For reference, this is what it looks like: https://github.com/StaticallyTypedRice/CloneQueue/blob/master/CloneQueue/CloneQueue.vb

I know people think it’s one of the ugliest programming languages, but I actually kind of like it. I can’t explain it, but from the first time I saw it, it just looks nice to me and I kind of gravitated to it. I tried doing a few things with VB.NET and actually liked how the language looks. If it wasn’t for me really not liking Microsoft, and switching to Linux a while later which Visual Studio doesn’t run on, I probably would have made more little apps with it. I honestly had fun with the language itself, just not the Microsoft parts that it relies on.

Namely, I know that the part where you have to specifically type out “End Class”, " End If" and whatever gets a ton of hate, but you rarely actually have to do that because the IDE does it for you, and I actually like it because in large heavily nested regions, you don’t go cross eyed trying to figure out which “end” or close brace is for which statement. It’s actually the part I like the most, and IMO really helps me visualize the various nested blocks.

I also like how it tends to use words to denote most things as opposed go symbols, kind of like pseudocode, which I actually found is easier to both read and type, even with the everything capitalised quirk (which the IDE also does for you so you don’t actually have to keep pressing shift if you don’t want to).

What do you think? Anyone else get what I mean? Or am I completely wrong and a fool for liking Visual Basic?

  • ttmrichter
    4·
    3 years ago

    You’ll find that programmers are an incredibly conservative lot. Any language that doesn’t litter the ground with braces these days is “ugly” or “too verbose” or such.

    Personally, like you, I enjoy languages that use keywords instead of line noise to divide chunks of code. My personal poison in this is Ada or any of the Wirthian languages (Modula-3 in particular), but I don’t hate VB syntax overall (though some aspects of it make me grit my teeth in pain).

    So, you’re not a fool for liking Visual Basic syntax, no.

  • Bilb!
    3·
    3 years ago

    Well there’s no accounting for taste!

    But really, any distaste I have for VisualBasic comes from needing to use it in massive MS Office Macros because I worked on a team for which actual programming tools were not allowed. The language syntax itself was fine, but that was an annoying circumstance to use it in.

    I also have a kind of nostalgic fondness for VB because it was the language used in the first programming class I took in high school.

    And no language will be uglier to me than PHP.

    • ttmrichter
      4·
      3 years ago

      And no language will be uglier to me than PHP.

      Challenge accepted!

      GT()
       N S,N,T,I,K,Q S I="K",S="11",K="l1",Q="R",T="K"
       I I=T D T
       Q:$Q Q Q
T  I I,S&K S S=S+K Q

      I’ve obfuscated the function name so you don’t have a clue what the function is supposed to do just from the name. But that’s real code that will really run in a real (and likely-surprisingly-to-you common) programming language.

      PHP is a nightmare language, but it’s far from the worst.

  • ​
    1·
    3 years ago

    I think it gets a ton of hate because people generally associate it with VB6 and older versions of the language. Lua and Ruby use a similar “word-based” syntax instead of brackets everywhere and they don’t get the hate that VB.NET gets.

  • Octorine
    1·
    3 years ago

    I have a lot of problems with VB, but the syntax isn’t that bad.

    You might want to look at Pascal or SML if you like those aspects of VB. I think SML has one of the nicest most readable syntaxes of any language I’ve ever seen. It’s a shame it never caught on.