Boss wants me to program

[Jordan Rastrick]

The problem with all posts that say "Use Visual Basic, its easy for
small programs" is that small programs, seemingly inevitably, become
bigger programs (unless they become dead, unmaintained programs). If
your users - you, your boss, coworkers, whoever - find your software
useful, and you start to get even remotely enthusiastic for the
project, then you'll find yourself extending and developing new
features, as well as having to fix problems in your existing code.

And while I'm personally no expert at language design, I've noticed it
seems to be a pretty solid consensus among the actual experts that VB
is one of the most atrociously designed mass market programming
languages in existence. Fine for small programs, sure. But if you ever
want to even think about doing bigger programs, or extending those
useful smaller programs to do more, or even maintain and fix bugs in
your existing code, then VB is not going to be your friend.

The major traditional advantage of VB is that it integrates very
smoothly and easily with Windows, and it has powerful and simple GUI
building tools.

However, Microsoft have essentially displaced VB from lone occupancy of
this niche with .NET. And part of the point of .NET is that its not
forcing you into one particular choice of language. So there's no
advantage to be had from using Visual Basic;  youre better off using a
language that might give you some sort of insight into good programming
practice, not to mention one that'll allow you to develop a serious
application if you ever need to.

Ultimately, if you want a current, supported version of VB, you have to
use VB .NET anyway, and if you're going to use .NET, why use VB at all?

If you have some C++ experience, C# is probably a good bet, as has been
pointed out. You get all the advantages that VB used to provide, with
far fewer of the drawbacks, and it'll stand you in good stead to learn
Java.

Theres even a version of Python for .NET, called IronPython. The major
advantage of this is that you get to program in Python, which I can
tell you from experience is a lot more enjoyable and pain-free than C,
C++, Fortran, or Java (and, I would highly suspect, VB and C#). But
apparently the available GUI builders aren't as good for Python -
having not done a whole lot of GUI building in general, I'll leave this
for more experienced people to judge.

xeys_00 at yahoo.com wrote:
> I'm a manager where I work(one of the cogs in a food service company).
> The boss needed one of us to become the "tech guy", and part of that is
> writing small windows programs for the office. He wants the development
> work done in house, and he knows I am in school for a CS minor. I know
> basic C++(Part 2 of that is in the fall), and I will be taking Java 1
> in the fall also. What is the easiest way for me to make windows
> programs that will do basic things like(Inventory, Menu Management,
> etc...)? I have heard visual basic is where it's at. I want to keep an
> open mind though, so I am wondering if python could be an option. The
> programs have
> no speed requirement.  But they must be pretty, and not confuse my
> boss. Plus he wants well documented help for each function. I asked the
> windows programming group, but I thought I would ask here also. Thanks.
> 
> Xeys