This is a single post from deeden.co.uk made during the period May 2002 to April 2009. During a previous grand redesign I decided to make a break with the past and consign the old entries to history. This entry is from April 2003 and lives here forevermore.

Visual Basic

Last night, for the first time in nearly seven years, I used Visual Basic. I had thought during those intervening years that it was a dreadful environment for developing in, and last night confirmed those suspicions. I know it has it’s adherents, like any other language, but if I never have to see it again, it will be too soon. I can’t count the number of times I said “we’d be done already if we could use X” or “why the hell can’t you just Y?”

There will be those who feel I’m just knocking another language because I don’t know how to use it. Believe me, it’s not that. I’ve used Python and Ruby for less time than I’ve used Visual Basic, but I’ve managed to understand them more and produce more in that those shorter spells. Visual Basic seems to reinvent the wheel (it seems to like square ones) and provide functionality in a very non-intuitive way. Rather than doing things in a similar way to other languages, it’s as if the designers, (there have to be many, this is not the product of one insane mind), have decided to do everything differently.

To sum it up, Visual Basic sucks.