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Four Microsoft Programming Languages Compared
prostoalex writes "Prashant Sridharan, senior product manager for Microsoft's Visual Studio product, compares four Microsoft languages for .NET development. C++ (.NET version), C#, J# and VB.NET are explored with features of each language outlined. There are no usual "pro and con" lists, so the ever-popular "default public access" made into the "features
of VB."
A "rich palette of languages"? Let's see, three statically typed object-oriented languages and one dynamically typed object-oriented half language. I seem to remember there being MORE to programming than objects.
But that's just me.
See you, space cowboy...
Which is pretty normal for any technology company. So Microsoft bashing is, for once, inappropriate. What's stupid is that anybody would think that Slashdotters would be interested in it. Even if we were all rabid .net fans, this kind of thing would have no interest for us.
Probably the guy that does that shouldn't use their follow up article in choosing a nice place to live:
Compare and contrast Soviet Gulags!
Non-portable C++,Psuedo Java with all the crap of and the portabiltiy of neither(C#), Wannabe Java(J#), and Beginner's Anal Soviet Interogation Code (VB.NET).
Thank goodness I'm in Linux with gcc, gcj, and Java. All of which are free, and all of which are portable. I don't have to pay Microsoft, I can keep my code compatible, and I can compile to hundreds of platforms. When was the last time Visual anything supported compiling to the TI-89, Mac OS X, and Solaris platforms from a single codebase on a single computer?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I count two: an odd C++/Java-ish hybrid (spoken with three different accents) and something almost but not completely unlike BASIC.
-- Alastair
To me the most significant feature of .NET is that the languages are more easily de-compiled.
I had to sit through 3 days of meetings listening to a .NET borg monkey feed his PHB the .NET mantra. Every problem we discussed could be solved by .NET.
It got really bad when we were debating whether to go with a Web interface or a traditional windows interface. Monkey-boy says, "No problem. The windows forms can be cut and pasted to ASP forms. It will _only_ take us 3 months to convert the GUI." ONLY 3 months! I told my boss later that I could write the GUI from SCRATCH in JSP in 3 months! My blood pressure is rising just typing this. It took all my energy to stop myself from strangling the guy.
This isn't an article. It's a marketing page.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Visual Basic is Microsoft's flagship project for Windows application software development while Visual C++ has been a poor stepchild. Windows has two major features that are hard to do cleanly without some kind of support hard wired into the computer language. One is the one-size fits all WndProc() interface to the Windows API with its zillion messages. The other is the different-shoe-for-every-foot of the zillions of interfaces that make up COM along with the support for QueryInterface to interrogate objects for supported interfaces at run time.
VB has message dispatch and COM support built in as language extensions to Basic. C++ is not supposed to need language extensions because of macros, classes and templates, and Microsoft uses a mishmosh of macros, classes, and templates to support message dispatch (the infamous message map macros) and COM with QueryInterface(). We can have flame wars about languages all we want, but I think that Windows support in VB is pretty transparent because they adapted the language while the Windows support in VC++ is pretty clunky because they have stuck to C++ without extensions, and there may be a cleaner way to use C++ to support message dispatch and QueryInterface(), but Microsoft has not figured it out but come up with a hodge podge (actually several hodge podges: MFC, ATL, and perhaps something else).
Also, VB is truly visual with the Form Designer while I could never figure out how VC++ is visual -- you need to create Windows forms as dialog resources that you have to wizard your way into code somehow. In the Microsoft world, VB is the solution they offer for the cook who wants to develop a recipe program, for the race car team that wants to develop and engine analyser program, for the accountant who wants to develop a financial program. VC++ is the solution they offer for the hard-core programmer who wants to squeeze out efficiency that you can never get in VB, but is willing and able to put in the extra time required for a program that perhaps will have a large shrink-wrap market. VC++ is not meant for the rapid development of the application-specific one-of program.
While Visual Basic is Microsoft's favored child for application software development, its syntax is not modern (i.e. C-like: I am a Pascal person myself, but I admit that C-style syntax has won out), its object model is restricted (lacks class inheritance), and it is slow. A VB program is actually pretty responsive to loading (a dig at Java) and to menu clicks, but it can bog down big time if you have heavy numeric stuff.
To understand where .NET came from, you need to look at Visual J++, a product they developed by hiring Anders "Delphi" Hejlsberg away from Borland. Visual J++ had a C-style syntax (it was Java), but in terms of drag-and-drop form layout, WndProc() handling, and COM/QueryInterface() support, it was everything Visual Basic was and Visual C++ wasn't. It wasn't up to VC++ execution speed, but it was much faster than VB, and it was one of the fasted-executing Java's out there.
J++ was also a marketing failure and the focus of the infamous SUN/Microsoft Java lawsuit. It wasn't proper Java, so it didn't get any Java people to cross over, and it wasn't of interest to the great unwashed masses of VB programmers either. The lawsuit and associated bad publicity about J++ didn't help either.
Microsoft is not one to give up, and .NET is really J++ Version 2.0. Part of .NET and C# is Microsoft taking their football and going home over the Java lawsuit, part is trying a second time with J++. If you have tried Visual C# .NET, you really need to install a copy of Visual J++ 6.0, play with it, and experience the powerful sense of deja vu.
Lets face it, the .NET langu
C++ - awful language, but at least it has high performance .. no wait this is the .NET version!
J# - like Java, only different!
VB.NET - Aw, isn't it cute! It's Microsoft My First Language! With real working arrays and everything!
C# - Like Java, only different!
My recommendation? Use C#, it's at least standardized and when you use it on Mono it will be the same. Of course the Mono runtime will have to be removed for the inevitable patent lawsuit, but the C# compiler will still be there for you!
Thanks microsoft, for your rich palette of non-standard languages!