Type Inference in Visual Basic with Bill Horst

I love this video - not necessarily for the content, but for the presentation. The content is good too, but I'm a C# developer The video is great because it FINALLY gives us a clear view at what is being demonstrated while keeping an eye on the presenters themselves. Beth, perhaps you could take over video-production for c9 too Haha.

Keep the great videos coming.

Good catch.

I was watching the video on the toolbar and then low and behold the presenters appear in the lower rhight corner when he is doing the demo.

From now on when you have a demo please follow this pattern!

Why don't many programmers consider Visual Basic a good programming language to learn? I like Visual Basic, even though it isn't my favorite, but I'm sure that it helps somehow if you know it. A lot of businesses here in the United States are using applications built with Visual Basic, and as a future programmer I'm sure that I will be needing it as a programming language for being able to maintain those applications that were written in with Visual Basic. I would like to know why many programmers are going towards C/C++, C#, Python, etc. What languages are the best for a programmer to learn nowadays? I'm waiting for your answer. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Adrian Mowrey  

Hi Adrian,

Why don't people think VB is a good programming language to learn?

This is a commonly discussed issue on the VB forums and on the email groups, etc.

We design VB to be usable by people who don't necessarily have a lot of training in programming (business people, students, hobbyists, etc), so we make it as "easy" as we can.  This leads to the misconception among some folks that VB is a "toy" and not worth the attention of serious developers.

Why C/C++/C#?

I think C# is favored by a lot of developers because it's familiar syntax.  Many people who are already familiar with C or C++ can learn C# quickly, whereas VB might be a little harder to get used to.  I originally used C++ on nearly all my college projects, but now that I use VB every day, I definitely favor it over C#.

A lot more enterprise-level applications are coded in C++ or C, and there are things (like memory management) that can be done in these languages that can't really be done in VB.  You couldn't code an OS in VB, for example.

Ultimately, different languages are out there for different purposes.  If your goal is rapid application development, I think VB is fantastic.  If you want to work on an OS or compiler or something like that, probably C/C++.  If you're still getting started with programming, I think VB is a great place to start, but you'll eventually want experience with several different languages so you are able to solve many different kinds of problems, etc.

Hope this answers your question somewhat.

Thanks!

- Bill Horst