Writing Mobile Code Essential Software Engineering for Building Mobile Applications [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Why VB.NET and C#?

The debate between VB.NET developers and C# developers is never ending and that's a good thing! Both camps have things to learn from one another. For my part, having worked with both languages for years and specifically having worked as part of the Visual Basic design team years back, I offer the following observations. Both languages can be used to accomplish just about any programming task; it is just a question of emphasis. I find Visual Basic .NET with its traditional Visual Basic emphasis on coding productivity extremely well suited for end-application development. C#, on the other hand, has an advantage in rigor that makes it somewhat better suited for framework design. Both seem about equally well suited for designing reusable components that fall somewhere in between standalone applications and comprehensive programming libraries. In addition, both languages offer nondefault options that make the languages approach one another; for example, the Visual Basic .NET language offers the Option Strict On directive, which I strongly suggest placing at the top of any module you write as a way to catch many kinds of common syntactic and logic errors. Both languages also learn from one another with each successive version borrowing useful concepts pioneered by one another; for this reason there is a good creative tension between the two languages. A feature I particularly like in Visual Basic .NET is its treatment of events; the AddHandler and Handles keywords (used in the code below) are more elegant and declarative than their current C# variants. Because it is most convenient to see example code in the language one is most familiar with, I am placing VB.NET versions of almost all the book's listings here in the appendix. Not listed are examples too trivial to bother translating because they are short and very easily understandable to both Visual Basic and C# developers. Wherever possible, common Visual Basic coding practices have been followed, meaning that the code below is not a direct translation of the C# code but rather a somewhat more "VB-ish" version; however, the samples are functionally equivalent, and it should be easy for those interested to compare the Visual Basic and C# languages and make their own decision on preference. Happy coding!