With a mighty <nagleE8x5Gz.9KL@netcom.com>,
nagle@netcom.com uttered these wise words...
> Visual Basic has been quite successful; it's supplanting COBOL in
> the client side of business systems. A sizable commercial market exists in
> objects for Visual Basic, one of the few object-oriented systems for
> which that has happened. It's not widely used in academia,
> but in the real world, things are different. Don't laugh at VB4;
> this is not your father's Dartmouth BASIC. It's a decent language now.
This is a point that I've been making, for a while now. VB and C++
compliment each other in just the way that JO claims is true for Tcl
and Java, one for the "scripting" level, the other for "system" level.
The latest version of VB is 5.0 (yep, it's available: I've seen a non-
beta copy, tho it was still in its box at the time). It's a very
serious grown-up Basic.
Sadly, there are people who'll slag off VB. The criticisms that I've
seen have reminded me of the myths surrounding Lisp. When I see a VC++
programmer distorting the true capabilities of VB (downward, of
course), the techniques they use appear to be _exactly_ the same.
Perhaps they even share the same motivation? I don't know.
I'm not a VB programmer. I'm not sure I'd even call myself a C++
programmer, for various reasons. However, I don't feel any need to
misrepresent VB's capabilities. If VB can do much of what I do in C++,
then I'm overjoyed, as it may mean that I can use something else, like
Java (or perhaps someday, my preference, Lisp) while a VB programmer
writes that boring DLL etc.
Could it be that some C++ programmers feel threatened by VB? I find it
ironic that a posting that's critical of VB might also slag off
Delphi, which is a language far closer to C++, and yet still very easy
to use. Therefore more threatening to a C++ programmer who doesn't
like Pascal?
Again, I don't know, as I've never felt a bias so strongly that I had
to distort the truth. I freely admit that I'm no fan of C/C++, but I
also admit that these languages have some utility. I don't let that
cloud my judgement by refusing to see the strengths of VB, Delphi, and
even a few languages (and implementations) of a more esoteric nature.
Go figure.
--
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Martin Rodgers | Programmer and Information Broker | London, UK
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