Stackoverflow .net language representation

Question

EDIT: duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/352882/why-is-there-such-a-large-percentage-of-c-questions

I couldn't help but notice that the tag topic count for C# is in excess of 8900 while the vb.net tag topic count is sitting at 1019. Does this mean that there is a shift towards c# as a .net language of choice, or perhaps the vb.net community already know it all and there is no need to ask any questions.

I am Not tying to start a war here. I am new to programming in ,net and the only reason I decided to build some applications for work using c# was that I like curly braces - after all vb has the same language support as c#, doesn't it so there should be no advantage to choosing one over the other; other than curly braces ;)

Answer 1

I don't think it is a "shift" so much as a quite long established fact. I'm not judging one against the other, but I know a lot of people (myself included) deliberately moved away from VB (VB6 at the time) when moving to .NET.

With 4.0, the two get even closer in terms of unique features - the most notable (for me as a C# dev) being dynamic as an alternative to OPTION STRICT ON in VB (for COM work).

Other than that, they are largely interchangeable. I vastly prefer the style of C#, but that is just preference. There does, however, seem to be more of a market in C#.

Answer 2

I started my programming in VB4.. and have been a VB fan since. And then LINQ came along and LINQ syntax in C# is so much nicer than in VB.NET, so I switched.

And most people are either switching from a languages with curly braces such as Java and/or C/C++ so it's only natural that they pick C# over VB.NET

And language support is not entirely 'the same' i.e.:

• My Extensions is very handy for some tasks.

• VB has late-binding support (COM, ActiveX, Javascript etc.)

• VB needs an underscore for line continuation which makes spanning LINQ queries to multiline a little hard to type and rearrange.

• C# has full anonymous method support while VB is only limited to single-expression lambda function only.

• You cannot use unsafe code in VB, so a performance-critical application might be better off with C#

• VB has the Handles and With statement and method-scope static variable which is handy at times.

• VB has XML-literal syntax which is super-useful when creating XML-laden apps.

• And with type inference, it's becomes so much easier to program in C# especially for folks who like functional programming. I used to hate having to declare the type I want twice when instantiating a variable in C# but that has been solved with var.

.

// Can your language do this?
Dim xmlSnippet =
    <someXml>
        <someNode><%= localVariableHere %></someNode>
        <%= For item In dataset _
            Select <subNode><%= item %></subNode>%>
    </someXml>

.

Dim x As New MyClass("Params")     // read like an english sentence but...

MyClass x = new MyClass("Params"); // who says C is shorter than VB?

var x = new MyClass("Params");     // equal, but there're more punctuations!

In the (near) future, .NET 4.0 will brings changes that will smooth those differences, particularly VB getting multiple-statement delegates and C# getting late-binding support.

So there might be more people taking up VB when .NET 4.0 comes. But for now, the stats say it best.

Answer 3

Jeff had an interesting blog article about this, asserting that basically, people either keep developing in VB6, or are switching right to C#.

The change between VB6 and VB.Net is so big and the differences between VB.Net and C# so small that most people apparently decide they might as well use Microsoft's "default" language for .Net - and there is a big advantage in doing so, since it's better supported by tools, libraries, etc.

Answer 4

Coming from mostly C++ programming (with a little Ruby and Matlab) to my current job, which is a .NET shop, I have programmed in both VBA and C#. My preference is C# as 1) I find I make more errors in VB with minor spelling mistakes that are treated as valid untyped variables and not pointed out by the IDE and 2) C# has many more examples of use on the net than C++ for learning language features and interfaces to things such as GUI toolkits. Thus, from both the top and the bottom C# is a workable compromise

Answer 5

8900 vs 1019 could it mean C# programmers get stuck more often than VB programmers?

Answer 6

It's not language based I think.

I saw this in my 2 previous jobs : C# developers are often more enthousiasts than VB developers.

I think that this is because C# developers often have a different background. You don't learn VB in computer science in hight schools...

Answer 7

I started out as a basic programmer, when I started .net I used vb.net now I use C# because I find it requires less typing and in general there is more support for C# over vb.net especially for advanced frameworks and n-tier application architectures.

I think .net is a great way for basic programmers to switch to a C style language because C# is so similar. (if they want to that is, there is nothing wrong with basic styled languages IMO)