Programming Languages

[King Rat]

For the programmers out there: What programming languages do you use? Which is your favorite? Least favorite?

I've been using Visual Basic since VB 4.0 came out and have several VB 6.0 and VB.NET (2003 & 2005) applications in use by our customers. Recently I took up C# and really like it. I've also been doing some developing with ASP.NET 2.0. I have a fairly large project coming up and I'm thinking of going with C# instead of VB if my customer has no objections.

[TF Admin]

KR, I work for a public safety software company. They code in Clarion using the Topspeed database. I am beginning to learn C++. I wantd to start with Visual Basic and I may change my mind, but I don't want to fool with DLL's and all that crap. I think if I coded everything myself I would be much better off.

TFADMIN

[King Rat]

"DLL Hell" was pretty much a VB6 (and previous) problem and it was quite bad. VB.NET is totally different. C# is even better and has become Microsoft's favorite. I guess it depends on what type of applicatons you want to develop.

But you bring up something I was discussing with a co-worker the other day. C++ programmers hate VB programmers (and have not much more tolerance for C#) because it is "too easy". I've heard things like "it's not REAL programming" or that "it allows too many people to write programs and ruins the profession". But, years ago I recall hearing the same argument from machine-language programmers bashing C (and later C++) because C "made it too easy" and wasn't "real programming".

In my business the goal is to write robust end-user applications for Windows PCs and to do it as quickly as possible. Time is money. My customers don't care whether I had to do the garbage collection myself or if .NET took care of it for me. So long as I don't charge them extra for it.

I use several different programming enviroments, depending on the task. What makes a good programmer is the ability to come up with a solution to a customer's need that works and is easy to use. The vehicle used to reach that goal is secondary.