MKing

I am sure you are right to say that these new concepts have been around in C for a long time. That is what made C so good. It is also quite possible that the reason VB was so good was that it did not have to deal with some of these concepts. One of the most amazing things about VB3/4/5 and 6 (probably 1 and 2 as well, but I never used them) was that it was very simple to learn and new programmers could write useful programs very quickly. This importance of this strength should not be underestimated. It is unlikeley that VB would have been any kind of success if it had not been to simple to use. I am probably expecting too much to think that an experienced vb programmer could start writing production code in .net straight away. I am however, quite worried about the number of bad reports of the current training being offered. I cannot currently see any reason to move to this platform. The investment in retraining would be huge, and I cannot see where any productivity gain is likley to come from.

I am sorry that the argument has so far been too slim! The problem is that VB.NET is a product that is so far removed from the previous versions of VB that it is hardly fair to use the VB name at all. It is however much closer to C or Java. I can understand why so many people believe this is a good thing. If you are a developer who has used a range of languages then VB.NET probably feels like a very comfortable language to use. However, if you have only used VB then VB.NET is a mamoth departure from traditional VB. Many of the new concepts are very strange. Up to Vb.NET we were told by Microsoft not to bind data to forms as this was inflexible and innefficient. Now they are saying that binding data to controls is the best/only way to display it. I find this really incredible and totally unrealistic. Maybe in the sample applications or very simple projects it is feasible to bind data to controls, but in real world complex apps this is totally unacceptable. ADO.NET is another example of where something changes totally, but by keeping the same name Microsoft pretends it is the same thing! Ruby forms were great! they were flexible enough to do everything I ever required of them. They could act as a nice simple form object, or as a class when required. We seem to have lost a lot of usability by going to Win Forms, but gained very little. My basic gripe is this; In an attempt to make it easyer for VB programmers to do web development, and in making VB a 'first class' language, Microsoft have removed all that made VB great in the first place. Its simplicity and usability are gone. Customers do not care how good we are at programming, what they want to know is does the application deliver what they want on time and every time. With VB6 we could do that with .net we cannot.

Is it just me, or are there any other VB programmers out there who just can't get there head round this new VB/C thing called VB.NET?

VB6 to .net upgrade I have so far found the upgrade wizard to be almost useless. Unless you coded your projects in a very specific way, and they are very small then the upgrade wizard will have so many problems that the project you get out at the end will be rubbish. I have tried several of our own projects, and not one came even close to working after the two or three days (seriously) it took the upgrade wizard to complete. Microsoft said that they had changed about 5% of VB in the transition to .net. I think it is more like 95%.