It is refreshing to see how people talk of the nineties, the way we talked about the eighties.

3 hours ago, Ian2 wrote

@vesuvius:You mean the seventies?

That's iPhone development. =)

Will this ever catch on, I'm not so sure. I will worry about apple mac development when businesses start buying apple macs as their main workstations. As it is they won't move to window 7, so them moving to apple is some time in the future

5 hours ago,Turbodad wrote

@Harlequin: I suggest you try iPhone development before trash-talking about it. You may be pleasantly surprised.

It is a sad dev environment. They have sad tools (xcode 4 is just now getting to live in the same state (but not the same zip code) as Visual Studio, debugging is sad, namespaces are sad (oh wait, where did they go?), etc etc etc...

I've done WP7 dev as an evening hobby for the last couple of months and there is really no comparison between the two.

1 day ago,hordak3000 wrote

When will Visual Basic finally get canned forever. Keeping Windows Phone Development C# only might have been a good chance to force some developers to move on and finally leave the 90ies behind.

It seems to me you are still in the 90's. .net was released the 00's. 

vb has this stigma as when think vb it is automatically associated with vb6, and the horrible kludges and hacks that were used.  Using C# does not necessarily make you a better programmer, I've seen WTF code in other languages. So why pickout VB.NET? 

Since the CLR cares only about IL, not what language it was written in.

So I ask you in technical terms what benefits would using C# bring when VB.NET can do 99.99% of what C# can do? And 0.01% it can't, what use is it in Line Of Business apps?

I like the Syntactic sugar of XML Literals, it makes a hell of a lot easier to read and understand. 

I praying for the day that all angled brackets language (XML, XAML etc) are unified under a common base that can utilised by the same mechanism that powers XML Literals. 

Imagine the power and jealousy it would reek.

On IPhone Development what about using Mono?

Of course, it's also relatively easy to jump into, so you see a TON of horrible code written in VB6. But it would be horrible regardless of the language.

I'm more trying figure out what it is that causes the automatic reaction to the initials V and B.

Could it need a re-branding be the solution? Say to  B#

The re-branding is point where vb6 legacy language features are removed. (Pure .net) 

If VisualStudio supported multilingual projects, or translation (something like reflector.net) I don't think this would be as big of an issue.

1 day ago,Adam​Speight2008 wrote

@spivonious: I agree about with your point about vb6. 

I'm more trying figure out what it is that causes the automatic reaction to the initials V and B.

Could it need a re-branding be the solution? Say to  B#

The re-branding is point where vb6 legacy language features are removed. (Pure .net) 

procedure Absmax(a) Size:(n, m) Result:(y) Subscripts:(i, k);
    value n, m; array a; integer n, m, i, k; real y;
comment The absolute greatest element of the matrix a, of size n by m 
is transferred to y, and the subscripts of this element to i and k;
begin integer p, q;
    y := 0; i := k := 1;
    for p:=1 step 1 until n do
    for q:=1 step 1 until m do
        if abs(a[p, q]) > y then
            begin y := abs(a[p, q]);
            i := p; k := q
            end
end Absmax

Algol 60 Dijkstra favourite Programming language. (very basic like)

If wasn't Sophie Wilson writing a simulation of the ARM Chip in 1982-ish, Apple's IPhone & Microsoft's Window Phone would have their CPU. Instead of slating basic, you should be paying homage to it. 

(I first learned to program in GW-BASIC)

2 minutes ago,Bas wrote

I love Basic. Like most languages, it just got better and better over time. I think the thing I love most about it is how merely mentioning it somewhere always allows you to pick out the clueless people who feel a need to share with the world how terrible it is and mention outdated Edsger Dijkstra quotes.

Indeed.

I usually find that the language is only as bad as the programmer using it. 

12 hours ago,Bass wrote

@"The teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery." --Dijkstra

 

Of course Dijkstra was being deliberately contrary at the time, largely to make a point about the need to learn program structure. And of course BASIC back then was a wholly different beast from even a vaguely modern version.

It has taken the fun out of programming for me. My hobby projects are rusting on my hard drive, my desire and drive to create is currently on hold. I try to find my happiness elsewhere now, I've just started my second year learning Italian, and my second cooking course (this time Italian cuisine). I still follow all the trends, still read the blogs, and the twitter-sphere. But I stopped caring or taking sides, it's just not worth it anymore.

