What is your opinion of Visual Basic

[Guest_imported]

I have to do a brief sumary for school and it is titled "Form an opinion of Visual Basic".
I was curious if anyone could help me out by sharing their opinion.
Thanks in advance,
TheNewMe

 

[austinsmom]

Well, I see that there are 5 responses, but I can't see them. This forum is very confusing...

 

[chiph]

VB is very very good at putting a user-interface together. Also good at writing general business applications. It's weak points are programs which run as services (without any user intervention). Distribution is also a little weak, since you've got to ship a large runtime with your program (this will change in VB7).

It's easy to write good code in VB, but it's even easier to write really bad code in VB. Since VB has the reputation as being a "beginners" language, there aren't too many highly experienced programmers using it (Tipmasters on Tek-Tips excepted!).

As a career move, knowing VB is almost a requirement nowadays for getting a job, since variations of it (VBScript, VBA, and ASP (sortof)) are used in all Microsoft products. VB Programmer's Journal has a salary survey every so often, and top-shelf VB programmers can command $70,000 or more (not straight out of college, but after a few years of experience).

Chip H.

 

[DGA15]

I am a heavy user of VB 6.0 with Service pack 4 installed. Interface and run Crystal Reports as well as using TrueDBGrid 7.0. VB is very adequate and helps me maintain low development. It's easy interface to the Microsoft Office products, as well as its included Jet database( appears to be Microsoft Access w/o the user interface) mean you can do a lot. The newly announced but unshipped VB-Net will allow easy integration of software components written in multiple languages (Fortran, Cobol, ?? APL). The VB Net will also finally have real program inheritance, which will make coding even easier.
DGA15

 

[VBMaster]

"Distribution is also a little weak, since you've got to ship a large runtime with your program (this will change in VB7)."

Actually it will be somewhat bigger I think. No more truely compiled code, just interpreted code (the same engine as C#).