Datasheet

Part I: Design Strategies

Visual Basic provides a convenience item not found in C#. You receive automatic wire-up of events with

event handlers using the handlers construct. Although this is a small feature, it does improve developer

efﬁ ciency and makes it possible to see the wire-up in the same place that the event handler appears.

Developing with Multiple Languages

Most applications you create use a single language because this tends to reduce the cost of updates later,

and using a single language makes the code signiﬁ cantly more manageable. However, your team may

consist of a mix of developers, in which case, using the languages that each developer knows will make

the development process faster. In addition, some languages do provide capabilities that are not robust

enough. For example, even though C# does provide great P/Invoke functionality, you may still ﬁ nd an

occasion to use C++ for native code modules. The three languages commonly used with C# are:

Visual Basic.NET ❑

Visual C++ ❑

F# ❑

Of course, you can use any language you want with C#. Some developers use IronPython (see

http://

www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=IronPython

for details) with C# when they

need Python ﬂ exibility matched with .NET capability. The following sections describe some of the

beneﬁ ts of using additional languages.

Using Visual Basic.NET

Some organizations view Visual Basic.NET with disdain due to its naming similarity with the ancient

BASIC language. The two languages couldn’t be more different. Visual Basic.NET provides signiﬁ cant

capability and exceptional development performance. The fact that Visual Basic.NET often hides com-

plexity that C# developers must deal with as part of their development environment means that you

can use it to create code fast. Visual Basic.NET also tends to protect the programmer more from acci-

dents that C# developers must keep in mind, such as numeric overﬂ ows. It isn’t a bad idea to require

less-proﬁ cient developers to use Visual Basic.NET until they gain experience.

Using C++

It’s easy to think that C++ has seen better days and then relegate it to the dustbin alongside COBOL

and FORTRAN. Interesting as it may seem, companies today are actually looking for a few COBOL and

FORTRAN programmers to maintain the huge mass of code written in an earlier time for mainframes

that still work today. In fact, you can read an article about the need for COBOL programmers in

California at http://weblog.infoworld.com/tech-bottom-line/archives/2008/08/

calling_all_cob.html?source=NLC-DAILY&cgd=2008-08-07. C++ is an older language, but it’s also

a capable language that can help you bridge the gap between the managed programming environment

and Windows.

Using C++ is almost mandatory in some cases. For example, if you have a real-time application that

works with specialized equipment, such as factory automation, C++ is almost a required part of your

application development plans. C# does provide better capabilities than most .NET languages for work-

ing with low-level code, but it can’t fulﬁ ll every low-level need easily. The coding becomes quite messy

at some point with a host of unsafe code sections. You may as well use C++, a language designed to get

the low-level programming task done.

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