Heck, C is better than C++ for reports...


I disagree with the dissing of VB. Yes it's fairly simple to learn. Yes it's not as powerful as C++. But it does an excellent job (mostly) of easily building GUI systems. There is a definite place in the programming hierarchy for tools that can accomplish the job easily and can create a robust, usable, and stable system. No, I wouldn't use it for real-time programming. But as a front-end to one it's much simpler to deal with than MFC. For data aquisition and database manipulation, it's much easier than C/C++.

Easier is good, as long as you aren't sacrificing something that is necessary. Need speed, C++. Just need a GUI to access a DB, VB would be my choice.

I recently finished a project that prints one of 25 reports. The program runs in MS-Windows XP server, each report requires getting data from a Sybase database located on another computer, formatting the data, then printing the report on one of several lazer printerss. Yes this could have been done in C, but C++ classes I found on the net made my job a whole lot easier. The program can not just simply output some text to stdprt or lpt1: because (1) the printers are not located there but they are no a network, and (2) the reports contain a lot of line drawing code that requires win32 api DCD line drawing and font functions.

Why not use a third party library to access the database using C++ and build the GUI using GTK+ or wxWidgets ?

No point in learning a new lang, and that too VB !!! It would be better if you invest your time in Python or something like that.

Why learn a 3rd party package when you know VB? I'd have to learn GTK+, wxWidgets, or Python. I already know VB. Hence my choice.

My post was intended for programmers who are thinking of learning VB for developing quick GUI applications.

Those who know VB, i agree dont need to learn anything new.
But those who dont, why bother learning VB which comes for a price (i mean you have to buy the studio) if you have Python and third party libraries at your disposal.

Let's see. I'd say Forth, but that would date me. It became Prologue after awhile, and is still one of the best 4GL's ever written. 6582 Assembler was fun, too (especially on a Commodore 64, which technically had a 6510 processor - the Commodore Disk drives had a 6502, as did the Apple II if I recall).

In the 80's, it was SAS versus COBOL in quite a few shops (this is big iron, water cooled processing, y'all. Your XBOX 360 has more computing power). Those of us who became SAS heavies had little respect for our long-in-the-tooth COBOL Colleagues. We were hip, and they, well, they coded COBOL.

Guess what happened to us hip SAS Wonks in the 90's? Well, new COBOL programmers were decidedly NOT on the way, as bright, shiny new Computer Science degrees were being put to use to build the World Wide Interweb thing... If they wanted to eat, many happy SAS progs took... (drum roll) COBOL gigs. It's OK, at least we now had nice PC's to run our 3270 emulators on... We didn't want to, but many of us took gigs fixing Y2K problems.

Side Note: You don't have to believe that the Y2K problem existed. Those of us who had to fix the problems KNOW that we had to fix many an algorithm that would fall flat when the calendar ticked over to '00'.

1999. The world came to an end. So many programmers on the market, no more Y2K work to feed us all... We lost many good developers who could not stay above water long enough to survive the job drought. I was one of the lucky ones - I like languages (hey, wasn't that what this thread was about???) so Javascript, VBScript, and ASP were just something else to learn. I went after it with gusto, owned a company, sold it, went to work for the new owner... Then ASP fell out of fashion...

This new .net thing seemed, well, interesting. It also seemed to pay well. I hated everything Microsoft (I ran Chili!Soft ASP on my Linux Servers), but something about .net piqued my interest. I was familiar with C++ and JavaScript (same syntax a C++) from my own personal projects (so C# looked familiar), but VB.net was the first .net language I was exposed to professionally (Fujitsu did put out COBOL.net, for those of you who can't stand being away from Level 88's)

So, is VB.net better than C#? Of course not. Is C# better than VB.net? Not really. Is straight C++ better than anything .net? Can't say without context (although if I'm writing a real-time system such as a video game, .net is NOT going to cut it). "The Best Language" (which in my mind equates to the Coolest Language) depends completely on what I'm coding, what the rest of my team is comfortable coding in, and how we, as a team, can turn out reusable objects so we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time we have to populate a Datatable from Oracle. Regardless of all the rhetoric, C# and VB.net compile down to the same IL. The runtimes for equivelent methods are the same (yes, my team has done extensive benchmarking on this). There are a few things that are available in C# that are a little more difficult in VB, but if you're coding at that level you would be better off switching to unmanaged C++ (yes, Visual Studio lets you write and compile old-school). For readability and maintenance, VB is great. If you make yourself turn on OPTION EXPLICIT and OPTION STRICT in every class module you will go a long way towards making VB as type-safe as C# is by default.

Coolest Programming Language? The last one I coded in (because it was the right language for the job, and I LOVE my job...)

Good Question!

Ned

I may sound stupid but im listing my favorite programming language....

BASIC http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforum...es/biggrin.gif

I love programming on my Commodore64 and in Apple Basic,etc......... (I dont know much more than that as far as programming)

I nominate GML (Gamemaker language, www.gamemaker.nl). GML is really really easy which allows for fast development. There is no graphical engine needed (it contains basic functions as draw_line(x1,y1,x2,y2). The language isn't so strict (you may add ; if you like after an line). It's not that higly cutomizable but I don't need that yet . Downside is that it uses directX, so no use with Linux or any other OS.

I know many of you would see it as eating an pre-chewed pie, but it is (in my opinion) one of the best language's to learn when your young. I learnt programming with that .