Developer Career Tips #0040
Should you turn your attention to VB.Net?
I'm seeing quite a bit of attention to VB.Net recently. More than one book has already been published on it already, plus I've received several email solicitations to attend classes on VB.NET, and the product hasn't even been released yet--in fact, it's in Beta1. Beta2 is schedule for release sometime this quarter. If all goes well for Microsoft, the production version will be ready before the end of the year. This is an awful lot of hype for a new version.
I've been using Beta1 now for the last four months as I write the update of my Visual Basic 6 book for VB.Net. I signed a non-disclosure statement to work with the Beta, so I can't speak about the details of the language, but I can tell you that in my opinion, it's much too early to start working with it, but let me give you some information which may help you make up your own mind.
First, don’t consider VB.Net a new version of Visual Basic. Although a knowledge of previous versions of Visual Basic will serve you well while learning it, there are enough dissimilarities to make you believe you are dealing with a new language altogether. This may well be a reason to be the first kid on the block to know the language---that knowledge could make you very valuable to employers--provided they adopt the language.
Secondly, if you believe that it's a foregone conclusion that you're going to be forced to learn VB.Net, and you may as well learn it sooner than later, you may want to rethink that position. In the latest edition of the Visual Basic Programmer's Journal, the editor indicates that Microsoft has informed him they intend to 'support' both VB6 and VB.Net. The key question---what does 'support' mean.
The bottom line is that at this point there's no rush to learn VB.Net.
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