From http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-4523043-0.html

(Developers cry foul over new Microsoft language January 18 17:21)


Upgrade hurdles ahead

Developers are worried that Visual Basic.Net is so different from the Visual Basic they have come to know and understand that upgrading will pose a major hurdle. Some say the .Net version bears so little resemblance to Visual Basic 6.0 and previous versions of the language that Microsoft shouldn't continue the name.

"VB.Net, unlike other versions of VB, does not use the language syntax and behavior of MS Basic," said Daniel Barclay, head of Barclay Software, an Orange, Texas, technology-automation software vendor targeting the banking industry. "The new language looks familiar, but it is not the same."

The result, said Barclay, will be that porting software to the new language could prove more difficult than rewriting from scratch. "Had application porting been made easier, I'm certain we would see existing applications bring (Microsoft.Net) into business environments that now will wait until (Microsoft.Net) shows up for some other reason," he said.

The bottom line, according to Barclay, one of 600 outside programmers to receive Microsoft's "Most Valuable Professional" (MVP) designation: "This is a stupid move by Microsoft that will, in my opinion, hurt the deployment of (Microsoft.Net), as well as their position with developers."

Here comes Fred

Barclay is hardly the only developer who is upset about the choices Microsoft is making with Visual Basic.

A former Microsoft VB product manager, Bill Vaughan, is credited as having coined the name "Visual Fred" for "VB.Net"--a name chosen to emphasize developers' claims that VB.Net represents such a radical departure from VB that it shouldn't be considered a mere upgrade. Vaughan is president of Beta V.

Another Microsoft VB MVP, Karl Peterson, echoed the qualms voiced by other VB developers.

"In short, the building consensus is that Visual Fred, what we've taken to calling VB.Not, may be a really cool language for new projects, but the payoff for migrating existing projects would be nonexistent," Peterson said. "There simply won't be a migration path. Existing, tested, functional code must be rewritten to be used in the future."

Peterson has gone so far as to launch a VB.Not Web site, where he lists the incompatibilities between the currently shipping VB 6.0 and VB.Net.