Languages and Beauty Contests

Life's full of trade-offs. Maybe you should stop reading your own programs ? Or trade in lisp for prolog. Hmm.

Anyway, the thing that triggered me was the beauty contest part of the title. I can see the parallel between reading a language and looking at a model on the catwalk. But can you please explain how the writing part relates to beauty contests ;-) ?

Lisp would read a lot better if you could use significant whitespace and leave off the parens if you wanted.

From the way the post ended, it seems like there are supposed to be some results at the end, but they aren't there. Maybe that is what you get when you write VB, whitespace? :-)

Why don't you take another look at Ruby? Well written Ruby is beautiful to my eyes.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I dislike reading VB, a lot. Most of my career has been spent working professionally with C variant languages, so I have a bias towards that style of code. However, I'd agree with Mike More... Ruby code is rather beautiful to my eyes. VB, on the other hand, always looks like spaghetti to me.

I've always considered readability a notch higher than most other features of a language and platform. I've had to do the C# to VB.NET thing and was very prejudiced against it...until after 6 months I couldn't really see any difference, other than it being more verbose, and more readable.

In one of my hobbies, I complained about this a lot (along with many others) and a guy goes and gives us the ultimate readable language. Check out Inform 7 at http://www.inform-fiction.org. It's a natural language development tool for interactive fiction.

David C.

I would love to see you take Ruby for a ride and post your observations here on your blog. My guess is that you'd like it a lot. :)

I have to agree with wekempf; I dislike reading VB a lot. If you spend your days day in/day out maintaining code, then I really can't believe your statement (actually I guess you spend most of your time on research?)

The "With" statement is overused, and crap (actually any use of it is an overuse). "ref" and/or "out" are missing so you can't tell on a function call if the value is byref... The verbosity of the lanaguage makes the signal to noise ratio quite low... And/AndAlso, Or/OrElse... Let alone the On Error Resume and friends...

So, I assume that you only posted this message as a way of starting a religious debate?

The wordiness of VB just seems so superfluous; I can't stand having to type 'Dim' when I declare a variable. To me elegance and beauty is in simplicity, and minimalism. VB is like a car covered in stickers expressing the owner’s political opinions, or house littered with cheap nic nacs…..ugly. I believe there is more beauty in C#, and C++. Why use verbose words where a simple piece of punctuation will suffice.

Interesting perspective. What VB.NET features do you find most aesthetically pleasing? More thoughts <a href="http://geekswithblogs.net/coredump/archive/2007/12/06/117430.aspx">here</a>.

@Josh
Which is more wordy?
System.Data.SQLConnection c = new System.Data.SQLConnection(args)
or
Dim c as new System.Data.SQLConnection(args)
I dislike having to write out the type twice simply to call a constructor

and readability?
If you see
}
}
}
}
in a c style language
vs
End If
Next
End If
End Function

you know exactly what each one does.

I flip back and forth between Java and VB.Net, and I do find I like the readability better.

I have to agree with others. VB looks like a mess to my eyes. Naturally, Maybe I have bias, because I can think in c# and can see code blocks so much better with the "{..}". I was a VBr before c#, so is it possible to be biased? Not sure. Anyway, if I really had to change from c# at this point, it would probably be to f# (not vb).

"Which is more wordy?
System.Data.SQLConnection c = new System.Data.SQLConnection(args) "

Well we have "var c = new SqlConnction();" now, so not sure that is a vb cred today.

"End If
Next
End If
End Function"

Yes it is explicit, but I have nothing ctrl-] does solve for me. You do bring up a good point. Why doesn't Intellisence bring up a helper next to "}" that shows the opening "if {..}" statement. That said, I have never really seen lack of it as a slow down. If your writing functions that go off the page, you should probably refactor that honker anyway. I am sure the vb pre-compiler firstly converts "End If" to a single token anyway. So even vb does not like those spaces ;) In the end, it does not matter. I for one am so over the vb -v- c# thing as most people hopefully are by now. I think the camps are set, the fires are hot, and folks are warm.

The king is dead, long live the king.

Don, when is this year's Christmas Video with Chris An coming out? I hope you guys stay loyal to that tradition. :-) I'm looking forward to it.

I'm with Tommy. I'm looking forward to your Christmas video too. :)

Just found it: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=367997

:)