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At 27:00 into the interview, Mr. Beckman says:
"We want to turn Visual Basic into not only the best and most popular programming language in the world but the most advanced programming language in the world."
Wow! What an incredible statement. It even took Charles by surprise. Microsoft Research favoring VB over C#! That's got to turn the .NET programming community on its ear.
right, there are not such thing as "the best programming language"! Microsoft Research guys should know this better that anyone, advanced... would be nice to explain how... and sience C#/VB share same runtime how VB can be more advanced than C# ?Mr. Beckman wrote:We want to turn Visual Basic into not only the best and most popular programming language in the world but the most advanced programming language in the world.
taluis wrote:At 27:00 into the interview, Mr. Beckman says:
"We want to turn Visual Basic into not only the best and most popular programming language in the world but the most advanced programming language in the world."
Wow! What an incredible statement. It even took Charles by surprise. Microsoft Research favoring VB over C#! That's got to turn the .NET programming community on its ear.
Position August 2006 |
Position August 2005 |
Delta in Position |
Programming Language | Ratings August 2006 |
Delta August 2005 |
Status |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | ![]() |
Java | 22.377% | +1.17% | A |
2 | 2 | ![]() |
C | 17.430% | -2.04% | A |
3 | 6 | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
(Visual) Basic | 11.195% | +3.44% | A |
4 | 3 | ![]() |
C++ | 10.254% | -0.26% | A |
5 | 5 | ![]() |
PHP | 9.639% | +1.77% | A |
6 | 4 | ![]() ![]() |
Perl | 5.313% | -4.57% | A |
7 | 8 | ![]() |
Python | 3.071% | +0.19% | A |
8 | 7 | ![]() |
C# | 2.683% | -0.80% | A |
9 | 10 | ![]() |
Delphi | 2.162% | +0.40% | A |
10 | 9 | ![]() |
JavaScript | 2.019% | +0.10% | A |
11 | 11 | ![]() |
SAS | 1.986% | +0.69% | A |
12 | 13 | ![]() |
PL/SQL | 1.151% | +0.19% | A |
13 | 28 | 15 * ![]() |
Ruby | 0.804% | +0.54% | A-- |
14 | 21 | 7 * ![]() |
Visual FoxPro | 0.631% | +0.20% | A- |
15 | 15 | ![]() |
VB.NET | 0.619% | -0.06% | B |
16 | 14 | ![]() ![]() |
Lisp/Scheme | 0.586% | -0.10% | B |
17 | 12 | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
COBOL | 0.561% | -0.48% | B |
18 | 18 | ![]() |
Ada | 0.554% | +0.05% | B |
19 | 19 | ![]() |
Pascal | 0.510% | +0.02% | B |
20 | 29 | 9 * ![]() |
D | 0.456% | +0.20% | B |
efortier wrote:I'm trying to figure out how to spell the name of the programming Brian keeps mentionning, Askel, askl... What's the correct name?
Thanks Charles, what a great interview (again!). Boy, some people at Microsoft makes me feel so clueless! And that Timewarp OS stuff is one of the craziest thing I hear about.
--Eric
PS: answering my own post: "Haskell"
staceyw wrote:Great video. Very interesting. Bit sad c# will not get some of these features. Please add the link(s) to blogs and so forth. Thanks!
Ion Todirel wrote:right, there are not such thing as "the best programming language"! Microsoft Research guys should know this better that anyone, advanced... would be nice to explain how... and sience C#/VB share same runtime how VB can be more advanced than C# ?
Mr. Beckman wrote: We want to turn Visual Basic into not only the best and most popular programming language in the world but the most advanced programming language in the world.
Charles wrote:
efortier wrote: I'm trying to figure out how to spell the name of the programming Brian keeps mentionning, Askel, askl... What's the correct name?
Thanks Charles, what a great interview (again!). Boy, some people at Microsoft makes me feel so clueless! And that Timewarp OS stuff is one of the craziest thing I hear about.
--Eric
PS: answering my own post: "Haskell"
Glad you liked the conversation. I know I did!
