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Since their introduction in 2002, Microsoft's pair of .NET programming languages, C# and Visual Basic.NET, have been close siblings. Although they look very different—one uses C-style braces, brackets, and lots of symbols, whereas the other looks a great deal more like English—their features have, for the most part, been very similar. This strategy was formalized in 2010, with Microsoft planning coevolution, to keep them if not identical then at least very similar in capability.
But the two languages have rather different audiences, and Microsoft has decided to change its development approach. The company has made two key findings. First, drawing on the annual Stack Overflow developer survey, it's clear that C# is popular among developers, whereas Visual Basic is not. This may not be indicative of a particular dislike for Visual Basic per se—there's likely to be a good proportion within that group who'd simply like to consolidate on a single language at their workplace—but is clearly a concern for the language's development.
Second, however, Microsoft has seen that Visual Basic has twice the share of new developers in Visual Studio as it does of all developers. This could indicate that Visual Basic is seen or promoted as an ideal beginners' language; it might also mean that programmers graduating from Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros in programs such as Word, Access, and Excel are picking the option that is superficially most comfortable for them. Visual Basic developers are generally creating business applications using WinForms, or occasionally ASP.NET Web Forms; the use of WinForms in particular again suggests that developers are seeking something similar to Office macros.
Accordingly, the development of the two languages is set to diverge. C# is going to continue to pick up more complex features. C# 7.0, for example, is adding integrated support for tuples and pattern matching syntax, the latest language features showing significant influence from functional programming languages like ML and Haskell. Visual Basic 15 is adding some of these, such as tuples, but it isn't going to match every new feature in C# 7.0. Going forward, it will be maintaining readability and keeping the number of different concepts manageable.
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(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Sunday February 05 2017, @11:56PM
It used to live up to its name.
Now one has to install it, load it whenever you feel the itch to program you still have to put up with the the IDE turned into big brother.
No - It doesn't need to be taught at all.
Nevertheless, if one does it on an Apple II or C64, it may spawn an idea in a young bright mind similar to "why was something working so well got so bad and how do we bring it back?"
To learn VB today because its all around is like spreading more cancer.