C#'s edge over VB [closed]

Answer 1

In early versions of VB.NET, the difference was more obvious, however with the current version, there are no significant differences.

VB supports XML literals directly in code, which is not supported by C#. C# supports unsafe code and VB don't. Technically these two are the biggest differences. There are many small variations but they are not important. I like C# more because I think the syntax is much less bloated. It's easy to recognize the blocks of code instead of seeing a bunch of keywords, but that's a pure personal preference.

Choose the one you and your team are more familiar with.

Answer 2

When you hit a problem, you'll often be able to Google for a code sample that shows how to solve it in minutes. This is a significant factor in improving productivity. When I was working with Delphi, I had to convert code samples from C into Object Pascal - doable, but tedious, i.e. lots of friction. So don't underestimate the fact that...

The vast majority of .Net code samples are in C# !

Answer 3

Performance?

No difference, though VB historically uses a weird indexing in loops which means that you have to subtract 1 from the highest index most of the time:

For i = 0 To someArrayOrString.Length - 1 …

Though I doubt this impacts performance in any measurable way.

On the other hand, due to background compilation, VB actually compiles seemingly faster. Some people claim that this makes the IDE react sluggishly but I've never noticed that myself.

Capabilities?

In a few instances, C#'s yield statement is really useful. VB requires more manual work here. Also, lambdas are much better implemented in C#, especially syntactically. Consider these two statements:

Parallel.For(1, 10000, i => {
    // Do something
});

versus

Parallel.For(1, 10000, Sub() _
    ' Do something '
End Sub)

Besides the fact that VB can't do this yet, and that a comment at this place is forbidden, it's just more clutter and generally a no-go.

Libraries/Components?

Identical.

Reputation?

Not important. “Street cred”? Sorry. Not a factor. Get over it, Nick.

Reliability? Maintainability? Ease?

More or less identical. I claim that VB is easier but that may be biased and in any way, it's only marginal.

Answer 4

Others have covered a lot of the differences - as has been said several times, they're nearly equivalent languages. A few differences which haven't been covered as far as I've seen:

VB9 has:

• XML literals
• Mutable anonymous types (urgh)
• More LINQ support in the language (C# only covers a few operators)
• A whole bunch of extra bits in the language which get compiled down to calls to the Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly. (C# prefers to be a small language with the weight of the .NET framework behind it.)
• DateTime literals

C# 3 has:

• Better support for lambda expressions: IIRC, you can't write a lambda expression with a block body in VB.
• Iterator blocks.
• Syntax for extension methods (instead of decorating the method with an attribute)

I suspect there is more, but I thought I'd just throw those into the mix.

Answer 5

Free from old cruft, array declaration in C# is not padded with extra element. VB.NET array is padded with extra element, so legacy VB6 code migration is easier.

C# is more consistent than VB.NET

Button1.Color() = Color.Red
Button1.Color = Color.Red

I can't give an answer when one student asked me when to use parenthesis on properties of VB.NET. It's hard to give an insightful reasoning for this kind of misfeature.

Consistency with instance and static members. VB.NET allows accessing static members on instance e.g. yarn.Sleep(1000), this is a misfeature. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/312419/language-features-you-should-never-use

Answer 6

VB has a better feedback on errors. In C# you have to compile more often to get all the errors in your syntax.