Son of Visual Basic
27 Apr 2005 
in mid-afternoon 
Matt Winckler
Visual Basic and I do not get along. I believe it stems from some fundamental difference of mindset between myself and whomever thought up the harebrained syntax behind this detestable language. To my eyes, VB is wordy, cutesy, corny, condescending, and non-intuitive. (What kind of half-baked hippie language uses the keyword “Friend” to define class members only visible within the containing assembly when it could use the infinitely more descriptive “internal” like C#?) I frequently marvel at how much it is used and by people who seem to be otherwise healthy and sound of mind. I especially wonder at the use of VB.NET, when C#.NET is there for the taking. They both do the same job; why not write code using the language whose syntax is concise and makes sense?
I theorize that the answer to this is that it is VB being taught to hapless non-CS college students, and thus it’s the only thing they’re familiar with. I was fortunate to work for an open source zealot during college, so I was exposed to the fresh air of PHP syntax (very similar to C# or Java) before bacterial VB infection settled in. I shed a tear for the folks who were not so fortunate.
And now I shed a tear for myself, because those less fortunate folks are in charge.