C
That's interesting (similar to System.Object approach). Anyway i like C# how it is TODAY (clean, elegant), some dynamic features whould't be bad, obviously depends on what they add. I'm looking at VB 9 specifications and i can't say the same, too many new constructs very ugly, they extend it too fast.Andrew Davey wrote:Adding late binding to C# could be done easily if they copied Boo. In Boo you can declare a variable "as duck". Then any references to members on that variable are late-bound. I like the approach because it makes the declaration explicit.
Where it gets more awesome is if you implement the IQuackFu interface on a class. This interface defines three methods: QuackInvoke, QuackGet and QuackSet. So when calling code invokes any member on your class, the compiler actually makes it call the dispatcher methods of the interface, passing the member name and arguments.
This basically means you can do funky stuff like add methods at runtime to a class. See http://docs.codehaus.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=13653 for a cool dynamic mixin example.
Adding late binding to C# could be done easily if they copied Boo. In Boo you can declare a variable "as duck". Then any references to members on that variable are late-bound. I like the approach because it makes the declaration explicit.
def Foo():
x as duck = GetSomething()
print x.Bar()
Note that it's duck as in "duck typing".
Where it gets more awesome is if you implement the IQuackFu interface on a class. This interface defines three methods: QuackInvoke, QuackGet and QuackSet. So when calling code invokes any member on your class, the compiler actually makes it call the dispatcher
methods of the interface, passing the member name and arguments.
This basically means you can do funky stuff like add methods at runtime to a class. See
http://docs.codehaus.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=13653 for a cool dynamic mixin example.
Adding this feature to C# would not in any way affect normal early-bound code. People are free to ignore the feature, but it's there if they really need it (e.g. with COM interop).
Adding support for something like IQuackFu (changing to a less silly name too I bet!) would actually surpass VB's dynamic abilities.
So in C# I'd love to see:
void Test()
{
late foo = GetData(); // "late" is a new, psuedo-type, keyword.
foo.DoSomething();
}
Do people see VB's inherent verbosity getting the in way of implementing features, like lambda expressions, in way that won't confuse Mort?
In C# 3.0:
list.Where(x => x == 42)
is nice and succint.
I've not been able to find a VB 9 version of that yet. The VB future's website still uses "AddressOf" to a seperate function.
Does anyone know what the anonymous method/closure/lambda expression syntax looks like in VB 9?
Andrew Davey wrote:
So in C# I'd love to see:
void Test()
{
late foo = GetData(); // "late" is a new, psuedo-type, keyword.
foo.DoSomething();
}
androidi wrote:
Andrew Davey wrote:
So in C# I'd love to see:
void Test()
{
late foo = GetData(); // "late" is a new, psuedo-type, keyword.
foo.DoSomething();
}
How is this different from how LINQ uses C# 3.x for example? It's not RTM yet which is too bad yeah.
Andrew Davey wrote:
So in C# I'd love to see:
void Test()
{
late foo = GetData(); // "late" is a new, psuedo-type, keyword.
foo.DoSomething();
}
namespace DoDynamic { public static class DoDynamic { public static object call (this object s, string name,
param object[] parameters) { // find and call the function using reflection } } }
Your sample becomes:
void Test()
{
object foo = GetData(); // "late" is a new, psuedo-type, keyword.
foo.Call("DoSomething");
}.
In adddition to being doable with the next c# as it is currently specified this syntax also makes the dynamic nature of each
call plainly obvious, and it is possible to chose dynamic or static on a per call, rather than a per-object basis.
Not exactly what you asked for, but pretty close and already working (in beta builds.)
John Melville, MD wrote:
In C# 3.0 I think you can build 95% of this with extension methods, like this:namespace DoDynamic { public static class DoDynamic { public static object call (this object s, string name,
param object[] parameters) { // find and call the function using reflection } } }
Your sample becomes:
void Test()
{
object foo = GetData(); // "late" is a new, psuedo-type, keyword.
foo.Call("DoSomething");
}.
