[Tutor] Python and Tcl/Tk

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> I don't know... VB 1 was released in 1991, and VB 6 in 1998.
> Almost one new version per year. I guess there is some kind
> of VB.NET now, 

Yes and in between we got lkots of VBA and VBScript releases.
But VB.NET is a major release with completely unified class 
libraries, full inheritance/polymorphism in its OOP 
capability etc. I hesitate to say so but VB.NET is not a bad 
language for just getting things done...


> has no holy cows. It all started with BASIC but I doubt that
> he's sentimental.

I dunno, its the one project Bill takes a very personal interest 
in, its what he iuses for his own programming - and he still 
does quite a bit by all accounts!

> VB 6      1998 1 yr
> VB 7/.NET 2002 4 yrs since previous version...

But all the ASP stuff and uunified VBA was in that period too.

> I don't know, but I suspect VB and CSharp will aquire more and
> more of each other. 

Thats true, and of course in .NET they both compile down to 
the same bytecodes. You can even write one module in VB and 
another in C# and link them together seamlessly. But I don't 
see C# ever appearing as a macxro language in Office 2005 or 
whatever, VB is the end user programming environment, C# is 
the developers tool.

I do expect to see Managed C++ gradually disappearing off 
the Microsoft radar except as a niche server side tool.

> wrong. With it's Java roots, it's rather object-oriented, and
> that might be to difficult to grasp for many?

Exactly, too much for the end users, and not 'natural English' 
enough for corporate America.

> But when Office etc is fully Dotnet enabled, VBA will be replaced
> by Dotnet, and you can write macros and whatever in any Dotnet
> capable language. 

Absolutely but as you said earlier, the normal way for end users is 
to record macros then enhance them, and I suspect the macro recorder will 
still be spitting out VBA.NET rather than C# for a long time to come.

Alan g.