Will VB.NET be phased out?

Question

The question "Are VB.NET Developers Less Curious? Standardizing on VB.NET" made me wonder if VB.net will ever (soon or in 5 years, 10 years, etc) be phased out?

Is there any talk or consideration of doing this? I don't know anyone that uses VB.net to do their development. Everything is done in C#...

Professionally, I only used VB.net once and that was early in the .NET days... Like people mentioned in the other question, VB.net was used a lot during the transition from VB6 to .NET but now more lean toward C# (I love C# much more than VB.net) but that transition phase is long over... It has got to be expensive to support a language the is being (presumably) used less and less.

If you're a dedicated VB.net user (who doesn't use C# much if at all), what would you do if VB.net was phased out?

Note/Update: I do realize that there are still (and always be) people out there that like and want to continue using VB.net. My question goes to the idea that at some point the cost-benefit for its continued maintenance won't make sense and (I suspect) Microsoft will pull (at least) "official" support...

Answer 1

Basic - Visual Basic - VB.NET - ???

I imagine it will evolve some more.

Not to mention: COBOL, FORTRAN, Lisp?

Answer 2

it'll be phased out right after COM is i'm sure.

Answer 3

There is plenty of VB work still out there (and especially in developing and maintaining old VB systems).

And it's not hard to transition to C#, seeing as how they are built on the same framework.

I personally enjoy VB.NET more just because it is easier to read (in my view). Some people complain about the verbosity, but I never have a problem with that because my typing is so fast that it is not like I feel as if I am wasting time typing.

Answer 4

The two languages are almost equivalent in features. In fact, I'd say that VB.NET is ahead right now. It has:

1. XML literals
2. A LINQ query comprehension syntax for the Aggregate operator
3. Indexed properties (always has had, and yes, valid question if this is a good idea)

Answer 5

C# is a fantastic language and could possibly be the most important langauge over the next 5-10 years, however it's C/Java like syntax puts off many programming beginners.

VB is a great language for starting out and a way to find your way around the .NET framework with a less steep learning curve, especially when moving from VBA or legacy VB apps.

Answer 6

Projects such as Small Basic that it won't phase out. Also it shows that Basic is still one of the easiest languages and that's something. IMHO Usability, readability and simplicity are important factors in languages, and basic delivers something good in there.

Funny enough VB.NET is almost easier than most of the scripting languages out there.

Answer 7

They're adding new .NET languages, not weeding them out. It's one of .NET's strongest selling points compared to java.

Answer 8

I don't see any reason why Microsoft would phase it out. They seem to be going the opposite direction and adding more languages that compile and run in the CLR. The CLR doesn't really care what language it was initially.

I've been working in C# exclusively last year, and Java for 2 years before that, and VB.Net for 6 years before that. I can tell you that C# and VB.NET coding is pretty much exactly the same thing with the words rearranged. Anyone who tells you different is just being elitist.

Answer 9

Don't think that VB.Net will go anywhere ever. The "Everything is done in C#" statement is way off. I'd actually find it interesting if someone made a VB/VB.Net vs C# usage graph by industry/use. I'd imagine ASP.Net would rank pretty high there due to all the previous ASP coders who wrote VBScript for a living. (Eww)

EDIT by MarkJ: Lisa Feigenbaum, a Microsoft PM in the .NET Managed Languages Group, said in mid 2009 that there were slightly more VB.NET developers than C#. She also said Microsoft won’t kill VB.NET because it is not in their interest to do so.

While I prefer C# over VB.Net myself, there are certain use cases where I'd never use a C#. I'd go as far as write most of a program in C# and then a small class library in VB.Net if I ever had to interact with some of the COM APIs out there. The Office COM APIs are one great example of an API which is really difficult to access with C# due to no dynamic binding. When everything comes out as a variant, it's more or less impossible to call methods on them when the compiler wants to resolve everything at compile time.

.. Of course C# 4.0 will fix this by providing the 'dynamic' type.

Answer 10

No, VB.Net is too important to phase out. And polyglot language programming is going to be one of the major selling points of .Net in the coming years.

The only thing I would critique about VB.Net and C# is that the first iterations of the languages were too similar. Now there is some differentiation that is occurring between the two languages and I think that's great. Every single language should have some kind of trait that makes it desirable. There shouldn't be two "Base Level" CLR languages just because there are two large groups of programmers that understand syntax A and another understands syntax B.

