# The Slow Brain Death of VB.NET

**URL:** <https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160>\
**Category:** blog\
**Created:** [March 10, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160 "2005-03-10T00:00:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Terrier](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/t/e19adc/32.png) [@Terrier](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Terrier)\
**Post date:** [April 8, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/21 "2005-04-08T00:00:00Z")

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Isn’t it just likely that the many of the original VB programmers came from DOS/Windows C and now that C# is available they are just going back? I am in the category. Nothing could beat VB Classic for ease of database access but I hated the language, it was extremely primitive and idiosyncratic. I always regretted that Microsoft won the desktop because that meant that VB won instead of Rexx. If you had to have a wordy language Rexx was head and shoulders above VB. When will there be a [Rexx.NET](http://Rexx.NET)?

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**Author:** ![Littlee](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/l/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Littlee](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Littlee)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/22 "2005-04-09T00:00:00Z")

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I do not understand why anyone would write anything of significance on the .NET platform for the desktop. It’s okay for internal stuff and some server applications but that’s about it.

Microsoft made itself what it is today via PCs. Apparrently, they’d like to see us come full circle - right back behind a dumb terminal. No thanks.

C++ is the route many are taking. Why get burned twice? You have to do a rewrite anyway. Sure, their’s some significant upfront work to be done but once completed…ah, the open air and freedom.

Multiple architecture and OS targets without proprietary interference? Priceless!

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**Author:** ![Ken\_Halter](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Ken\_Halter](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Ken_Halter)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/23 "2005-04-15T00:00:00Z")

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Hey “Blog Fly”

What’s the point ?,I kinda like sticking to [VB.NET](http://VB.NET)…like you sir,this post takes a sorta marginal  
view of things.The developers have no time for vb6 anymore because of the .net framework api’s.  
The activex days and dll hell days…

A marginal view is exactly what _your_ post exibits… seems that, because _you_ like B#, everyone should. Now _that’s_ funny.

“DLL Hell” is an issue that people have when they don’t know what they’re doing.

If COBOL (cobol is a computer language that hasn’t changed much since the late 1970’s) is good enough for the precious bloatware known as the [VS.Net](http://VS.Net) IDE, why wouldn’t VB6 be good enough? I just don’t get the resistance to having VB in the .Net IDE. It boggles my mind how damn selfish people are.

Another thing that gets me these days is… Bloggers. Get a grip! Writing a blog does _not_ make you an authority on a subject.

Ken Halter  
MS-MVP-VB

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**Author:** ![John](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/j/a3d4f5/32.png) [@John](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/John)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/24 "2005-05-05T00:00:00Z")

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I work with both c# and straight C++. I have also done some work in Java as well. To me, Java and C# are VERY similar, too similar to be a coincidence. Having said that, I am not that impressed with .NET as a whole. Having to look up things I used to know from C++ API (SDK) development for the .NET framework may be just an annoyance, but some things are downright aggrevating. Lacking support for LSA functions (and having to write lines of Pinvoke/Marshalled data structures with ugly syntax)and the convoluted support being built into .NET framework 2.0 for ACL support makes me wonder out loud “Is this suppose to make development easier?” My suspicion is that deep inside MS really wants to again give outside developers one API set (framework with its host of bugs - check out the service packs already out) that gives us limited access to internals - while themselves keeping lean and mean API development to themselves. “Hey you guys develop your word processor on .NET technology - we’ll put out office on lean C++/Win32 code” - and see which one performs better. Now the administrators have to download a littany of .NET service packs and hotfixes along with OS service packs and hotfixes - thank MS! And memory bloat - don’t get me going on this one - MS apparently must be investing in the PC memory field!

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**Author:** ![Steve](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@Steve](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Steve)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/25 "2005-08-12T00:00:00Z")

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It always humors me when people who have “invested” so much effort into a dying technology that has long since been passed by, Novell for example, they bitch and talk down the new to justify keeping the old. You talk about service packs being released for the .NET framework. How many service packs were released for VS6? Wasn’t it at least six separate service pack releases? Does that mean it was buggy and worthless? It does remind me of the Novell guys who are whining about switching over to Windows servers. I ask them why, and eventually the truth comes to the surface, it’s because they have “invested” so much into it that they don’t want to move on and learn something new.

NEWSFLASH!!! Technology moves along and evolves whether you like it or not. You have to constantly be learning and adapting or you will certainly be left behind. Those who are stuck in the VB6 bubble will either die whining about being left behind or will get with the program and evolve like the rest of the world.

So there were six million VB developers? There were also millions of Win3.1 desktops out there. Does that mean Microsoft made a mistake in moving everyone over to a 32-bit platform? A lot of applications had to be rewritten to evolve and become native apps on the new win32 platform.

