“Microsoft .NET provides several ways to think of your code as more than just a bunch of disconnected lines. As a Visual Basic programmer, you’re already familiar with the concept of a class, a section of code that defines an object and its behavior. As you’ll see in this document, you can use Visual Basic .NET to create both assemblies and namespaces. You’ll need to understand both of these concepts to be a productive Visual Basic .NET developer.” Read the rest of the article at MSDN. “Reduce your reliance on Win32 API calls by learning about specific and useful classes in the Microsoft .NET Framework; each class discussed here replaces one or more Win32 API calls you might have had to make in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 to accomplish the same goals.” Read the rest of the article at MSDN.
Porting Over from Win32 and Using Assemblies & Namespaces in .NET
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Haven’t these kind of concepts been around for a *long* time? Are they trying to impress the naive (read: VB programmers) or something?
(Just joking any VB programmers out there!)
The idea of creating an object-oriented framework to simplify development and hide the gory details has been around for a long time, sure. It’s not the framework itself that’s really interesting, it’s how it’s implemented.
It is a little laughable that to many VB programmers this will be new stuff. Inheritance? Wow! Constructors? Who’d a thunk it? Polymorphism? No way! (OK, I admit polymorphism could be achieved in VB using interfaces, but few programmers other than me used it, when I was forced to use VB.)
Shoot me if you like, but except for a few minor gripes I prefer C# over Java any day.
I’ll stick with C++, REBOL, and PHP …
::shivers at the thought of anything else::
Seems everytime MS posts a new .NET article it’s news on this site. You never mention articles posted at java.sun.com or http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java.
Thats because Java programmers know how to program, and where to look it they need to. For VB “users”, programming can be difficult if they’ve never done it before.
You know what they say about polishing a piece of s*it. Same applies to VB.
I think the important part is Microsoft actively trying to get developers to reduce their reliance on the Win32 API. A lot of the other stuff has been around in C++ and other languages for a long time, but they basically had to rewrite VB to get it in there without making a mess of the whole thing (and in a way this shows some of the strengths of the CLI, since C# was written from the ground up for the CLI, and then they rewrote VB for it as well). It’d be nice to see the Win32 API go away, even though it’ll most likely be there as long as Windows is supposed to remain backwards compatible with older versions of itself.
It also encourages cross-platform development once the CLI and .Net architecture are supported on other platforms. The only time I really touch VB is when I have serious time restraints to deal with, but since that tends to be a normal thing in my job, it’d be nice to be able to use it for other platforms (or to port some older apps without completely rewriting them). It’s also nice that most of the system calls don’t require as much work to utilize in another language with .Net, and that I can use both VB and another language in the same project while I’m rewriting it.
There’s going to be programs that are frankensteins of various languages cobbled together. A VB toe, a C# head, a C torso, perl hands.
Which?
Java – Solaris, Linux(yeah it was not orginally ported by Sun, but it’s supported now), Windows FROM sun.
plus ports to every other major UNIX, MacOS, EPOC & dam near everthing else
.Net – Windows. No others ports BY ms.
Plus, TWO incomplete(read: unstarted) ports to Linux, that’ll prob. never support ALL of the .net framework (like passport)
Also, this whole CLI stuff, I can do it with any other binnary format, it’s just means MS has spent time writing compilers!
bah