Mindcracker, Inc. is a custom software solution provider. Recently, I had a discussion with one of our clients about migrating their existing Windows Forms applications written in the previous version of VB.NET to C#. This is not abnormal. Today, I saw a discussion about the future of VB.NET.
In this article, I will try to answer the same question.
All children are equal
Microsoft continues to say they treat all three languages, C#, F#, and VB.NET as primary languages in .NET. Watch this Channel 9 video in which program managers and leads of these languages talk about the future of .NET languages.
As you can see from the above video, the future of all three languages is moving forward and so far, Microsoft has no plans to stop it.
VB.NET Ranking
Let’s take a look at the Most Popular Programming Languages of the past two years, and you will see VB.NET still holds the #10 spot.
What Does Google Trends Say?
Let’s look at Google Trends for the past five years. Clearly, the search terms for VB.NET are going down significantly.
And then there is the truth
Popularity and demand of a product, including a programming language, is usually driven by its market demand. I work with and meet many clients, innovators, and community leaders and I can clearly say that the talk about and need of VB.NET is slowing down, compared to C# and F#. Most of the new work I see is being developed in C#.
Based on my personal observation, C# has a better future.
I did some more digging and visited several online job portals to see what the job market for these languages looks like. The Job portals include Indeed, Glassdoor, Monster, and Dice. The following table shows the number of job openings in different cities from different sources.
Source | Location | C# | VB.NET | Java |
Indeed.com | New York, NY | 1,084 | 135 | 2,859 |
Glassdoor | San Francisco, CA | 1,256 | 307 | 5.518 |
Monster | Los Angeles, CA | 566 | 84 | 1,000+ |
Dice | Chicago, IL | 314 | 38 | 554 |
Glassdoor | Philadelphia, PA | 823 | 154 | 1,348 |
You can clearly see from the above table that there are more C# jobs compared to VB.NET.
So where do you go from here?
If you’re a pure VB.NET developer and have not done any other programming, you have nothing to worry about. If you’re a .NET developer, it should not matter what language is being used. All you need is to learn the language syntax. You can quickly learn C# language syntaxes and you’re as good as VB.NET.
Here is an intro book to get started with C#:
Good luck!
Recommended readings:
Shobana JPosted Jul 13, 2016, 5:13 AM
Nice one sir
Debasis SahaPosted May 14, 2016, 1:56 AM
Thanks for sharing this ...
Sonu ChaudharyPosted May 13, 2016, 1:39 PM
good one
Sr KarthigaPosted May 13, 2016, 10:52 AM
nice one sir
Vignesh ManiPosted May 13, 2016, 7:10 AM
Good one sir.
Vincent Maverick DuranoPosted May 13, 2016, 5:57 AM
If you can VB; You can't do everything.
Bhuvanesh MohankumarPosted May 13, 2016, 4:58 AM
Clearly spotlighted and it was really helpful to know where the language stands. Also agree in our industry learning is like engine oil, even the petrol is ample in tank you need engine oil to run the vehicle, same way even we are master of some technology, regardless should learn day by day to have updating of some skill set. This is purely in my point of view, others can add If I am wrong :)
Pritam ZopePosted May 13, 2016, 4:53 AM
Nice............!, That's true,I also changed my way from VB.NET to C#,because of simplicity of C# & saves a lot of time of programmer for writing code.
Ibrahim ErsoyPosted May 13, 2016, 3:48 AM
Thats because Microsoft contributed on C# much more than VB.NET to compete with Java.Microsoft may be treating equal to all languages but its too late now,Mahesh.Microsoft's Marketing strategy slowed down another product.Sad to see VB.NET so unpopular as its coding style was fine to all beginners.Thats my opinion.We shall see in the near future what will become of VB.NET
Thiruppathi RPosted May 13, 2016, 2:36 AM
Thanks for this article. i am also vb.net dev. So c# has simpler one of vb.net.
Nitesh KejriwalPosted May 13, 2016, 12:09 AM
Great insights. I believe Microsoft has not yet supported VB.net in ASP.Net Core. Does MS has any plans for the same? If no, I think VB.Net is going to be in same state as of COBOL / PASCAL / FORTRAN these days. Let me know if I am missing anything. :)