Windows Phone Development goes VB.Net!

@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.

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...

@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.

@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.

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.

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

Btw, putting vb on my resume got me some work. I think I bought my first Acura with some vb6 consulting...

@PaoloM:As I will reiterate, there are a lot of larger companies that are heterogenous. In fact all but 1 startup I have worked at had a mixture or C++, VB and C# code.

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.

@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.

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.