Although I've been using C# in my work in the past couple of years. I am still a hard core VB/VB.Net fan.
It was around 1995 when I started using VB in my work. It was VB 4.0. Coming from a C++ windows development, boy it was cool and easy. Intellisense wasn't invented yet but edit and continue was already there (real cool and I missed it greatly when VB.Net was born). It was easy, effective and was helpful in creating so many useful programs. It enabled mass based app development. A lot of people can now create applications with the need of a true blue programmer. VB 5 came around with the cool intellisense feature that changed the way I coded. VB 6 was the last of the versions in the platform before .Net. Prior to .Net, COM (and even til now) has been the component model of choice on the windows platform. COM was difficult to write in C++ but was so easy to do in VB. A VB class construct nicely fits in the COM world.
VB.Net didn't have the big acceptance a lot of people hoped for. The VB developers (me included) loved VB 6. There are so many things we can't really give up (edit and continue for example). I had to study C# in order to learn .Net framework in order to wean me off from VB 6. When I learned to love .Net it became easy to love VB.Net. I've accepted that VB has to grow up and I embraced the change. Even until now, VB.Net has introduced productivity features in making a developer's life much easier.
VB was blamed by many for creating "poor" developers. It is only half true. VB has opened up opportunities to non developers to develop applications otherwise would have been in the realm of the elite (expensive) technical group. VB has revolutionized productivity that even the elitist tech group now acknowledge.
Why I love the VB language?
1. I know what construct I am terminating. I know this is the end of an if statement when I see an End if. This is true also for while, for loop, loop etc. Other lnaguages like C only uses {} so you wouldn't really know if you were at the end of an if , while etc they are all }
2. Vb code is closer to how we read/write. We use words not short cuts.
3. <Add yours Here>
Why I love the VB 6 (and earlier)?
1. COM development made easy
2. Edit and continue
3. Intellisense
4. <Add yours Here>
why I love the VB.Net
1. "My" - do I need to say anything more?
2. Cool Linq to XML syntax
3. <Add yours Here>
What else do you love about VB/VB.Net? I only listed very few items. Care to share them here? How about sharing this with people who also loves VB?
What are your ups and downs with VB? Want to know how VB people think? What's in store in the next generation of VB.Net?