In adddition to being doable with the next c# as it is currently specified this syntax also makes the dynamic nature of each
call plainly obvious, and it is possible to chose dynamic or static on a per call, rather than a per-object basis.
Not exactly what you asked for, but pretty close and already working (in beta builds.)
shoshan wrote:Hia...
How much did pepsi pay him for the commecial ?
The next time you interview one of these 'Physics Mafia' guys, I'd be interested in knowing their answer to the following question: "What is one Megabyte?"
If they answer 106 or 1,000,000 they are correct.
If they answer 220 or 1,048,576 (which is what the dir command thinks it is) I would be greatly saddened.
Charles wrote:
Maybe Pepsi makes you smarter? Hmm...
C
TommyCarlier wrote:Well, we are talking about binary data, as in zeros and ones. So 220 is more logical.
1KB = 1024 bytes
1MB = 1024 KB = 1024 * 1024 bytes
1GB = 1024 MB = 1024 * 1024 KB = 1024 * 1024 * 1024 bytes
In binary:
1KB = 100 0000 0000 bytes
1MB = 1 0000 0000 0000 0000 bytes
1 GB = 100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 bytes
cain wrote:
How is using the wrong values more logical just because we're talking about binary data? G, M, k, etc. are all decimal prefixes. What is more logical is to use the binary prefixes (Gi, Mi, Ki, etc.) when talking about binary data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix
"However, they have not yet been widely adopted by manufacturers and individuals; many continue to use the SI prefixes in a binary sense, despite the lack of support from official bodies. As a result, there is no unambiguous notation for decimal multiples of bits and bytes."The current methodology may not be strictly correct but it is understood. Can you imagine the resulting mess from changing binary data metrics at this late stage?
jbwebb wrote:
The current methodology may not be strictly correct but it is understood.
I'm old enough that I don't need to imagine it. I lived in a world where kilo still had an unambiguous meaning. It was orderly, peaceful world of shiny happy people. "Late stage", huh? In physics, kilo has meant 1000 for hundreds of years. See the section 'Historical context' at the NIST site:jbwebb wrote:Can you imagine the resulting mess from changing binary data metrics at this late stage?
NIST wrote:Once upon a time, computer professionals noticed that 210 was very nearly equal to 1000 and started using the SI prefix "kilo" to mean 1024. That worked well enough for a decade or two because everybody who talked kilobytes knew that the term implied 1024 bytes. But, almost overnight a much more numerous "everybody" bought computers, and the trade computer professionals needed to talk to physicists and engineers and even to ordinary people, most of whom know that a kilometer is 1000 meters and a kilogram is 1000 grams.
tourist wrote:
Oh, really? Do people really understand that when talking about bandwidth or processor speed the prefixes have decimal meanings?
one kibibit | 1 Kibit = 210 bit = 1024 bit |
one kilobit | 1 kbit = 103 bit = 1000 bit |
one mebibyte | 1 MiB = 220 B = 1 048 576 B |
one megabyte | 1 MB = 106 B = 1 000 000 B |
one gibibyte | 1 GiB = 230 B = 1 073 741 824 B |
one gigabyte | 1 GB = 109 B = 1 000 000 000 B |
o yesCharles wrote:
shoshan wrote: Hia...
How much did pepsi pay him for the commecial ?
By the way, I was drinking Coke.They didn't want to pay enough to get on C9 (Just kidding!)
The only inference that should be made from Brian drinking diet Pepsi on camera is that Brian likes diet Pepsi... As you know, soft drinks are free at MS and we have both Pepsi and Coke in all fridges.
Maybe Pepsi makes you smarter? Hmm...
C
Ion Todirel wrote:right, there are not such thing as "the best programming language"! Microsoft Research guys should know this better that anyone, advanced... would be nice to explain how... and sience C#/VB share same runtime how VB can be more advanced than C# ?
Mr. Beckman wrote: We want to turn Visual Basic into not only the best and most popular programming language in the world but the most advanced programming language in the world.