BuCKetHeaD27

Isn't Visual Basic dying? I'm taking a course @ school on it, and bah. Microsoft needs to die along with all their languages. Sorry for my bad attitude.

BFRD

Visual Basic 6 (and its predacessors) are being phased out in favor of the .NET counterparts (I know I am trying to get rid of my legacy VB COM junk). VB.NET while widely used continues to be falling out of favor to the more syntacially common C#. C based languages are more popular at the moment (and in the past for that matter). C# and basic JAVA for example are almost completely identical. There are some cases where this can be an extremely handy fact. I have heard some people say that VB is easier to learn, that is just a misunderstanding. Programming logic is the difficult part and that will be the same for VB, VB.NET or C#. Learning a C based language will give you more re-usable syntax knowledge that you can pass into another C based language. I'm not trying to say anything bad about VB or those who choose to write in it, I just see more opportunities for C# (if you are sticking with MS).

As to your disdain for MS in general, I can't help you there. There is plenty of programming that you can do in linux. Perl can be a lot of fun!

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BuCKetHeaD27

Eh well i'm going to finish this class anyway. Isn't C# from Microsoft to compete with Java?

BFRD

If you are taking a class by all means finish it. Just try to learn the patterns and not the syntax.

It is hard to directly compete against a programming language. Because of the syntax similarity it would make it easy for JAVA programmers to start writing C# code. One of the biggest selling points for JAVA is it has the capability of running on many different platforms. So you could write an app that ran on linux as well as windows. The only drawback to this, while JAVA apps seem to run very well on linux, they do tend to suck on windows (just pretend "suck" is a technical term here ). Not all applications really *need* to be cross platform anyway. Most business apps for example will be run in a windows environment, so I personally would choose a platform that was best suited to run on windows. Until more businesses adopt linux (which I don't really see happening anytime soon) I feel that the .NET framework (VB or C#) is the way to go.

*Please note that I am slightly biased, I lead a nice life based on my job as programmer.

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BuCKetHeaD27

What do you mean by learn the pattern and not the syntax?

ALIENIZED

I am also taking and in fact im in it at this very moment. I asked on another post but does anyone know where I can get free visual basic program like microsoft's for me to use or learn through it?

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BFRD

Many young developers fall into a bad habit of following examples so closely that they can only reproduce the exact same thing. In stead of focusing on the syntax (actual coding statments), focus on what is actually being accomplished. One way of doing this is breaking down each section of code and writing out comments of what is actually doing. Once you become familiar with the specific pattern then you can reproduce the same thing in any language you want. Syntax can be found in references all over the place, knowing how to use it is the key to being successful.

Since you are in a class, you will certainly be required to make simple programs (likely using examples). Just make sure you understand exactly what every line of code is really doing. If you ever write a line of code and have no-idea why you had to put it there, then you need to stop and figure out why.

Hopefully this makes sense. With the renewed interest in programming, I hope to have another installment of a Programming Challenge soon.

Your school may be able to provide you with a student version of Visual Studio. Other than that you can visit http://www.academicsuperstore.com/ and get student prices on a ton of software.

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ALIENIZED

I doubt that they can but it never hurt to ask(I will do that tomorrow). thanks

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Wolfblood

the wya i learned the pattern fo code,while learning java wasits all like a recipe,u got the ingrediants and the directions

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BuCKetHeaD27

If you want visual basic i'm sure I have an extra copy lying around here at work...