{"id":1421,"date":"2017-03-22T11:28:46","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T11:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.verbat.com\/?p=1421"},"modified":"2024-05-24T12:49:15","modified_gmt":"2024-05-24T12:49:15","slug":"the-future-of-visual-basic-verbat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.verbat.com\/blog\/the-future-of-visual-basic-verbat\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft\u2019s Programming Language Strategy & The Future of Visual Basic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft\u2019s Program Manager Mads Torgersen recently posted about what they plan to do with their widely popular .NET languages – C#, Visual Basic, and F#. And things look uncertain for Visual Basic.<\/p>\n

Their plans were later elaborated in detail through a series of blogs. There will be fundamental changes that looks favorable to C# and F#. Though there wasn\u2019t any negative statements regarding VB\u2019s future, the vibe their statements left made it seem that a bumpy road awaits VB.<\/p>\n

Where they stand now\u2026<\/h3>\n

According to Torgersen, C# is the most popular of the three, and will keep evolving as a state-of-the-art programming language. He added that F# is steadily climbing the ladder, and could become the best-tooled functional language on the market. VB is apparently the odd one here, as it is now mostly used for Windows Forms applications and in ASP.NET development<\/a><\/strong> by new developers. But many surveys indicate that developers are moving from VB to C# owing to the latter\u2019s richer ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s reason for changing its development strategy could be the fact that both C# and VB have different audiences. They found that new developers in Visual Studio<\/a> favor VB, as it\u2019s more comfortable them to learn the tricks of the trade. VB is still a tool for client-server programming while C# evolved to being useful for n-tier web-based applications.<\/p>\n

F#, on the other hand, takes a different, more independent path. Microsoft will reportedly take measures to make F# more useful in the .NET landscape, hopefully with better error messages and support.<\/p>\n

Where they are going<\/h3>\n

C# and VB will be going different ways from now on. VB\u2019s popularity is dwindling and it will eventually end up disappearing from the radar for good. Evidently, C# is diverging from VB. As VB will be supporting the standard base class libraries set along .NET framework in the not too distant future, we can expect some amount of cross-platform work in the dying language. However, not all VB codes would be portable. Some can be shifted to a smaller set of libraries while the rest remains on on-premises applications. F# will find its place among financial services and machine learning-based applications.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in it for enterprise developers<\/h3>\n

For starters, they will have two important choices.<\/p>\n