The Joel on Software Discussion Group

Not that I hated Variants. Just fascinated to know that Joel had a hand in some of the features of Visual Basic.

My main problem with variants is that people use them.

Not for the reason Joel wanted them included, but for dumb reasons like;

"So if I decide to change the type of a variable I don't have to go edit the declaration.... see?" <inane grin>

or just a fundamental misunderstanding about what types are supposed to do for your software. Or even;

"It cuts down the number of variables I have to think of names for because I can re-use them.."


The problem with giving people a gun is that sooner or later they shoot either themselves or, worse, you.


"With" is a nice construct to have though -- it does make code look tidier.

Bad programmers will end up writing bad code.  You can do the same re-assignment games with Python variables, but Python is a "real" language.

I'm always amused by the belittling of VB by "serious programmers"; I usually find the productivity and code quality of said superstars to be pitiful.

VB has warts, but it's been a great way to create and call COM objects for many years without having crap like

HRESULT hr = pSomeCrazyThing->QueryInterface(__uuidof(IUnknown), (void **) &pUnk);

> I'm always amused by the belittling of VB by "serious programmers"; I usually find the productivity and code quality of said superstars to be pitiful.

I find exactly the same. The people who complain about VB are the ones who *need* a more difficult language to force them to think about what they are programming rather than hacking about in VB. You can write good VB code

I want to find out whoever wrote On Error Resume Next and throttle them.

"I find exactly the same. The people who complain about VB are the ones who *need* a more difficult language to force them to think about what they are programming rather than hacking about in VB."

Okay, this couldn't go uncontested, although I realize that VB defenders huddle in little groups and convince each other that this sort of bullshit has some sort of basis in reality. It doesn't.

Visual Basic earned a lot of derision because it was a ---TERRIBLE--- platform. Not only was the language a half-developed abortion of many parents, with countless indefensible language elements that should have been obsoleted by the early 80s, but the implementation was terrible as well.

There were many superior alternatives (e.g. Delphi which beat VB in every measurable and academic way) that came along, but they died because the die-hard VBers clutched their hands to their ears and decried all of those meanies trying to move/replace their rancid cheese.

This has nothing to do with complexity. Python is enormously easy to develop in -- far more logical and "simple" than Visual Basic actually -- yet it's an elegant, powerful language, and many of its fans have a brain on their shoulders and gauge their tools in a critical, considered manner.

VB.NET is of course only some syntactical sugar/diffs on C# to pander to the fear-of-change VB crowd, however even it gets derision, because pretty much the only people who embrace it over C# are, as a general rule, the same idiots that embraced Visual Basic in a fervent fit of denial. If a technology is largely embraced by bozos, the technology does get a reputation accordingly.

I only liked VB because it was the "automation language" for Microsoft Office ( and Visio).

Also, it played nicely in the Windows windowing environment, providing a simplified wrapper around all those Windows needed things -- callback Events, DLL encorporation, OLE calls, etc. 

Simplified, that is, compared to the C interfaces of the time.  And it had a nice debugger.

So you liked VB because it was from Microsoft. That's pretty much the case, and the VB defenders can drop all of the ridiculous defenses and simply accept that fact.

"I would eat whatever Microsoft serves."

I've met far too many of that sort in this business.

>>VB has warts, but it's been a great way to create and call COM objects for many years without having crap like...<<

Some of those warts have caused me great pain. VB is great for automating office. It's good for gluing together COM components to do something useful in very little time. It's passable for simple applications and GUI centric stuff. But there are a few 'warts' that make me a little grumpy because they really, really get in my way.

1. The fact people can decide if they want to use 0 or 1 based arrays. WHY?!?. At this point I just assume 0 unless I find out differently at runtime. This has been a good assumption most of the time.

2. Collections. Collections have to win the all-time "almost good enough to be a useful data structure" award. Anybody who has had any experience with associative arrays, dictionaries or hashes in languages like perl or python feel crippled by VB collections. Granted you could use the scripting object's Dictionary class, but why the hell isn't this a part of the language?

3. Every now and then I run into a statement like

if myBoolean then
    MsgBox "hey, bud"
end if

and it doesn't work even though in the debugger myBoolean is true. Turns out that for reasons unknown to me if myBoolean is actually a variant you have to explicitly compare it to true or false. Sometimes. It's the sometimes part that is really maddening.

The rest of the stuff that I wrestle with in VB (no short circuiting on boolean comparisons, error handling as mentioned above, vb can be statically or dynamically typed you pick, etc.) are annoyances born of my own particular quirks I'm sure. There are plenty of things in other languages that annoy me as well. But the above 3 just seem horrific to me.

Variants are fine with me. But I think if I met somebody like Katie descibes with "It cuts down the number of variables I have to think of names for because I can re-use them.." I think I would have to take them out into the parking light, hang them from a light pole and use them as a pinata. But that's the programmers fault, not the languages. Variants can, in some instances though, slow your program down. A lot. On one project I got a 50% performance boost simply by changing one 'Variant' to be strongly typed.

Maybe this makes me one of those 'serious programmers' with low productivity and low code quality. Maybe I'm pissy and just like to complain. I don't know. I think we all agree that bad programmers can write bad code in any language.

Gimme a break. Delphi better than VB? I don't think so. Maybe you think the language is better (it's not), but with RAD environments you have to consider more than just the language.

First off, the Delphi syntax is much less English like than VB6. Maybe it's more flexible (yes it can do pointers...big whoop, this is RAD not OS development). Furthermore, Delphi 7 couldn't EVEN DO UNICODE.

Secondly the Delphi 7 IDE was crap compared to VB6. Any IDE that Borland puts out is 100% CRAP when you compare it with Visual Studio.

