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>At this point C# and VB.Net are a wash in features/functionality/performance. But in the future that's everyone's guess. The way the product managers are talking about it it sure sounds that they are taking some different directions with the languages in terms of focus which IMHO, is a sad state of affairs as I see the focus for Microsoft should be on the framework and the tools in general rather than on the languages. But there's internal competition and pride driving that at Microsoft more likely than what's best for customers <g>...


Actually, I don't know that I agree with you. I think that there are different types of developers with different types of problems who can use different types of solutions. Just like I always advocated that server and client both had their place in database development. So, if I'm creating a framework, or a product that needs to get access to the "metal" of the computer, I may pick one language; while if I'm creating an in-house corporate app, I may pick another. What's more, even if both languages give full access to the core framework - one can do something that another may not.

As a simple example, C# has integrated XML Docs, VB has an external tool. VB has full semantic and syntactic intellisense, C# only has syntactic intellisense. As it said in the roadmap doc (hang on while I get the quote):

"Visual Basic is the most productive, Visual C++ offers the greatest power and control, Visual C# advances the state-of-the-art in language capabilities, and Visual J# enables Java-language developers to build applications on the .NET Framework."

So, while all four may have full access to the framework classes, VB may focus harder on things that make your development time quicker. It's not so much "internal competition and pride" - though there's a lot of pride on all the teams, it's more the scenarios that we're each trying to enable.

Look at it this way - Fox adds things based on the needs of Fox developers - sometimes they take time (like Access/Assign which I pushed for in VFP3), sometimes they come right away. Same thing will happen with the .NET languages - VB will focus on its "prototypical" developer, as with C#, C++ etc. - I'm sure Delphi and Eiffel will do the same. <g>

yag