What's Visual Basic?

[Scyther]

I'm choosing my high school classes and I want to know what the heck Visual Basic is, and whether it is a useful programming language.

So, uh, help? And thanks.

 

[Skroy]

To quote from my Java book which happens to have a table of programming languages in it: "Visual Basic is a Microsoft programming language and software development environment that allows programmers to create Windows-based applications quickly."

Based on what I heard from other people, it is the easiest programming language you can learn.

 

[Dinru]

^What he said.

Also, it was made specifically for the purpose of teaching programing, and for the most part outside of the classroom it has very few practical uses without the program you use it in.

 

[Zhorken]

Visual Basic is a pain and useless, both for using and as a learning tool. Only go for it if it's required for higher-level programming classes you'll want to take.

EDIT: a good first language is python, and it's also useful for actually making things in

 

[Creasy]

EDIT: a good first language is python, and it's also useful for actually making things in

A better and generally more useful first language is PHP.

 

[Ivy Newton]

A better and generally more useful first language is PHP.

I dunno, I've heard from many sources that Python is the easiest language to learn. A good intro to programming and whatnot.

 

[1. Luftballon]

A better and generally more useful first language is PHP.

On the contrary, PHP has a lot of bad design decisions (my favorites are that everything is crammed into a single namespace, that even the core libraries don't compile under E_STRICT) that PHP is a pain, and, while useful, is not a good first language.

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Discussion: We don't see the real need for named parameters, as they seem to violate PHP's KISS principle. It also makes for messier code.

Consider this rant.

I would recommend a lisp (scheme if you want to learn programming, common lisp for all the stuff that comes with it) or haskell, but they're unlikely to be offered at your high school.

tl;dr: no, php isn't actually a better and generally more useful first language. Okay, maybe useful. Definitely not better.

 

[Creasy]

my favorites are that everything is crammed into a single namespace

The lack of namespaces sacrifices essentially nothing while adding simplicity. It isn't an obstacle outside the minds of ENTERPRIZE PROGRAMMERS who are desperately grasping for reasons to look down on the "unwashed" languages.

Consider this rant.

"Would it have been really benefical if, like, PHP had been designed from ground up with no monstrosities like register_globals and safe_mode? Parameters off a hash/accessor and all operations are "safe" by design - too much to ask?"
- register_globals is no longer an issue
- safe_mode is fine, PHP can't be "safe" by design (much like Perl is "unsafe" by design and therefore absent from most shared hosting)

I would recommend a lisp (scheme if you want to learn programming, common lisp for all the stuff that comes with it) or haskell, but they're unlikely to be offered at your high school.

Nobody uses your toy languages for anything practical.

Okay, maybe useful. Definitely not better.

"Useful" and "better" aren't so far apart.

 

[opaltiger]

Nobody uses your toy languages for anything practical.

I know no specifics about either, and yet I beg to differ. Might I suggest researching your claims? Also, popular is not the same as better.

 

[Creasy]

I beg

That same pathetic handful of programs is brought up in every Lisp debate. Amusingly, many were later rewritten in an "inferior" language (Paul Graham's precious Yahoo! Stores, Reddit, Jak & Daxter ...).

to differ.

I don't know or have any opinion on Haskell, but it clearly has little usage in the real world.

Also, popular is not the same as better.

When choosing to learn a spoken language, would its popularity be more or less important than its syntax and overall "quality"? Would you rather know Spanish or Lojban?

 

[1. Luftballon]

The lack of namespaces sacrifices essentially nothing while adding simplicity. It isn't an obstacle outside the minds of ENTERPRIZE PROGRAMMERS who are desperately grasping for reasons to look down on the "unwashed" languages.

Maybe you like inconsistently named functions and underscores all over the place.

EDIT: okay, so it longer need to be underscores all over the place. Doesn't save it from inconsistent functions naming.

True, it sacrifices nothing - you can achieve similar results by controlling what functions get declared. But you... don't. Not unless you're the sysadmin.

"Would it have been really benefical if, like, PHP had been designed from ground up with no monstrosities like register_globals and safe_mode? Parameters off a hash/accessor and all operations are "safe" by design - too much to ask?"

Maybe. Maybe not. That's not the issue. We're dealing with what PHP is, not what it might have been.

- register_globals is no longer an issue
- safe_mode is fine, PHP can't be "safe" by design (much like Perl is "unsafe" by design and therefore absent from most shared hosting)

Safe isn't something for the language to be concerned with. Safe should be let the programmer take the safest possible route, not force the programmer to take the safest route. Every reasonable language is unsafe by design. It's still possible to write safe programs. (I'm under the impression that safe_mode is there to protect the programmers from themselves.)

Nobody uses your toy languages for anything practical.

What do you call de facto standard for purely functional programming. Okay, maybe that doesn't qualify as practical. How about bootstrapping implementation of perl6?
Or xmonad or darcs or LOLITA?

