VB is good for.......

[V3RIZON]

I usually just read the AO forums and tend not to post as I am not into security but I have an opinion on VB that I would like to share and see what some others think about it. There are a number of "What language to learn threads out there" and some great answers to these posts. The majority of answers advise people to learn C/C++, Java or ASM, very few say VB is a good language to learn, I propose that it is and here is why (I will try to be brief and elaborate only when necessary)...Flame away VB haters!!!

1. VB is very easy to learn, several months of working with it on a somewhat serious level results in an individual that can bang out a somewhat usefull application. It may take that long for someone to just grasp the basics of the some of the OO languages.

2. Microsoft Office, the majority of organizations that have windows based infrastructures also use some if not all of the components of the Microsoft Office suite. VB is the macro language for Office and with it you can fully customize virtually anything within Office if you can think of it you can do it in office with vb. I would love to elaborate on some of the things I have done for the organization I work for with VB/VBA but it is somewhat beyond the scope of my discussion but I will give one example that helped propel my career. While in college I started learning VB as a hobby and while working as an agent at a large call center I observed all the level 1 managers preforming repetitive tasks. Mainly manually tallying agent productivity from individual spreadsheets. I asked my manger how long he spent each day doing productivity, at least an hour he told me. To make a long story short I hacked together an improved agent spreadsheet that saved there daily productivity based on ther network login name and the current date. I then hacked together an administrative sheet that simply opened each sheet cut and pasted the relevent numbers and gave a tally for the group. After deploying the solution in my group I was asked to design something that out whole project could use and was pulled from doing agent tasks, phone duty mainly and given a level 1 managers pay and worked full time writing macros for all our managers, client reps, and project directors. These were lazy execs that wanted everything done for them, I can't tell you how many spreadsheets I made with just buttons on them to open our daily reports. Upon finishing my education I was offered a full time position in the IS department where I help facilitate organization-wide information sharing. All because I had worked with VB for 4 months prior to working at the call center and hacked together 2 simple spreadsheets with about 100 lines of code. In summary if you know VB you can really shine when if comes to working with the MS Office Suite, this applies to all levels of an organization, from the secretary all the way to the top.

3. While syntax varies greatly from language to language there are some concepts that are the same regardless of language and an easy language like VB introduces programmers to these concepts in a much easier way than the OO languages. Some may beg to differ but hey it's my opinion. Once comfortable with VB the transition to the OO's and applying the basic concepts is much easier.

any thoughts or feedback on this??, as I said this is just my opinion but I believe the above to be valid points for the defense of VB as a programming language.

[I am a cracker]

any thoughts or feedback on this??, as I said this is just my opinion but I believe the above to be valid points for the defense of VB as a programming language.

There was a time when every microcomputer was shipped with a small Basic interpreter, and many hackers cut their first code using Basic. Basic is a simple language that is easy to program and allows small programs to be written very quickly. The disadvantage of most Basic is that it is slow and lacks any proper structured programming features. Basic has made a big comeback as Microsoft Visual Basic 4,5,6 etc... which is certainly visual, but is anything but basic. Some applications come with a form of Basic which can be very handy for automation purposes, and some networking software suites come very sophisticated Basic which interfaces with the TCP/IP stack and allows automated network operations. I leave it to your Hackerly imagination to find uses for Basic, but I must admit software like this is very useful to have around...

[s0nIc]

hmm i love VB.. hehe i have been practicin VB and it has been my MAIN coding language.. second to C++

[Mantix]

vb is good for many things and can be powerful if used correctly thats why i use it

[ammo]

I have nothing against vb itself. Only thing is when learning vb as a first prog. language, I find it to leanient; it's too easy to learn bad programming practices with it, like not declaring variables (and type'ing them (variant))...

I'd rather have someone learn basics with C/C++ then move on to vb for rapid developpment, GUIs and etc.

Ammo

[[WebCarnage]]

any thoughts or feedback on this??, as I said this is just my opinion but I believe the above to be valid points for the defense of VB as a programming language.

Yes, but I think the reason that most "uber-133t hax0rs" tend to shun away VB programmers, is because either it's "too" easy - and isn't a challange, therefor it must not have the 'potential' needed, or/and the programming language gets you into bad habits which hurt you when moving on to, lets say, C,C++, Java, whatever...

I've literally seen those 'hacker-groups' which recruit folks with ads like these:

• Programmers needed - No VB allowed

I myself used to program in VB, but when it caught a slight case of fever (virused), I had to trash it, then found ASM (Assembly) and just stuck with it. I say, better to be good at one language then be OK in three (I also have Borland C++).

[Tedob1]

vb is cool. its easy, makes nice looking programs. once you learn vb, asp is a snap. The major drawback to vb is the enormous size of a simple program if you want to put it on a computer that dosn't have vb or the service pack installed.

[phuckintwizted]

vb is cool easy to learn to make very usefull programs and its very popular so there is alot of tutorials and source code around . the draw backs that i see are that its fairly slow and the runtimes and its o/s specific. which brings me to my point , ive just started to learn python(named for monty python hehehe) very usefull open source multi o/s language . check it out at www.python.org and support these people.... i have.

[proactive]

VB doesn't support multi-threading. That can be a bitch.

[Gbin@ryR]

As i've post on another thread I have no experience of these two languages (Java and C++), but i have heard that C++ is easier and has more freedom.