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Is Visual Basic a Good Beginner's Language?

Austin Milbarge asks: "Ever since the .NET framework came along a few years ago, Microsoft had promised VB developers that their language would finally be taken seriously. To be honest, I never understood why some non-VB developers thought of VB as a 'toy' language, but that is for another article. Anyways, Microsoft made good on their promise and transformed VB from an easy to learn language into an object oriented power house, with lots of OOP functionality thrown in. The old VB has been discontinued, and the new VB is no longer a simple language. With all the fancy changes, is VB still the great beginner's language it once was? Would you recommend it to a beginner over C#?"

24 of 1,100 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No. by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 2, Funny

    ....plus it lets learners go straight into OO and learn good practices.

    Or run, screaming in mental agony from the building as their virgin eyes behold the Java "Hello World" app.

    --
    May the Maths Be with you!
  2. 10 PRINT "FIRST POST!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    20 GOTO 10

  3. And in other questions... by edremy · · Score: 5, Funny
    Dear Republican National Committee: Would Hillary be a good president?

    Dear Osama Bin Laden: Would you like to come to my bar mitzvah?

    Dear Eagles fans: Would you be willing to sign Terrell Owens again?

    --
    "Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
    1. Re:And in other questions... by lucabrasi999 · · Score: 2, Funny
      She is the ugly woman version of John Kerry. Bland. Impotent. Pandering.....Plus, she is bat-shit insane.

      Come on, quit holding back. How do you really feel about her?

  4. Re:Is Visual Basic a good beginner's language by The_Wilschon · · Score: 4, Funny

    I hate when people make statements sound like questions and vice versa?

    --
    SIGSEGV caught, terminating

    wait... not that kind of sig.
  5. Re:still C by beavis88 · · Score: 5, Funny

    *sniff* brings back memories of my first C program

    % ./a.out
    Segmentation Fault
    %

  6. Re:Yes. by edmicman · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wow, I would have to agree. Your comment reminds me of going through 4 years of school, learning C, java, some assembly, etc. Sure, I could do the educational tasks with it, but I wanted something I could *show* people. "Look at how I can parse this string" or "watching me simulate a computer chip - look at the flashing lights!" just doesn't have an appeal. Enter the MS tools. I think VB would be a decent starting language just because you are able to *do something* that is neat fairly easily. C# would probably be just as easy to dive right into, too, and probably has more potential to do advanced things down the road. Or, in a different vein, start off with a scripting language like ASP or PHP. You can get your feet wet in actually writing *something*, and see results immediately, too. And a personal web server is simple to set up. Good luck!

  7. Re:Bad idea- compilers by wizbit · · Score: 4, Funny

    and I can always tell the difference in code between a real programmer and Visual Studio Wizards

    So can I. The #Region " Windows Form Designer generated code " seems to be a bit of a giveaway, no?

  8. Re:still C by Ratbert42 · · Score: 2, Funny

    $ cat test.c
    #include
    int main()
    {
        printf("Hello world\n");
    }
    $ gcc -o test test.c
    $ test
    $

  9. Worked for me. by Stoutlimb · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Honey, you'll still be a virgin if you do it THIS way..."

    Worked for me.

  10. Re:I'm a fan of Java by jcr · · Score: 4, Funny

    a great user interface library in the form of Swing.

    You really need to get out more..

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  11. VB.NET actually runs faster than C# by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ... by about 6 weeks.

  12. Re:still C by iphayd · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh come on.  You know you commented it.

    #include    //Most people put <stdio.h> in this line after #include, but I can't due to a software patent.
    int main()  //Main function is run every time
    {           //Begin Main function
        printf("Hello world\n"); //Print "Hello World" and start a new line
    }           //End Main Function

  13. No. by Werrismys · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's proprietary, runs on one platform only, and it's basic (on steroids).

    --
    'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
  14. Re:still C by el+cisne · · Score: 2, Funny

    Flipping brilliant! Thank you. Ahh, yes, the memories. Innocently asking the TA "What's a seg fault?" Innocence was soon dashed, as the Holy K&R I consumed.

  15. Java snobs? by PhYrE2k2 · · Score: 4, Funny
    for those of you C++/Java snobs that think VB/C# are for morons


    Please don't associate those Java users with us C++ (and C for the procedural of us) users.
    *shudders* I feel so dirty.
    --

    when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
  16. Re:still C by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Funny

    You forgot to put your name, class, and project number up at the top of the file as comments. You will also lose point for not properly documenting the method's in and out parameters and how they might be modified. Finally, you also did not declare the "Hello World\n" as a constant to ease modification at a later point in time.

    ...or at least that was the way my first Hello World program was graded (although that was in C++).

  17. Re:still C by stoicio · · Score: 3, Funny

    You failed to notice that he doesn't *return* anything
    from main, which is declared as 'int main'.

    You fail the test!

  18. In-depth answer by Trogre · · Score: 2, Funny

    no

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  19. Re:still C by ignavus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh, you mean...?

    #include <stdio.h>

    int main() {
        printf("Segmentation Fault\n");
        return 1;
    }

    --
    I am anarch of all I survey.
  20. Re:Visual Basic is horrible; use Python by ignavus · · Score: 3, Funny

    Makes a great starter pet, too.

    --
    I am anarch of all I survey.
  21. With apologies to Douglas Hofstadter.. by Ztream · · Score: 2, Funny

    Question: Is Visual Basic still a good beginners language?
    Answer: Mu.

  22. Never improve on perfection :) by CarpetShark · · Score: 3, Funny

    You introduced a bug ;)

    That should return EXIT_FAILURE or something, not 1.

  23. stats on these responses by Chapter80 · · Score: 2, Funny
    Out of curiosity, I did a quick, rough word find on the responses that have been posted.

    Here are my estimates after running through a few that I was curious about:

    Java 500 Python 180 Ruby 120

    Notes:
    - I counted on a few pages, and estimated the rest.
    - This was strictly a word find, so Java and JavaScript would both show up above (and yet, I understand that they are different languages). For this reason, I couldn't easily count C or VB/Visual Basic.
    - Some people mentioned the same language by name multiple times, and thus got counted multiple times.
    - Mentioning that "LanguageX sucks" would still register a count for LanguageX. Further, a message with the Subject "Re: Python", that said "No, try Ruby" would count once for Python and once for Ruby.
    - I am not trying to make any point with this, other than seeing which languages people are mentioning. Someone might want to run a more elaborate test, as this has no statistical significance.
    - This message was constructed to the same number of references to each language counted, so if someone wants to count again, I don't throw off the count much (for the languages mentioned - even LanguageX).