The GIMP uses Scheme as a scripting language (actually a subset of r5rs, iirc), though admittedly it can also use a few others.

researchfail?

"Useful" and "better" aren't so far apart.

If you learn C instead of Python, it will be more useful because there is more code in C than in Python. But which will better teach good programming practices? (No, not C - C is full of horrible code; grepping the ToME codebase for 'hack' or 'XXX' produces 2431 lines. And that's self-admitted. Let's say a thousand because this includes 'hacker' and such get counted too.)

PHP is useful because there is a lot of code in it to understand, but I stand with my conclusion that it is not better.

And anyway, I'm calling fallacy.

That same pathetic handful of programs is brought up in every Lisp debate. Amusingly, many were later rewritten in an "inferior" language (Paul Graham's precious Yahoo! Stores, Reddit, Jak & Daxter ...).

Fair enough. More above.

I don't know or have any opinion on Haskell, but it clearly has little usage in the real world.

A decade ago, you would say PHP had little use in the real world.

When choosing to learn a spoken language, would its popularity be more or less important than its syntax and overall "quality"? Would you rather know Spanish or Lojban?

This pathetic argument is brought up in every programming language debate.

With a natural language, both sides have to understand the given language. If the other person doesn't already know your language, they won't for a long time.

Computer languages are completely different - if you can write a compiler in an already-known language, then the computer will get it. There is no hesitation to learn it just because the computer really doesn't have anything better to do if nobody else has anything better to do with it. If the target machine doesn't support perl but it does have a cc, I can compile perl on that machine and 'teach' it in about half an hour, given a reasonably fast computer. (Okay, so I'd have to have lex and yacc.) If somebody doesn't know German, it will take them years to learn German.

In any case, programming languages are as much, if not more, mindset as function. (Damnit, English, this could end up "more mindset as function"!)

Incidentally, I'd rather know Lojban. Logic and linguistics seem more interesting to me than a anything about Spanish, except maybe the things that make it a natural language, but then, I could also use any other Romance language with similar results.

 

[Ivy Newton]

When choosing to learn a spoken language, would its popularity be more or less important than its syntax and overall "quality"? Would you rather know Spanish or Lojban?

Except for the small fact that this has no relation to programming languages, because (as sreservoir said below) it's easy to 'teach' a computer a new language - and once you've done that, you're purely concerned with the ease of use of the language. Programming languages make no difference to the end user (unlike spoken languages where they're 'visible' to everyone), so I postulate that it makes much more sense to use a better language than a language that would only be used because of its popularity.

The only reason I can think of for using a more popular language is if you don't have the skills to make your own compiler and can't find an already made compiler (highly unlikely, because one would imagine that if a language exists there has to exist a compiler for it) of if you're using some sort of webhosting service that only has, say, PHP installed on their servers.

 

[Creasy]

Programming languages make no difference to the end user (unlike spoken languages where they're 'visible' to everyone)

> implying everyone compiles 100% of their code

The only reason I can think of for using a more popular language is if you don't have the skills to make your own compiler and can't find an already made compiler

> implying well-documented libraries aren't important (lol @ lisp)
> implying having others review and improve upon your code isn't crucial to software development

(I'm under the impression that safe_mode is there to protect the programmers from themselves.)

safe_mode is there to protect the programmer from people who share his server.

 

[1. Luftballon]

> implying everyone compiles 100% of their code

implying that there is any code at all that isn't compiled at some level

> implying well-documented libraries aren't important (lol @ lisp)

implying that you can't just do what every other language does and let you take some C and write bindings for it. (Which sucks when you have to do it, but you do get lots of understanding of the underlying code.)

> implying having others review and improve upon your code isn't crucial to software development

Sure. Try comp.lang.lisp. There were over five hundred messages sent to it in the past ten days.

And since here you're equating popular to better,C, Java, or Python are probably better.

And to say that PHP is 'easier' would only be lying to yourself; Python has more discussions in the normalized rankings and tends to be easier to read and write, at least for people who aren't firmly opposed to lack of curlies.

safe_mode is there to protect the programmer from people who share his server.

But if you're running in a chroot jail with properly set permissions and users, 'programmer' and people who share his server' tend to be the same person. (I tend to be an advocate of using jails for executing arbitrary code. Saves you from rm -rf --no-preserve-root /.)

And anyway, suPHP.

 

[Ivy Newton]

> implying well-documented libraries aren't important (lol @ lisp)

I do believe that would fall into the already covered "ease of use" category. Obviously people wouldn't use a language if they couldn't figure it out. But many not-so-popular languages are fine in that regard, so... moot point.

 

[Scyther]

^
Um, this is nice and all, but they offer Python or PHP for nineth grade in my school. Feel free to continue use the thread for this.

And, uh, thanks and all.