DevTopics

Great empires often fall from within. 

The death knell for Visual Basic is premature, but it’s true that VB has deviated from its original vision as an “Application Construction Kit” for the masses and has lost significant market share as a result.  

Tim Anderson summed it up best:

It sounds like perfection.  Microsoft had perhaps the largest number of developers in the world hooked on a language which in turn was hooked to Windows.  Yet Microsoft took this asset of incalculable value and apparently tossed it aside.  Back in 2002, Microsoft announced that the language was to be replaced by something new, different and incompatible.  That caused rumblings that continue today.  Developers expressed emotions ranging from frustration to anger.  They felt betrayed.

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Tags: .NET, Alan-Cooper, Bill-Gates, C#, Development, Languages, Microsoft-.NET, Popfly, Silverlight, Software, VB, VB.NET, VB6, Visual Basic, Visual-Basic-.NET, Visual-Basic-6

Debate over the most popular programming language can become an emotional, almost religious battle.  And sometimes there’s no debate at all, such as when a developer is assigned to repair legacy software.  “It was written in COBOL?” is a popular refrain.

A programming language is just one tool in a developer’s expansive collection of specialty software and hardware.  So does it really matter which programming language a developer uses, as long as he or she is meeting customer requirements on time and within budget?

Yes, yes it does.  Ford or Chevy.  Stihl or Husky.  Coke or Pepsi.  Let’s face it, we all get passionate about our tools.

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Tags: C#, Delphi, Development, Java, JavaScript, Languages, Perl, PHP, Programming-Languages, Python, Ruby, VB, Visual Basic, Visual-Basic-.NET