SRL Archive - General

Which should I learn first, and why?
:P

VB if your not very experienced. Certainly make the 'switch' to c# though as it's more heavily used and is better experience. VB is very simple though, and quite similar to pascal script.

C#.. VB sucks. Its too wordy. C# is also closely related to java syntax wise and thus it'd be easy to transgress from one language to another (java).

Pascal lovers will always say VB as it's just as wordy as Pascal. I personally hate languages that use begin, end, and next (all keywords) instead of braces. VB uses DIM quite a lot. The for-loop is atrocious! Strongly typed languages are my preference and C# is more strongly typed than VB.

I don't particularly like .Net but I'd have to go with C# over VB any day. C# is more widely uses and like I said, closer to java.

From: Brandon

Pascal lovers will always say VB as it's just as wordy as Pascal. I personally hate languages that use begin, end, and next (all keywords) instead of braces. VB uses DIM quite a lot. The for-loop is atrocious! Strongly typed languages are my preference and C# is more strongly typed than VB.

I don't particularly like .Net but I'd have to go with C# over VB any day.

I would like to point out that I am in no way a 'pascal lover', but this is correct; you will learn more, and quite likely be happier with a c# program rather than VB. Though, that's not to say there is anything wrong with using VB to learn your way around the .NET framework.

From: NCDS
I would like to point out that I am in no way a 'pascal lover', but this is correct; you will learn more, and quite likely be happier with a c# program rather than VB. Though, that's not to say there is anything wrong with using VB to learn your way around the .NET framework.

LOL! I wasn't referring to you of course :) It's just in experience through PM's, quite a lot of guys that liked Pascal asked me what was a "good" language to learn and all though that they would give VB a try.

I whipped up a webbrowser in VB.
I think I'll try C# tho. Got the book Head First C#, any other books/websites you guys can refer me to?

From: Brandon
LOL! I wasn't referring to you of course :) It's just in experience through PM's, quite a lot of guys that liked Pascal asked me what was a "good" language to learn and all though that they would give VB a try.

Ah, I see.

From: NKN
I whipped up a webbrowser in VB.
I think I'll try C# tho. Got the book Head First C#, any other books/websites you guys can refer me to?

www.homeandlearn.co.uk is a fairly decent site to get started with. Just keep the MSDN doc's open in another tab and you're good.

Neither. Study C++ or Java. :)

In all actuality, I can't say much for C# since I've never bothered touching it but Visual Basic is definitely a good language for a person who has never programmed before but you should only program in it for a week or so to get your feet wet, then move onto a more powerful language.

If it has to be one of those 2, c#, otherwise I'd recomand java or C++

I started on C++, I just don't know what to do in it. Reading from a book, and making them console programs is just so… boring. :(

I would get a half decent grasp of C# then move onto C++. It depends on what you want to accomplish though. C++ for performance and dotnet for stuff that's not so intensive. Each language has it's merits and downfalls.

From: NKN
I started on C++, I just don't know what to do in it. Reading from a book, and making them console programs is just so… boring. :(

try and convert tpa functions to c++? it will give you loads of knowledge on things like operator overloading, templates, pointers and whatnot

From: NKN
I started on C++, I just don't know what to do in it. Reading from a book, and making them console programs is just so… boring. :(

I would recommend looking into Qt, after you have a good grasp of the language, it is a well written library, and contains many tools. It is the library to rule all other libraries, the only thing it lacks is JSON, and that's going to be included in Qt5 (Which is supposed to support iOS devices too).

Qt is basically a GUI library, but then they started adding things, like networking, file IO, Unicode, OpenGL interfaces … it's pretty cool :D.

I always give this quote when people ask whether they should learn VB:

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." - Edsger W. Dijkstra

So C# for sure.