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#1 jdale

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Posted 06 August 2010 - 08:57 PM

Any hope of getting VB support as well as C#? These days there's not much difference in what the two languages are capable of, and if I had time to learn another language it probably would not be C# in any case, but if I could use VB I would be very interested in getting some Netduinos.

#2 Chris Walker

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Posted 06 August 2010 - 09:09 PM

Any hope of getting VB support as well as C#? These days there's not much difference in what the two languages are capable of, and if I had time to learn another language it probably would not be C# in any case, but if I could use VB I would be very interested in getting some Netduinos.


Hi jdale, welcome to the Netduino community.

VB support is on the short-term wish list for .NET Micro Framework, but not supported today. If you look at the source code, you'll notice that there's actually some VB support code in there...but VB has some differences (the My namespace, Microsoft.VisualBasic compatibility, specialized exception handling, etc.) which will require some more work to the .NET Micro Framework to support it...

In the meantime, you may be surprised at how quickly you can pick up C# if you already program in VB. Some users get their first C# projects up and running in a single weekend...

We hope to see VB support in the not-too-distant future.

Chris

#3 jdale

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Posted 07 August 2010 - 04:46 PM

I've got to finish learning MySQL before I can take on another language... with any luck you'll have VB support by the time I am ready for the next project. Thanks for the update, though, I will keep an eye on Netduino.

#4 xc2rx

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Posted 19 August 2010 - 03:15 PM

I've got to finish learning MySQL before I can take on another language... with any luck you'll have VB support by the time I am ready for the next project. Thanks for the update, though, I will keep an eye on Netduino.


You sound like you just started programming. Perhaps do some web development first before you get into Windows and Embedded programming. Embedded is not recommended for new programmer. Also, if you want to survive in the real world, C# is the way to go. Go search on Monster.com and see what most employer require. It will be C#. Get real dude.

#5 Chris Walker

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Posted 19 August 2010 - 03:24 PM

Alright, alright, let's be polite :) We like all programmers and enthusiasts here...don't want to scare anyone away... xc2rx makes some good points... C# is the most popular .NET language for commercial applications and would be very useful to learn. But VB is used a lot in personal projects as well as in internal corporate projects...so we know that it would be useful to support here as well. And yes...hardcore high-volume squeeze-every-last-cent-out-of-a-product embedded programming is done in assembly or C/C++. But with Netduino, we've tried to make embedded programming approachable for .NET programmers as well as people who are just beginning to program. You'll see a wide variety of projects here (very simple to incredibly sophisticated) as our userbase is both diverse and ingenious. Chris

#6 jdale

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Posted 19 August 2010 - 04:19 PM

xc2rx: I started programming in Basic on the Commodore and Apple II. I currently program in VB.Net and I've written applications such as a macro parser and direct serial port support (with some multithreading). But I'm not a professional programmer and I have no desire to be one. I've worked in C/C++ (though not recently and not C#), and in my opinion the C languages are just not as good for the hobbyist programmer. Get the punctuation wrong in VB and you get an error. Easy to fix. Get the punctuation wrong in C and you can completely alter what the program does. Not so easy to figure out what went wrong. That's fine if you are programming every day and will get it right every time but as a hobbyist I don't maintain that level of fluency and it means that VB is much, much easier to debug. And in terms of what it is possible to do with C# vs VB, there really isn't much difference anymore, by design. Switching to C# would take time but provide very little benefit. Basically it would just make more sample code available to cannibalize...

#7 greg

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Posted 19 August 2010 - 04:44 PM

xc2rx: I started programming in Basic on the Commodore and Apple II. I currently program in VB.Net and I've written applications such as a macro parser and direct serial port support (with some multithreading). But I'm not a professional programmer and I have no desire to be one. I've worked in C/C++ (though not recently and not C#), and in my opinion the C languages are just not as good for the hobbyist programmer. Get the punctuation wrong in VB and you get an error. Easy to fix. Get the punctuation wrong in C and you can completely alter what the program does. Not so easy to figure out what went wrong. That's fine if you are programming every day and will get it right every time but as a hobbyist I don't maintain that level of fluency and it means that VB is much, much easier to debug. And in terms of what it is possible to do with C# vs VB, there really isn't much difference anymore, by design. Switching to C# would take time but provide very little benefit. Basically it would just make more sample code available to cannibalize...


Just to correct an error - the parser in C# is just as good as in VB -- if you make a mistake it'll catch it.

#8 Chris Walker

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Posted 19 August 2010 - 04:46 PM

jdale, I actually started out with BASIC myself (OBASIC/MBASIC on CP/M, various BASICs on TRS-80s, Commodore 128s, TIs, Ataris, etc.) Then I moved to QuickBasic/QBASIC, QuickBasic Extended (PDS), and even Visual Basic for DOS. I started with Visual Basic on Windows when version 3 or 4 came out and used it extensively until about ten years ago. When the first betas of .NET came out, I built a website using VB.NET 1.0 (and released it under the beta "go live" license). I did do some Pascal, Assembly (MASM), and C code in there--but I loved BASIC and used it extensively wherever possible for a long, long time. I understand the value, and I understand why you love it so much. About 5-7 years ago that I picked up C# and then C/C++. I still get to do some programming and I choose to use C# for .NET because it's pretty universal--but I also maintain VB fluency and try to explain things in both because I know the VB community is so strong. We welcome your VB-loving-attitude here, and hope to have an embedded VB microcontroller solution soon. We're actually putting together the pieces to start a VB port (more on that soon). In the meantime, I can tell you that C# is a much easier transition from VB than C is (C# is basically VB with curly braces when you're getting started). If you have a free weekend, feel free to play with it. Check out our samples and see if it's cool for you or not (bad pun, COOL was the codename for C#). If you don't fall in love with C#, I totally understand...VB is great in its own way too. But we'd love to have you as a member of the community in the short term, so I'll still give you a bit of C# encouragement and support :) Thanks for your participation here, jdale (and xc2rx)! Chris

#9 Chris Walker

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Posted 01 September 2010 - 02:40 AM

jdale, It will take some time to get it working, but we just started an open source project to bring Visual Basic support to Netduino (and the .NET Micro Framework, generally). http://forums.netdui...-basic-support/ Chris




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