Monday, April 24, 2006

VB.NET vs C#

I've read various articles regarding VB.Net vs C# debate and which one is better. I've been working with VB since version 5.0 and I like it a lot. My logical move was also towards VB.Net and I worked on approximately 15 large size VB.Net Projects. At the same time I worked on two small C# projects and never felt uneasy. When I was switching to .NET 2.0, I found that as per one of the articles:

  1. C# is in more demand because of logical reason - C# programmers are not in as much abundance as VB or VB.Net Programmers
  2. C# is considered to be more advance - people give different reasonings such as VB.Net allows late-binding etc. but anyways.
  3. C# programmers are paid more - because of reason #1 and #2

So it makes a logical choice to be paid more :) So I switched to C# and it was a very easy move. No issues at all except missing some semi-colons occassionally and hating some of the features of VB.Net. Anyways, some of the handy pointers that made by switch easier:

  • Whitepaper on differences between C# and VB.NET (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308470)
  • Reflector - Initially my productivity in VB.Net was better. So I would write the code in VB.Net first in cases and will use Reflector to convert to C# to see the semantics differences. Then C# became a habit.

I hope it makes it easier for people who need to switch between C# and VB.Net from project to project.

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