I think you can have access to some, but not all pointers in VB. Then again, I have never had a need to directly deal with pointers.

I'll bet the ranch and the dog that VB .NET will be just fine for DB application development - which is the type of development that most folks here engage in. Even in VB - if you need free-threading - you have access to that. This, IMO, is an important feature that I am glad they exposed in the language..

The big point is this: 80% of the time, you are working with the framework anyway. Whether you implement it in VB or C# - what is the difference.

My 3 C# pet peeves:

1. Case sensitivity
2. Curly braces
3. Semi Colon Line Termination

Look at VB vs C# code and the VB code is more declaritive and readible. This should/needs to count for something...