David H. Burns wrote:
> Neeum Zawan wrote:
> 
>>     BASIC? Not my favorite, but I have fond memories of it.
>>
>>     Can't imagine anything people would be more scared to admit to. 
> 
> You are right on both counts. BASIC was (and I guess still is) despised 
> by the "real programmers"
> as not being a *real* programming language.
> The fact is (that is to say, "my opinion is") that those who talked that 
> way rightly perceived it as a
> threat to their elite status and so its development was squelched. The 
> VB's are different animals.

It's a completely different beast, for a completely different purpose.

Visual Basic has always been (and always will be) developed to allow 
people to rapidly develop programs that have no memory or speed 
requirements, but only interface ones.  It's great for writing small 
one-off apps, and even larger special purpose apps, but I wouldn't use 
it (or use it exclusively) for something to required significant 
computation.

That's the reason for the complete overhaul from VB6 to VB.Net.  VB6 was 
great as a "basic interpreter", but was hitting a wall in terms of 
usefulness.  VB.Net changed the focus from "basic interpreter" to "rapid 
app development."  People who actually use it for their jobs get more 
done with the new version, so it was probably a good decision on 
Microsoft's part.

-- 
Chambers

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