If people would stop feeling sorry for themselves long enough to get a grip and learn the .NET framework, maybe they would actually see that the world hasn’t come to an end. Fat chance in hell of that happening though. Those who don’t want to change will always find excuses why they shouldn’t have to do so. That’s just human nature. I for one get excited by the challenge of something new. What about Avalon? What about the next generation of RAD and the endless possibilities that presents? Oh wait, we should have kept DOS and the FAT16 filesystem. After all, think of all the old DOS programs that are OBSOLETE now!!

Stop living in the past and GET OVER IT!

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**Author:** ![sameerb](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/s/b9e5f3/32.png) [@sameerb](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/sameerb)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/26 "2005-08-21T00:00:00Z")

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Really! I don’t understand all the cry about which language is better. A language is supposed to be a means by which you design a program fro some purpose. If you work in VB and are hugely productive in it then any other language then by all means use it. We programmers should not forget that we are not here to satisfy our egos, but the egos of our clients.  
I’ve been developing in VB for the past 5 years and have always delivered projects on schedule and to the satisfaction of my clients; which in the end is all that matters in the real world.  
Now some people may bring up the question about the elegance of VB to other languages. I would agree that VB is quite wordy then other mainstream languages and it has its quirks. But if elegance were the sole issue then we would all be better of with Smalltalk, Lisp or now Ruby!  
With reference to .NET, presently I’am sticking to VB till I get a complete hang of the .NET Framework; then I’ll move to C#, by which I mean,‘learn C#’; which is not that hard.

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**Author:** ![Joe\_Bain](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/j/b782af/32.png) [@Joe\_Bain](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Joe_Bain)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/27 "2005-09-30T00:00:00Z")

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Anyone who is thinking about moving from VB I encourage you to check out Borland Delphi. It has a great history of complatibility. Projects made with Delphi 1 back in 1995 (or 6?) can be compliled with the newest version of both [Delphi.net](http://Delphi.net) and Delphi.Win32. You also get 5 lauangues (Delphi Win32, [Delphi.Net](http://Delphi.Net), C#, C++ (next version), and [VB.net](http://VB.net)) in the best IDE around. The pascal syntax is also easier to pickup then the C syntax for people whos only experance is VB.

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**Author:** ![Darren](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@Darren](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Darren)\
**Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/28 "2005-10-11T00:00:00Z")

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[VB.net](http://VB.net) is the beginning of the end of VB in many cases. I’ve been porting stuff to [VB.net](http://VB.net) for over 12 months and have gotten to the point of “Why bother!”  
Microsoft doesn’t even support VB in many cases -Check out the latest DX9 SDK - No VB!  
I agree with joe - delphi is probably the next logical step for VB6 developers as it can be used with Win32 OR the the very weighty Net framework! - and code can be recompiled on other platforms!  
Besides that everything else will be VB6 and DX8 - proven, tested and it still works!

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**Author:** ![Sumod](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@Sumod](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Sumod)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/29 "2005-10-17T00:00:00Z")

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Hi love [vb.net](http://vb.net) but every one say that C# is growing.Should i make a shift to C#.If i did will i have any advantage.

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**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/user_avatar/discourse.codinghorror.com/codinghorror/32/36371_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/codinghorror)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/30 "2005-10-17T00:00:00Z")

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Should i make a shift to C#. If i did will i have any advantage.

I think the smartest strategy is to learn both.

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**Author:** ![SiGiD](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/s/f4b2a3/32.png) [@SiGiD](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/SiGiD)\
**Post date:** [October 20, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/31 "2005-10-20T00:00:00Z")

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I’m not sure that the question should be “Do I go with [VB.NET](http://VB.NET) or switch to C#”. I think the question should be “Do I go to .NET or switch to something that has a longer expected useful lifespan”?

Keep in mind that .NET is entirely new and unproven technology, and continues to evolve as we speak, producing new versions which are significantly different from (and incompatible with) previous versions. Can you cost-justify shooting at an unproven, quickly moving target, especially when you cannot know exactly when Microsoft may decide to pull the rug out from under you again?

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**Author:** ![RalphE](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/r/74df32/32.png) [@RalphE](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/RalphE)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/32 "2005-11-04T00:00:00Z")

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Haha:

I don’t fit in the migration…I learnt assembly programming :) and use it in vb6 with the ThunderVB([http://thundervb.profitux.cz/)](http://thundervb.profitux.cz/)) add-in. IMO, .NET is very heavy on resources. A simple form with nothing on it can consume 3-5mb of memory…although i think that mainly is the .NET framework and it increases less after that. But still IMO, I’ll learn C/C++ before I’ll ever get good at .NET…actually I’ve done a little in VB .NET Express 2005 but I find the IDE horrifically slow and sluggish and the .NET api just too much …maybe thats why it so slow lol. Forget about vb6 infamous slowness…ThunderVB solves that problem with a bit of asm knowledge ;)

Ok…there is one thing about VB6 that can’t be solved…it will always be 32-bit so I’ll probably have to move on and learn some C/C++ where the 64-bit compilers are coming. .NET…no way…