Answer 11

Simple answer, NO.

Because there are still tons of devs and existing/new apps using it. And, they are still adding new things to the language. They wouldn't keep updating VB.NET and putting out new releases if they were going to get rid of it. Once we've had 5 or more years without a new version of VB.NET being released, then we may need to start worrying aobut it getting "phased out".

Answer 12

There are too many programmers that would lose their jobs if the VB line was phased out. I wont comment if that is a good thing or not, but i think for M$ they would lost out on a number of sales to the programmers who want to stick with the VB line.

Answer 13

If you watch Anders Hejlsberg on the Future of C# from PDC, he talks about the co-evolution of C# and VB right at the beginning. He makes it pretty clear that in the short term, VB isn't going anywhere.

Answer 14

I'm going to go against the grain here: I think they will phase it out eventually, probably within the next five years or so.

By "Phase Out", here, I mean put it on the same kind of life support that VB6 has - the occasional bug fix or security update, they'll leave the MSDN pages up, and they'll keep taking your money for the tools if you really want to give it to them, but overall they'll stop any active development.

For a historical case study, look at Visual FoxPro. Personally, I could never stand the thing, and was more than happy to see it slide into the sunset, but there's still a HUGE installed base and programing community (believe it or not,) and MS more or less said "yeah, but we'd really rather you all move to C# on SQL Server." Based on the way Microsoft has been treating VB lately, I see that as VB.Net's future.

Answer 15

My answer is No.

I am working on maintaining multi-millions dollars web application involving more than 300 developers. And the main language we are using -- vb.net But also we use C# to write service. The company pick the dev tool for a reason for keep making the profits with consistent support from MS.

I think average .net developers should be able to use both language without any issues. How hard it is to learn c#/vb.net syntax if you are already familiar with .net framework ?

Answer 16

Lisa Feigenbaum, a Microsoft PM in the .NET Managed Languages Group, said in mid 2009 that Microsoft won’t kill VB.NET because it is not in their interest to do so.

She also said there were slightly more VB.NET developers than C#, which runs contrary to some people's perceptions.

Answer 17

Goto the namespaces on MSDN for .Net Framework 3.5 or higher, there are serious gaps as far as VB.Net examples. The writing is on the wall IMO.

Answer 18

I disagree that John Saunders is wrong. MS is moving towards the two languages being virtually identical minus curly braces and semicolons. Since the early days of .Net, VB.Net has been getting the short-end-of-the-stick.

• You would never create a library in VB.Net, so why should it support XML doc comments? Yes, it's there now, but not until recently in .Net's history.
• Operator overloading? That's beyond the VB.Net developer's understanding. They won't complain. Yes, it's there now, but for a long time it was not.
• LINQ - OK, we will provide it now. Future enhancements...no guarantees!
• Lambda - Sure, but they must be declared to return a value and can only be a single statement (will be fixed in 2010 I believe). This limitation has made closures syntactically painful in VB.Net.

Ironically, VB.Net's dynamic binding has become vogue (for good reasons). C# will support dynamic binding in the next release.

I would truly appreciate someone explaining why dynamic binding is good for C# in its next release, but for VB.Net, in most circles it is considered bad practice to not have 'Option Strict On' at the top of every .vb file.

Answer 19

VB caught a slow but terminal illness when they released .net. Classic VB used to be a easy-to-get-started-with language compared to the other dev tools for Windows.

VB.net in contrast is more convoluted and complex than C#, so I think the only reason it still exist is because:

a) there's lot of old classic VB code out there that has been, or will be migrated to VB.NET. As long as that market is there MSFT will maintain it; killing it too early could lose some of that existing market to competing platforms. Wouldn't want that to happen, right?

b) there are a lot of VB programmers who have used VB for years, feel comfortable with it, have not yet taken the plunge into C#. However, the 'getting started' appeal that was there in classic VB is no longer there so I think C# is a lot more attractive to new programmers, and to those who have a genuine interest in programming besides just caching their paycheck.

Only a matter of time until VB.NET will go COBOL on itself IMO, but how long? 2/3/5/10/15/nn years?