You’re not the only one.  I love what I do, but I find a certain part of culture that seems to be growing around IT in general quite poisonous. 

Seeing you mention tribes, it’s quite interesting to listen to this interview with Billy Hollis from about 26:30 onwards. http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=596

7 hours ago,Sven Groot wrote

@Bass: Which just goes to show that even the greatest minds can be wrong sometimes.

(I first learned to program in GW-BASIC)

No, I totally agree with him. But he was talking about unstructured BASIC - not Visual Basic.

When one of the biggest minds in computer science calls teaching a language a criminal offense - that language will be fucked for life. The fact that any Basic still exists is a testament to Microsoft's power over the computer industry. They can outrule Dijkstra FFS.

VB.NET is a structured and OO language that is just as powerful as C#. No doubt about that. But the stigmata of this quote will haunt it forever. Virtually all Visual Basic hate comes from that single quote.

Add in the fact that even Microsoft these days are treating it like a second class language - I wouldn't touch with a 5 foot pole when a language like C# already exists.

2 hours ago,TommyCarlier wrote

The reason I haven't been very active on C9 (or my blog) is that I'm a bit fed up with the entire IT culture, the little fights, the cynicism, the different camps (or should I say tribes), the egos, …

It has taken the fun out of programming for me. My hobby projects are rusting on my hard drive, my desire and drive to create is currently on hold. I try to find my happiness elsewhere now, I've just started my second year learning Italian, and my second cooking course (this time Italian cuisine). I still follow all the trends, still read the blogs, and the twitter-sphere. But I stopped caring or taking sides, it's just not worth it anymore.

Tribalism is human nature, it's in our DNA, refined after tens of thousands of years of constant warfare and natural selection.

Add in tens (or even hundreds) of billions of dollars if one tribe wins over another, and you have the computer industry.

As for myself, I identify with FOSS and Linux tribe then the Microsoft and properitary tribe. Mostly because I think FOSS will be better for society then everything being closed source and unavailable for modification. I don't see any profit incentive for myself if FOSS wins more battles. In fact, I think it might have an overall negative effect on my salary. But I care dearly about the future of technology, and that's the only reason I become a software developer. We still have so much left to do.

Well, maybe not a C# compiler, but the Mono project has a VB.NET compiler written in VB.NET. It's currently missing a lot of features the C# compiler (written in C#) has, partly beacause of lack of demand, and partly because VB.NET is not actually a standard.

1 hour ago,Bass wrote

No, I totally agree with him. But he was talking about unstructured BASIC

But he claims that anyone who's been taught BASIC has been irreperably damaged. Like I said, I learned to program in GW-BASIC, which is one of the unstructed versions (line numbers, no subroutines). By Dijkstra's reasoning, I would therefore be unable toever learn to program properly because of the bad stuff I'd learned from BASIC. Which, if I do say so myself, it just blatantly untrue.

By contrast, I would argue that if it weren't for BASIC, I wouldn't be a programmer at all. BASIC was available (included with MS-DOS 4). BASIC was easy to learn by trial and error and got you immediate results without working through the whole book.

Sure, the code I wrote had no structure and had variables named a, b, c, but it still pulled me into that world and itdid not do any lasting damage.

23 minutes ago,Sven Groot wrote

1 hour ago,Bass wrote

No, I totally agree with him. But he was talking about unstructured BASIC

But he claims that anyone who's been taught BASIC has been irreperably damaged. Like I said, I learned to program in GW-BASIC, which is one of the unstructed versions (line numbers, no subroutines). By Dijkstra's reasoning, I would therefore be unable toever learn to program properly because of the bad stuff I'd learned from BASIC. Which, if I do say so myself, it just blatantly untrue.

By contrast, I would argue that if it weren't for BASIC, I wouldn't be a programmer at all. BASIC was available (included with MS-DOS 4). BASIC was easy to learn by trial and error and got you immediate results without working through the whole book.

Sure, the code I wrote had no structure and had variables named a, b, c, but it still pulled me into that world and itdid not do any lasting damage.

