I know there are lots of Visual Basic vs. C# threads out there, but I think this is important.
Are there more professional Visual Basic.NET or C# jobs?
+2
A:
A quick search on Jobserve reveals:
- C# - 458 active jobs
- VB.NET - 117 active jobs
wildcard
2009-07-22 22:28:13
Lol C# pwns hard
Janie
2009-07-22 22:49:17
or there are so many VB programmers out there that there are fewer jobs available ;)
Jason
2009-07-22 23:51:23
But what about other day statistics. That might be different.
Umesh Aawte
2009-07-23 17:45:40
A:
According to Jobserve in the UK, it's about 4:1 in favour of C#. That accords with anecdotal evidence I hear.
Bob Moore
2009-07-22 22:28:35
+2
A:
Well, take a look at the tags to get an idea of how many people are using it. C# has 30,000 questions tagged, while VB.Net has about 3,000. I doubt that there truly are ten times the amount of people working in C#, but I think that's a pretty good indicator.
Plus, for what it's worth, whenever I look at what jobs are available I see more C# than VB.
Matt Grande
2009-07-22 22:28:50
That metric could mean a number of things...C# programmers are better at asking questions?
Robert Harvey
2009-07-22 22:29:59
@Andy: He was originally a VBx dev, then a VB.Net developer and only then only became a C#, so not a valid point.
Simeon Pilgrim
2009-07-22 23:23:32
A:
Generally, I've notice more C# openings. It can probably vary greatly by region.
Mike C.
2009-07-22 22:29:43
+2
A:
Just by doing a quick search of Monster and Workopolis, the number of C# listings is three times what the VB.NET listings are.
Although really, if you know one language you may as well learn the other. It's not much of a leap. Plus knowing both can't hurt.
Brandon
2009-07-22 22:29:58
I've heard that ratio before. I was an avid vb6'er until C# came along. Now that I've done curly braces for so long, it's hard to think in VB anymore, .NET or otherwise.
Robert Harvey
2009-07-22 22:33:42
A:
To be perfectly honest, I have never seen a job offer from a firm involving anything to do with VB. To support the answer, I just graduated in CS and have interviewed with almost every big firm in the book (probably 40 interviews of the last 3 years).
I guess it depends what you already know, but I have found so many times where C# is documented and VB isn't.
Good luck on the job hunt!
TahoeWolverine
2009-07-22 22:31:37
The idea that we are "starting to drop support for VB" is a frequent anxiety that I've seen expressed for the last fifteen years that I've been at Microsoft. This is utterly unsupported by fact. We spent millions of dollars every year improving VB and supporting the product, we are committed to our VB customers and we have publically stated that our goal is to ensure that no one ever has to choose C# over VB for "feature" reasons; that is, there will be no _major_ functionality that C# has and VB does not, eg, LINQ.
Eric Lippert
2009-07-23 05:33:48
Hey, that's great! There is certainly a huge community out there, and while there is code in production, there will always be jobs to support its maintenance.
TahoeWolverine
2009-07-23 05:52:33
A:
Flamewars aside. IMO vb.net is microsofts attempt at supporting the multitude of old skool VB developers, but what they really want to do is move c# forward.
Yes there are probably more jobs in c# on a daily basis. but vb is like ie6 (downvotes commence here), it is ugly but will be around for a while.
That said, I do love the VB 'with' statement thing
David Archer
2009-07-22 22:35:56
i don't think VB.net has much to do with vb6, besides it is a personal thing not to like verbose language. I am sure a lot of people like to feel like they are hardcore programmers not to be confused with vb programmers but at the end of the day , c# or vb.net both have a lot of great programmers.
zaladane
2009-07-22 22:43:11
I know what you mean. Its true its just the verobsity of VB that I personally dislike. And yes agree I both languages have amazing programmers. Not trying to downplay VB programmers, just voicing why I think MS still has such a strong 'opinion' on VB. I just think MS are doing a backward compatibility thing with VB.
David Archer
2009-07-22 23:14:28
do any of you actually KNOW MS's opinion, or are you just guessing? VB has been around forever and will continue to be around so long as the developer base is there.
Jason
2009-07-22 23:54:39
Definitely guessing. I agree it will be around for a loong time. me personally, and my opinion only, thinks they want to move to c# but don't want to leave behind their very large group of mostly very good programmers.