Third, COM is not as easy in Delphi 7 as it is in VB6 and back in the day when Microsoft's COM was all the rage, what did you expect people to choose? If all you care about is feeling superior then you chose Delphi because it had pointers right?

I think you got it backwards. It's the Delphi users who huddle in "little groups" to make themselves feel better because let's be honest...everyone knows that Borland was eventually going to fuck something up (and they did).

Look at the market for Delphi add-ins and components for christ's sake. You've got NOTHING idiot.

And when I say idiot, I mean "OMG Give Me Something Complex".

You're hilarious, Wayne B.

I won't bother debating your nonsensical, misinformed, laughable take on reality (I guarantee that you have never used Delphi. Instead you've picked up the misled, bullshit talking points from the VB-luvvaz newsgroup).

Like english...man. Yeah, that's always been a critical element of a programming language.

You're a raging, grade-A idiot. No more needs to be said.

"...pretty much the only people who embrace [VB .NET] over C# are, as a general rule, the same idiots that embraced Visual Basic in a fervent fit of denial. If a technology is largely embraced by bozos, the technology does get a reputation accordingly."

Gee whiz, I'm sure glad you were polite enough to leave some wiggle room with that "pretty much".  Otherwise I'd've thought you were talking about me.

To say "dood vb is the crapz you are a loser for using it lolz" needs answering.

I once was in a really crappy town in Canada - it sucked. So what, the rest of Canada was ace. It is possible to ignore the stupid aspects of something.

Some of the features of VB, especially the legacy stuff, was laughable.

Who cares, the good stuff was amazing.

I mean, there must be some reason why it is the most popular programming language there has ever been.

Disclaimer: My uISV is written in VB6 and sells bucketloads. Guess what? Customers don't care what it's written in :-)

"To say "dood vb is the crapz you are a loser for using it lolz" needs answering."

Right, because I made the statement in l33t-speak. More accurately you decide to deride the message by stereotyping the speaker.

"I mean, there must be some reason why it is the most popular programming language there has ever been."

You have some stats to back that up?

If Visual Basic was made by anyone other than Microsoft, it would have died a quick, well-deserved, ignoble death. Because it's made by Microsoft, though, it immediately got embraced by the Microsofties, certain that whatever Microsoft put out would eventually lead to greateness.

"it's made by Microsoft, though, it immediately got embraced by the Microsofties, certain that whatever Microsoft put out would eventually lead to greateness."

That'll be why .NET has taken over the world for desktop apps then.

Are you just trying to be stupid? The majority of ASP & VB shops immediately did embrace .NET, justifying it in a way that would have justified switching to Java years earlier. Most other groups are gradually migrating.

Moron.

You say most desktop applications have/are migrating to .NET?

You must live in an alternative universe (population 1).

OMG, I can do more in VB in 15 minutes than you can do in a whole day of Delphi.

What? Are you sad that Delphi is dead? Do you REALLY think that it died because VB users refused to change? REALLY?

No, Delphi died because nobody liked the horrible syntax and Borland makes IDE-shit-stew compared to Visual Studio. (Remember, we're talking about RAD programming here...there is NO PLACE for a language that lacks automatic garbage collection).

I'm sorry your favorite language is dead, but that's survival of the fittest for ya.

I always thought one of the main reasons Delphi lost popularity was the crazy pricing structure dreamed up bybthe MBA types who took over Borland.

"OMG, I can do more in VB in 15 minutes than you can do in a whole day of Delphi."

Please, that is complete bullshit.

Having used both VB6 and C++ Builder (Delphi's bastard cousin) for years, I can tell you both environments are very productive. Perhaps VB has the edge as a COM consumer, for integrating with MS Office, Office COM Add-Ins, and things like that, but with all that power comes a higher susceptibility to DLL Hell, something you can mitigate somewhat in Delphi by virtue that you can compile most Delphi components directly into the final EXE.

Delphi has a ton of 3rd party components: Everything from charting to Internet protocols. And again, most can be compiled right into the EXE.

With VB, your only choices are to call a DLL or COM object. More DLL Hell, more installation issues.

Both platforms are great. VB as a language sucks, so I think as far as the language goes, Delphi has the edge there.

"You say most desktop applications have/are migrating to .NET?"

Um...no, I said that most VB-shops have migrated to .NET. Do you have a reading comprehension problem to misinterpret that so badly?

You see, that differs from "most desktop applications" in that VB accounts(ed) for a laughably minute percentage of actual shipping apps. Microsoft didn't use VB for anything, and in the general market the number of shitty VB products can be counted on one hand.

OMG, my dear chap, you may (or may not) be perfectly right in everything you say...but do you really have to express yourself in such a trollish manner?

"Please, that is complete bullshit."

Complete bullshit? No...not for an ass-hat like OMG :) Maybe a *slight* exaggeration, but anyway...

I fail to see where compiling things into a single Exe has more weight than doing COM easier. DLL Hell has pretty much been minimized by Windows "protected files" and/or exe.local files in Win2K+. And, the market for COM objects is/was MUCH larger than the market for Delphi components. DLL Hell isn't so bad you see.

Anyway, what about unicode? Delphi 7 has no native support for it. In VB6 all the native controls support unicode. Ouch, that's gotta hurt. You gotta use Delphi.Net for proper unicode desktop apps...there goes your single Exe.

"VB as a language sucks, so I think as far as the language goes, Delphi has the edge there."

I've tried them all...I disagree, but that's just an opinion (albeit, a more popular one...I'd rather use If...Then... than If...Then Begin...End; anyday.)

Wayne B is my official idiot of the Week. Congratulations.