Morgan (and Tom),

The context of the environment and the philosophy of the companies I work with play a major role in the recommendations that I make. It is my job to point out the pluses and minuses of different options that they can make and what I would recommend, but I don't have a hard fast rule to go by. As a consultant and designer of systems, I need to make sure that the companies will be comfortable with the decisions they make for future needs of the app and for maintenance. One language does not always fit every situation based on the context of the environment of the company. I appreciate the fact that Microsoft gives companies chooses to best fits their needs. However, Microsoft has a responsibility to continually state the future directions of the languages so that decision makers can make the best long-term decisions for their projects. I don't think Microsoft will ever come out with something that states when to use one language over another but instead continue to state the future enhancements that the languages will incorporate and leave the decisions in choosing the correct language(s) for each application to the decision makers that best know the context of each environment.


>Tom,
> You might want to ask Cathi and others who are more associated w/ MS and the direction of .NET, what there setup is, or if they had to use one language which they would choose. I mean, It is nice to see what Microsoft recommends, and to know the direction of .NET, but something more practical might be just to see what they use as their language of choice, or if they use both languages within one project, if they are deciding on the architecture.
>
>Morgan
>
>>Your point is the one we are very interested in.
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>>It is the direction that Microsoft intends and finally does take with .NET that is of interest to me. Where will C# and VB.NET be say in two years? If we read the comments from Microsoft it looks like more emphasis will be placed on the UI and IDE using VB.NET, in future releases of Visual Studio .NET.
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>>The Microsoft recommendation of using C# for classes and VB.NET for the UI seems reasonable. You can use whatever you like however, for maximum power and productivity I think I understand the plan.
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>>You can choose your route and have to be satisfied with the result. I think Microsoft is describing an “ideal” use for each of these languages but each programming environment will be a little unique. Some might follow the Microsoft recommendations of using C # and VB.NET and others may standardize on one language.
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>>Learning the framework etc. takes the real effort. It seems that whatever language you choose is not too important as it is not difficult to learn a new language as far as our group is concerned.
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>>Within our work environment we want to be able to help each other. It is critical to our company’s success. The fact that we have choices is nice but can be confusing. Standardization of one language may be our best route. Having people experienced in one or both languages (C# or VB.NET), is something that might evolve but I cannot see us standardizing on both. It is an interesting topic and we have a ways to go before we decide on our path.
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>>Our reality is this is not an academic institution. One minute of production downtime costs $36,000 and if we have a problem it is good to put all resources on it who have common knowledge. By the way we did rule out COBOL as our .NET language of choice! So we are getting close to a decision. :)
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>>Tom