On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 3:45 PM, James E Harvey <[email protected]> wrote: > I've been asked by our web site consultants which language we'd like them to > use to program our new web site, VB or C#. They will be using VS 2008 to > create the site, and MS SQLExpress for the data part.
The choice between the two matters less with each release of Visual Studio. The two compilers are moving toward a general IL-generation convergence, by design. That said, C# is guaranteed to be around forever on .NET, whereas the future of VB is not as assured. Personally I like F# for business logic + C# for UI coding, but YMMV. F# is awesome and I cannot sing its praises enough, particularly if you need to deal with parallelism or to build complex data structures, like decision trees and such. IronPython and IronRuby are maturing with the DLR, and are also options, but F# matches C# for performance because of its powerful type inference capabilities, which give you the syntax of a dynamically typed language but the actual performance of a statically typed language. A non-MS alternative that plays especially nice with Mono (on both Linux and Mac) is Delphi Prism, a variant of Object Pascal created by RemObjects and now adopted by Embarcadero (formerly CodeGear (formerly Inrpise (formerly Borland))). It's actually a very nicely engineered language with lots of value-added semantics on .NET that has features even C# doesn't have, like class contracts/invariants/pre-conditions+post-conditions (wicked cool for debugging), built-in syntax for parallel processing, and additional built-in data types like sets. I just got the latest Delphi Prism 2010 and decided to renew my RAD Studio subscription because I like it so well. This was supposed to be the year I finally stopped renewing my Delphi and C++ Builder-related compilers, but Embarcadero has actually done some interesting things by adopting Prism and adding long-awaited features to Delphi proper, like generics, attributes (for better runtime type information/reflection), and lambdas. They are also going to be going 64 bit and targeting Linux and Mac more aggressively with both Prism and native Delphi, having learned a few lessons from the Kylix foobar of their predecessors. - Publius > > I have no experience with this, but may want to become involved in the > future developing new pages. > > This sounds like an important decision, does anyone have any opinions on > which is "better", VB or C#? > > James E Harvey > Hanover Shoe Farms, Inc. > M.I.S./Corresponding Officer > Off: 717-637-8931 > fax: 717-637-6766 > email: [email protected] > > > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
