Programming

Eh, you can tell I haven't spent much time worrying about .Net support on Linux for a while—there's always some other language or system that I consider a better fit for the job. (In other words, I sit corrected, because standing would be too much effort.)

May I just ask how VB.NET code isn’t maintainable?

TL;DR: Lots of old code written by VB6/VBA programmers in the wild. It's way more holistic than C-hacker-ish C# code.

Speaking from a bunch of legacy projects, you will likely encounter:

• Option Strict Off activated, so your type checking and IDE tools are half broken now.
• Global imports from anywhere to anywhere, proper namespacing is unheard of.
• Object everywhere, because Variant.
• On Error Resume Next everywhere, so you switch off and on exceptions while debugging.
• ByRef everywhere, because VB Classic is call by reference first.
• All declarations on top of a function, drastically increasing their scope, because, you guessed it, this is the only way in old VB.
• Code bases riddled with poor reimplementations of string methods using Mid. Actually, that's a bonus, it's very satisfying replacing those with one call to a string member.
• Multiple assignments to function name variable instead of return, making code harder to follow.

I'm currently maintaining a multi million line VB.NET code base, the foundations of which were hastily laid down by young and inexperienced devs realizing a business opportunity in the early 2000s. Lots of these out there in the enterprise world from what I hear and I think this is where there the language gets its reputation from. Sure, at its best it's just C# with words in place of curly braces, but that's only the case with well disciplined programmers (and even then, why not just use C#?). Option Strict is, well, just an option, and even the infamous On Error Resume Next is still usable in VB.NET to this day afaik. A lot more room for shooting yourself (or the next person reading your code) in the foot if you don't know what to look out for.

I was mostly thinking about PHP with that comment. Which has some serious issues with how modules from other files are included and general structure. It's possible to write well organized PHP projects but it takes discipline, it doesn't happen organically, and its really hard to fix once the project has grown significantly.

I haven't used VB since VB.NET 2003 so I hesitate to speak on that directly. Professionally I work across multiple OS's and architectures so all .NET languages are kinda no-go's. That's where C++ really shines.

Got it, but on the other hand (and as someone else commented): With the right settings, VB.NET can be en par with C#, for instance. They both compile to the same MCIL code, so it should really boil down to a matter of personal preference, right?

I mean, you could also use C++/CLR. Please don't. Because at some point people like me have to maintain it and they will hate every minute of that experience.

I feel that many people don’t know that and tend to think back to C64 Basic, etc. and just laugh it off.

I don't know if people laugh it off because of the 8bit Basics, I think it's more because of VB6. And AFAIR VB.net was made to make it easier for VB6-developers to switch to .net. The real programming language for .net was supposed to be C# and I guess some people at Microsoft also like F#.

I also enjoy other “hated” languages like PHP and Java

But Java is not a bad language per se; I actually enjoyed programming in Java more than C#. Java is hated because of its Enterprise-stuff. C# has managed to get a foot-hold in game development and is therefore cooler than Enterprisey-Java.

I also like to play the UNO reverse card: I personally hate projects that run with Electron, for instance.

I don't see how that is a UNO reverse card :)

Yeah they both compile to the same CIL so performance isn't an issue.

I feel like you just answered your own question of why people don’t like VB.NET and prefer C#. Per your own words you have two languages that are “just as good” except one of them needs settings adjustments or it’s not as good, and also has “alien” syntax which makes it harder for other developers to work on the code and makes it harder for you to move to other C-style languages (basically every currently popular language).

So if at best they’re “just as good”, then the obvious choice is C# which requires no settings change and has familiar syntax. Especially so if you can work in both just fine.

It’s not just some “god complex” thing, it’s mostly just practicality.