I think you are getting a little ahead of yourself there. The more you work in real industry as a software engineer, the more you realise how much you don't really know about proper design patterns and OO.

I started programming in a structured language with no-OO. I thought I was hot sh!t back then, coding up 500 line functions with multiple switch statements. I didn't know what "clean code" and proper OO is, and honestly I don't totally get it yet. I'd be scared to think what would have happened if I used BASIC for years.

No matter what you think you know about design: there is still alot to learn. Even Martin Fowler and company come out with new books and new ideas all the time. It takes years and years of code reviews and constant refactoring to really get how to design a system really well (arugably no one ever really "gets it", but whatever).

Sure maybe you know all of this coming out of college, but I doubt it. No offense bro, just how it is. Not saying Dijkstra is totally right, but you really can not accurately judge yourself at this stage of your career.

(1) Age of introduction (younger you are, the more damage it will do)

(2) Sustained exposure (the longer the exposure, the more damage it will do)

(3) Amount of exposure (writing 10 or 20 liners is not as bad as writing 2000 liners in BASIC)

Just like lead poisoning, there is no safe exposure tolerance to BASIC. All the minute amount of lead in the air from decades of leaded gasoline use is killing your brain cells, even little molecules of it - as we speak.

Too much of (1),(2),(3) and you'll probably end up like SpectateSwamp or something. Damn, that might explain it. Or it could be real lead poisoning.

18 minutes ago,PerfectPhase wrote

How is writing in BASIC any worse than coding in assembler?

Depending on your choice of instruction set, you can code some pretty convincing subroutines. I know the 68000 had call and return instructions.

Personally I think it's kind of sad that something arguably not meant for human consumption provides a more intuitive and structured environment then BASIC.

Anyway I am in a way greatful that I started with basic and progressed through c, pascal, c++ etc.  I always felt it gave me a much better appreciation for each improvement in the language.

I wonder, if in the future Funtional programing will rule and people will look back and pitty those of us that learned OO first.

I pretty sure the only rule of software development is adapt or die.

2 minutes ago,PerfectPhase wrote

All the BASIC languages I grew up with ZX81/BBC/Amiga all had GOSUB-RETURN.

Anyway I am in a way greatful that I started with basic and progressed through c, pascal, c++ etc.  I always felt it gave me a much better appreciation for each improvement in the language.

I wonder, if in the future Funtional programing will rule and people will look back and pitty those of us that learned OO first.

I pretty sure the only rule of software development is adapt or die.

As they should. Surely it's kind of difficult to wrap your head around functional programming after being exposed to so much imperative programming. And no I don't mean understand what  functional programming is, but actually program non-trivial stuff with something like Haskell. You have to unlearn a lot. We have corrupted by dishonest languages to write dishonest code.

10 hours ago,Bass wrote

I think you are getting a little ahead of yourself there. The more you work in real industry as a software engineer, the more you realise how much you don't really know about proper design patterns and OO.

Thanks for the insult. So you agree with Dijkstra that this is purely because I learned programming in BASIC? If I had started out with Pascal I would've magically been the perfect programmer now?

I am fully aware that I am not a perfect programmer, though I do believe I'm pretty good based on what other people (who actually know me and my code) have said about my coding style. What I'm opposed to is this notion that I'm somehow worse offjust because I started off writing BASIC code.

18 minutes ago,Sven Groot wrote

@Bass:

10 hours ago,Bass wrote

I think you are getting a little ahead of yourself there. The more you work in real industry as a software engineer, the more you realise how much you don't really know about proper design patterns and OO.

Thanks for the insult. So you agree with Dijkstra that this is purely because I learned programming in BASIC? If I had started out with Pascal I would've magically been the perfect programmer now?

I am fully aware that I am not a perfect programmer, though I do believe I'm pretty good based on what other people (who actually know me and my code) have said about my coding style. What I'm opposed to is this notion that I'm somehow worse offjust because I started off writing BASIC code.

Otherwise I'm sure everyone would hire you as Senior Software Engineer right out of college right? Nevermind the 10+ professional experience requirement usually the jobs that start with "Senior" usually require. Clearly every company who hires people with professional experience must be stupid.

