.NET framework offers a myriad of languages which puts us programmers into a deep
thought process about which programming language best suits our needs.
Which language is the "best" language choice? If you are a VB wizard, should you take
the time to learn C# or continue to use VB.NET? Are C# ASP.NET pages "faster" than
VB.NET ASP.NET pages? These are questions that you may find yourself asking,
especially when you're just starting to delve into .NET. Fortunately the answer is simple:
there is no "best" language. All .NET languages use, at their root, functionality from the
set of classes provided by the .NET Framework. Therefore, everything you can do in
VB.NET you can do in C#, and vice-a-versa.
The differences occur in three main areas: syntax, object-oriented principles, and the
Visual Studio .NET IDE. Syntax concerns the statements and language elements. Object
Oriented differences are less obvious, and concern differences in implementation and
feature sets between the two languages. IDE differences include things like compiler
settings or attributes. There is also a fourth area of difference: language features that are
present in one language but have no equivalent in the other.
If you are more familiar with Java, JScript, or C/C++, you may find C#'s syntax more
familiar than VB.NET's.
If you've been doing VB for the past five years, there's no reason to think you have to
now switch to a new language (although you should always look to be learning new
things).
The fact is that VB.NET has all the facilities of VB such as not being case-sensitive,
having the option of using IntelliSense etc in addition to which you have an ocean of new
ideas & concepts thrown in for the benefit of programmers.
VB has matured as a language and if you do not know it already, its almost 11 years since
VB was born. It now provides all facilities for distributed computing and Internet
programming for which it was not useful earlier. With VB.NET, due to the .NET
framework all the classes and all the namespaces available with the other languages are
made available to VB also. This is in addition to the drag and drop facility of building
forms and web pages which was always the attraction in the use of VB. Thus it has the
dual advantage of ease of use and the availability of advanced features.
As already stated earlier both VB.NET and C# are equally powerful. So the primary
reason for which VB could not reach the zenith of popularity has been eradicated and
programmers who have been waiting for OOPs concepts to be incorporated into VB are
rewarded with this offering of Microsoft.