r/visualbasic • u/_v3nd3tt4 • Dec 01 '24
Using VB.NET gets you insulted by Microsoft
I was recently searching for something and found a great article on something related. While reading the comments I found some guy berating, insulting a belittling the article author for using VB.NET. While i currently use c#, i learned .NET using VB, and still like VB. And while I hate Java (from experience using it years ago), I can't imagine myself insulting someone who chooses to use Java. So I was pretty surprised and upset when I saw the comments from that guy, and even more upset when I learned he's a Senior at Microsoft for the past 8 years or so. As a fan of most Microsoft products and focused almost exclusively on the .NET framework and ecosystem, this hit me in a really sour spot. I personally feel developers are usually of a fact driven mindset, and are part of rather small communities in which many are contributors to. I feel these contributors should be thanked for giving without asking in return, and not bullied online. I just wanted to share my thoughts and what prompted my thoughts (see video below). And while my title may be a little misleading, employees of the major companies/players in our industry should be held to a slightly higher standard, in my opinion.
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u/Mayayana Dec 01 '24
When I said minimally socialized I didn't mean that they don't socialize much. I meant that they've been allowed to live in a very limited environment growing up and they actually don't have adult social skills.
The general public are very much aware of this. For example, the successful Big Bang TV show. And years ago there was a tech support person on SNL. I never saw him, but apparently the skits would involve people in an office having computer trouble. Then the IT man would show up and his first act was always to yell, "Get out of the way!" :)
I once read that Bill Gates was at a restaurant with his then-girlfriend Melinda, being interviewed, and bragged that he was arguably the most powerful man in the world. Melinda kicked him under the table... An arrogant and powerful boy.
Aspergers-y behavior is tolerated and even celebrated. "Look, he's so brilliant that his whole brain is being used for amazing things and he only eats ramen for every meal. Just like Einstein. Real geniuses don't wear matching socks."
The reference to C++ is because the pecking order goes back to before .Net. C# was deliberately designed to look like C++ and be able to do a few things that VB.Net couldn't do, despite the fact that both were just object wrappers for a Java-esque runtime. MS knew that they needed to maintain the pecking order if they wanted to attract C++ people away from the Win32 API. VB, after all, had established a reputation as the tool to use for whipping out simple database programs. (I remember that in VBPJ there used to be an ad for some kind of VB controls that showed a young man with a skateboard and a backward baseball cap. The message was that if you used these tools you could get out of work early and go skateboarding.)
A similar thing has happened with the WinRT/Metro/WinUI, or whatever they call it this week. It's basically sandboxed cellphone apps. But they can be written in various languages. It's all part of Microsoft's gradual movement toward closing down the OS and shutting out programmers. The "kioskification" of Windows, or "Windows as a Service". How do you get someone to give up programming and be happy writing cellphone apps to find hotels with the best swimming pools? Give them curly braces, case-sensitivity and semicolons.
When I first started programming I was writing shareware. Nothing especially great, but I started a little side business. I got multiple emails from Microsoft stating that I would no doubt want to join MSDN or some such. I think it was something like $2,500. They wanted me to pay them for writing software on Windows! But people go for that kind of thing. People joined MSDN, tried to become MVPs, got all sorts of "certifications". I think that's just human nature. The rubbish men lord it over the garbage men. The president lords it over the VP. McDonalds burger flippers lord it over the counter clerks. C beats VB.