VB - give it chance, it's ACE! (Visual Basic in general)

Member Name: MrClyfar

Product:	Visual Basic in general
Date:	11/10/01 (85 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, It IS powerful

Disadvantages: Loose some flexibility, No single EXE distribution

This isn't a beginner's guide as such, but I hope everyone who reads this can gain something from it.

I have been using Visual Basic for many years now, my opinion on this development tool in general is that for the majority of software projects it is more then capable of producing the goods.

VB is easy to learn - the language is very easy to follow, a beginer can create a simple Windows program in minutes. You can easily develop web applications using web classes or activex documents (but these two tools aren't the best made for doing such projects).

But the beauty of VB is the fact that you CAN create very powerful, flexible software - if you have the know how to do it. It's no good saying 'VB isn't as powerful as C++...', blah, blah, blah. By using the API or COM it is possible to build really amazing stuff. Granted VB isn't as powerful as C++ on a language level - but by taking advantage of Windows system calls it can catch up.

Another great asset to VB is that writing software that does use the API or COM is a lot easier then using C++. Yes you do loose some flexibility or perhaps some control over what happens i.e. VB takes care of what happens in the background for you. But at the end of the day the end result is almost (90%+) the same, and produced in less time, so why worry?!

I read a lot of comments about C++ vs Visual Basic, but let's have some common sense here. Different languages provide different resources, results, performance, etc. C++ is more complex, more powerful and better suited to, perhaps, software that depends on speed or portability. The point is that VB is the choice development platform for many millions of Windows developers. Why? Simply put it provides a more proficient envirnoment - by that I mean the time it takes to develop a program is shorter then a C++ equivalent.

This isn't too say that C++ is a poor choice, but for many time critical pr
ojects, whipping out a program in VB is the only choice and a good one.

I understand many C++, or other language, programmer's will have their opinions on VB not being up to scratch, fair enough - I mean an opinion it like an asshole, everybody's got one - but I think there is an argument for VB to be considered a premiere programming tool. It's the dark horse of development tools and as it's popularity grows, I feel the number of C++, JAVA programmers might not increase as much such as in previous years, certainly with VB .NET coming out, but that's another story...

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