David Archer
2009-07-23 00:25:20
That is not the opinion of my team, the Visual Studio Languages Team. We own both VB and C# and have publically and vocally committed to maintaining and evolving both languages. The idea that we secretly want to drop VB is utterly unsupported by fact, and I would appreciate it if people would stop spreading nasty false rumours about the opinions of me and my coworkers.
Eric Lippert
2009-07-23 05:36:48
@eric Wow! Thanks for stepping in. Now I know. Yes it was my opinion. And sorry I didn't mean to offend. My opinion however was not targeted at "[you] and [your] coworkers". It was the opinion of 1 developer out in the wild (who happens to love c#). Thanks again :-)
David Archer
2009-07-23 09:21:47
+1
A:
Funny that the jobs really take the language into account. It all compiles down to the same MSIL amirite?
Janie
2009-07-22 22:50:40
Didn't know that human readable code was was necessary to execute it on a machine.
Janie
2009-07-23 16:05:07
+4
A:
I know this answer kind of sucks but ... in the long term the language doesn't really matter.
Today C# is probably better but what I really value in a developer has nothing to do with the languages he knows... specially in .NET languages. If I'm hiring a developer I prefer one with vast experience in C++ and which gives me a good impresion about the way he does things than a c# developer which just happens to know a lot of the .NET framework but who isn't capable of telling me what a pointer is or ANY method for sorting a list.
If the project is in good shape I won't hire him, if the project is in bad shape I might hire him but I can assure you probably he'll be out when we start a new project or we need some hard development, performance improvements and so on.
For the .NET world I really don't care... if you are a great developer in vb.net I will hire you for my c# project ... You'll be up and running in about a week ... And the other way around.
Jorge Córdoba
2009-07-22 22:52:42
"You'll be up and running in about a week ... And the other way around.". Dude, no offense, but that's pretty jacked up. I'm not saying I would keep a developer around who doesn't know jack diddly, but it's a similar attitude to that why our economy is so bad, and there are no jobs. Specifically, if I were a Jr. .Net developer and I didn't know something, I would hope to expect that I can learn from the Sr. Developers, not just get canned because of something I didn't know. The downfall of the software industry will be peeps who aren't willing to share knowledge with other people ... :\
David Anderson
2009-08-13 19:23:36
No, this is absolutely correct. Any C# or VB developer worth his salt can switch to the other language very easily. Virtually all concepts are the same, the difference is mainly syntax and corner cases cases. Non-matching concepts (like `Handles` or `WithEvents` in VB, or `yield` in C#) are limited in number and fairly well covered.
Pavel Minaev
2009-08-13 19:57:52
A:
I noticed that a lot of VB6 programmers tend to whine about the VB.NET initially, but later find it far more powerful and useful once they delve into the DotNet Framework.
Unfortunately, a lot of C# shops are being dishonest in saying that C# is more powerful or somehow can do more than VB.Net. The truth is (from my experience) is that C# programmers and programming stores are charging quite a bit more for the same thing. I personally converted a C# app to VB.Net as one client discovered they could save $200,000/yr in development costs by salary reduction alone by keeping their current VB.Net staff (and not going for the pricey C# developers).
The problem with VB.NEt is that it has gotten a bad rap thanks to old-school VB'ers who, for some strange reason, balked at the new features and also C++ people standing to ancient claims that VB is slower (back then it was, today they are virtually identical).
I've heard outrageous claims that coders use VB.Net because they are lazy - (maybe so w/ VB6 and earlier) or somehow less intelligent (Basic was written for scientists, originally!).
With features such as intellisense, the "speed in coding" argument goes out the window as well (not to mention the dot notation, XAML and other features that reduce typing to a minimum).
I my opinion, C++ apps should be ported to C# and VB6 apps ported to VB.NET depending on the coders available. C++ is an awfully verbose & tedious way to do common business tasks (which even Perl can do) and should be relegated to multimedia & network appliances and anything requiring a tiny footprint. Business managers should weigh in the speed at which things get done - cryptic code means longer debugging time, usually and VB.Net has advantages in human readability, after all, that's what programming is: converting Human language to a 1's and 0's. Ego should never play into this.