a job at a fast food joint.

{ f= 'Hello' isString } —> true but { f= 123 isString } —> false


I'm already getting nightmares just looking at the samples

there are a few programming languages that do this:

PostScript
Forth
SmallTalk

also some HP calulators

two names for it:
Reverse Pollish Notation
Stack Oriented

you are bascialy bowing down to the level of the CPU and the Stack.

Push 5
Push 5
Add
MOV A, Mem$12345
puts 10 in mem!

not hard at the masm/asm level.

but when the darn language forces you to do this with say any decent sized algabraic expression you can go nuts... no parens, and all values and operators have to be in stack order!

Orbit86 wrote:

so they have control over several programming languages..?

so when a new generation of programmer props up they will only know how to program in Windows..

coming back to the stereotype that MS has a monopoly or tries to monopolize markets..

Hu?

1)  IP -- If I invent something I have some rights to make money from it and keep others from claiming it as thier work.

2) "so when a new generation of programmer props up they will only know how to program in Windows.." how on earth could that be?  some kind of brain-implant that stuns them everytime they think a non-microsoft thought?  -ZAP- back to MSFT!

and they have sent out open specs for big parts of .Net to help others work with it.

Orbit86 wrote:

so they have control over several programming languages..?

so when a new generation of programmer props up they will only know how to program in Windows..

coming back to the stereotype that MS has a monopoly or tries to monopolize markets..

MS controls .NET, but they standardized the CLI and C# which is basically like the C/C++ language and libraries standards. 3rd-parties can participate in evolving both the C# and CLI standards.

.NET is just MS' implementation of the ECMA/ISO standards plus their own proprietary libraries (Windows Forms, ASP.NET, etc.).

Anyone can implement the standardized technologies. Mono and .GNU are doing this now, but they are also implementing the proprietary portions and could run into issues in doing so. Mono divides their implementation into two stacks -- a stack containing only standardized technologies and an add-on stack w/ the MS proprietary ones. These implementations run on multiple platforms.

Microsoft Research has a ECMA/ISO implementation that runs on Windows, Unix, and Mac and is licensed for non-commercial use.

VB/VB.NET and and J# are the only MS-proprietary languages commercially distributed for .NET. C# and C++/CLI are standardized languages. There's also many 3rd-party languages available.

Orbit86 wrote:

hmmm, so if the linux\unix community and perhaps (MAC?) community wanted to add new features to a specific language they could and that would still be usuable in VS?

They'd have to go through the standards bodies to do so, but yes. If the features were adopted as part of the C#, CLI, or C++/CLI standards, MS' subsequent implementations of the respective standards would (in general) have to adopt the features to remain compliant.

If the features aren't something that has to be implemented at the core language or CLI level, the 3rd party (Mac, Linux, whomever) could just write their own CLS-compliant library like Mono is doing with RelaxNG support, GTK#, or some of their Unix-centric libraries.

Beyond just adding features to those languages, other languages could be implemented. Apple, for instance, could create an Objective C implementation for the CLI.

Here's a couple of partial lists of languages running or in development for the CLI:

http://www.dotnetpowered.com/languages.aspx

http://www.dotnetlanguages.net/DNL/Resources.aspx

ECMA-334 and ISO/IEC 23270 are the respective standards for the C# Language.
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-334.htm

ECMA-335 and ISo/IEc 23271 are the CLI standards
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-335.htm

C++/CLI appears to have not been finalized, but the current spec document is available here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/homepageheadlines/ecma/default.aspx

and an overview of it here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/02/PureC/default.aspx

CLS information here:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/730f1wy3(en-us,vs.80).aspx">http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/730f1wy3(en-us,vs.80).aspx

Was it "MDI forms" that Amanda was (very painfully) attempting to describe?

"What we were trying to emulate was when you have one instance of Excel open and have multiple documents inside of it."

Emulate?   Shouldn't she know what an MDI model is?