There is something you will never get without actually working in the field for many years. I know this much. Skill comes with experience, and as a college student, you really don't have all that much of it. It's not an insult, it's fact.

As so far of the Dijkstra quote is concerned, I tend to agree with it, because I've seen it first hand. Plus I just trust Dijkstra more then random peoples on the Internets. The guy invented test-driven development without anyone even knowing it for 20+ years. He was a frecken genius. So yes, appeal to authority argument, yada yada..

And yeah I agree, from what I seen of your stuff, you are a very good programmer. Now, if you had started with Pascal however...

11 minutes ago,Bass wrote

Otherwise I'm sure everyone would hire you as Senior Software Engineer right out of college right? Nevermind the 10+ professional experience requirement usually the jobs that start with "Senior" usually require. Clearly every company who hires people with professional experience must be stupid.

There is something you will never get without actually working in the field for many years. I know this much. Skill comes with experience, and as a college student, you really don't have all that much of it. It's not an insult, it's fact.

Oh, I agree with that, definitely. But I still don't agree this has in any way anything to do with the fact that know BASIC.

11 minutes ago,Bass wrote

Otherwise I'm sure everyone would hire you as Senior Software Engineer right out of college right? Nevermind the 10+ professional experience requirement usually the jobs that start with "Senior" usually require. Clearly every company who hires people with professional experience must be stupid.

There is something you will never get without actually working in the field for many years. I know this much. Skill comes with experience, and as a college student, you really don't have all that much of it. It's not an insult, it's fact.

Oh, I agree with that, definitely. But I still don't agree this has in any way anything to do with the fact that know BASIC.

15 seconds ago,Sven Groot wrote

@Bass:

11 minutes ago,Bass wrote

Otherwise I'm sure everyone would hire you as Senior Software Engineer right out of college right? Nevermind the 10+ professional experience requirement usually the jobs that start with "Senior" usually require. Clearly every company who hires people with professional experience must be stupid.

There is something you will never get without actually working in the field for many years. I know this much. Skill comes with experience, and as a college student, you really don't have all that much of it. It's not an insult, it's fact.

Oh, I agree with that, definitely. But I still don't agree this has in any way anything to do with the fact that know BASIC.

I've just seen that people who have certain language histories bring certain code smells. People who grew up writing BASIC seem to universally write crappy code (same with hardcore C++ programmers doing C#/Java development, by the way). That's my experience. You can feel free to disagree with me (and Dijkstra).

I don't think I'm all that unique either. Like it or not, BASIC (and BASIC programmers) have a terrible reputation and it propagates up to Visual Basic even though VB is not exactly a joke language. And just like almost all reputations, they have to be earned somehow. No need for pity.

Add in the fact that Microsoft is actively treating it like a second class language (this thread is a testament to that), and that it's a non-standard that likely will always be behind in Mono. That's why I recommend not using it.

And for reputation sake not putting it on your Resume. I know people who will throw away Resumes that have the word Basic on them. It's almost a synonym for "incompetent" sadly, even if the person may not really be incompetent. Maybe we need some VB.NET lovers throw away Resumes with C# on them for balance.

Since when has knowing fewer languages (or anything in life) been an advantage?

There is a lot of "pie in the sky" reasoning here, so (like you) I will save on keystrokes, and leave that to someone else.

15 hours ago,PaoloM wrote

Ah, to be young and thinking to know everything again...

Let's not get too ahead of ourselves. I respect Sven highly.

I'm confident, even certain, that Sven is more compentent then many middle age software developers. He is a brilliant computer scientist, and get this: a Ph.D. student with an actual formal education both behind him and ahead of him. He's the kind of person any company would hold onto for as long as possible and not throw away with the rest of the trash. If you know what I mean.

No disrespect to trash, of course.

But you still need VBA for Excel/Office Macro (if you don't want to code in Excel, not VS). VBA is different, but, I am sure VB is better than VBA. So, there are still enough MS love for VB, until they finally make C# avaliable to Excel Macro Editor.

33 seconds ago,magicalclick wrote

@Bass:

But you still need VBA for Excel/Office Macro (if you don't want to code in Excel, not VS). VBA is different, but, I am sure VB is better than VBA. So, there are still enough MS love for VB, until they finally make C# avaliable to Excel Macro Editor.