Hmmm might promote D while I’m here :)  
[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/benchmark.php?test=alllang=csharplang2=dlangsort=fullcpu](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/benchmark.php?test=alllang=csharplang2=dlangsort=fullcpu)

Ralph

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**Author:** ![Tony](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/t/ee7513/32.png) [@Tony](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Tony)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2006, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/33 "2006-02-02T00:00:00Z")

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Let’s see. MS helps me make a respectable living. They provide adequate resources for me to do so by providing the best IDE’s out there. With the release of .NET 2.0, I have been able to write full blown applications in as little as a week. The last time I attended an even similiar to the release of VS2K5, MSSQL SERVER 2K5 and BizTalk 2K6 in regards to Java was…hmmm…um…hmmm…

Oh and my belly was full thanks to MS for providing a great lunch…got free software that you can even use in PRODUCTION!!

Last time I got that from a Java expo was…hmmm…umm…

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**Author:** ![Emmet1](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/e/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Emmet1](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Emmet1)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2006, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/34 "2006-02-20T00:00:00Z")

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Um.. I too find the IDE very sluggish on my system. As far as I can see, there’s a shortage of [VB.net](http://VB.net) programmers, compared to VB6.

Seems like everyone wants to migrate to .net, but let’s face it - many people don’t want to have to handle the extra complexity, so they quit, leaving a huge market for the rest of us.

Every day, in the newspaper, [vb.net](http://vb.net) seems to be the most in-demand skill going, moreso than C#, C++, Java or anything else.

My 2 cents

Em

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**Author:** ![Old\_Guy](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/o/cdc98d/32.png) [@Old\_Guy](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Old_Guy)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2006, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/35 "2006-02-22T00:00:00Z")

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Emmet - if I may try to get this clear, you say that you are seeing a large demand for [vb.net](http://vb.net) programmers as opposed to VB6 or C#, et al?

I suspect that this is due to the fact that various clueless midle managers are looking at their (now obsolete) inventory of VB6 code and trying to “move forward” with as little pain as possible, and they think [VB.NET](http://VB.NET) is the logical way to go.

Little do they know they’d be way better off going to C# if they absolutely _must_ move to .NET, since C# is the language that .NET was designed for in the first place. And re-writing VB6 legacy code in [VB.NET](http://VB.NET) requires pretty much the same amount of effort as re-writing it in any other different language, such as C#…

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**Author:** ![Old\_Guy](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/o/cdc98d/32.png) [@Old\_Guy](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/Old_Guy)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/36 "2006-03-03T00:00:00Z")

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The VB6 documentation on MSDN appears - suddenly - to be no longer available:

a href="[Technical documentation | Microsoft Learn](http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vbcon98/html/vbstartpage.asp)"[Technical documentation | Microsoft Learn](http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vbcon98/html/vbstartpage.asp/a)  
is no longer working.

Is this a “subtle” hint from our dear friends at Micro$oft?

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**Author:** ![old\_guy1](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/o/dfb087/32.png) [@old\_guy1](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/old_guy1)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2006, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/37 "2006-03-03T00:00:00Z")

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And just for your info, it appears that our dear “friends” at Micro$oft have given us yet another “subtle” to stop VB6 by removing the online product documentation from MSDN.

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**Author:** ![VBMan](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/v/8dc957/32.png) [@VBMan](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/VBMan)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2006, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/38 "2006-03-04T00:00:00Z")

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What chyou talkin’ 'bout Willis? :-| Try your link again. It’s alls in there brotha…

VB6 isn’t going away anytime soon. It will be the next Cobol of the decades to come. Granted new development will be in .NET (VB or C#), but maintenance and possible enhancements and integration with newer .NET features will still be going on in VB6 where good business sense dictates.

Laugh at Cobol, but I’ve got a consultant friend making more than most .NET devs right now. Now that’s irony. And it wouldn’t suprise me if the same holds true for VB Classic work in the future as the “herds” migrate to .NET and the Kewl kids don’t want to get dirty touching “legacy” VB6 code. Hey, my bank account doesn’t care where the green comes from. It’s all good…

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**Author:** ![AndreH](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/a/958977/32.png) [@AndreH](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/AndreH)\
**Post date:** [March 5, 2006, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/39 "2006-03-05T00:00:00Z")

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I’ve been developing in VB6, then swithced to [VB.Net](http://VB.Net) in 2001. In the past few years, C# has indeed had a meteoric rise in popularity (Even in far off places like South Africa). I tried to convince my manager (an ex VB6 developer) that C# is the way to go, but that just didn’t work - so I started building a simple little code generator in C#. Hopefully that will count for something on my CV. :)

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**Author:** ![SiGiD](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/s/f4b2a3/32.png) [@SiGiD](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/SiGiD)\
**Post date:** [March 13, 2006, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/the-slow-brain-death-of-vb-net/1160/40 "2006-03-13T00:00:00Z")

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Clayton - as long as you don’t mind not getting a paycheck for the next 10 - 15 years or so…;)

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