The Tech Mind

paan 9 April 2008 Rants 972 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

Recently I’ve registered at LowYat.net a big community of people that range from codders to bloggers to pet owners and mangga kiddies. My old haunt of a tech forum is dead for some time now and I never like big community because of the signal vs noise ratio that you usually get in big communities, as opposed to smaller you know everyone community. But I needed input on something, and I lurk there sometimes, so I’ve decided to register.

While waiting for someone to  answer my questions I figured I’d be helpful and browse for something in the coders forum. So the the story was there was a guy that started programming and wanted to know a good language to start with, and wanted to choose between vb.NET and java. I’ve always had a bone to pick with vb and vb.NET, nothing personal, I’ve always feel that best practices are better learnt when you are starting to learn to code, rather than go through the trouble of unlearning your bad practices. And I feel like I’ve articulated my point through calm and in a more or less civil way. And I personally believe what I wrote about all the bad things a bad programming language teach you and how it is better to start off with a better programming language like java or even C#. See, I said C#, I support .NET, I’m not a microsoft basher. Which is why it puzzles me why a guy in the forum called me out as a Microsoft basher. 

Granted my research was not that complete. I cited some stuff that is more relevant to vb6 rather than vb.net (it was a forum post, I googled a little and that’s it, i didn’t do a 3 hours research). But I do feel that the essense of it was there and the point is that it is better to start with a language that doesn’t follow best practices like allowing uninitialized variables. I even said that I understand that vb is not bad, it has it uses like rapid UI prototyping, and my point is that it is not a bad language, it’s just a bad FIRST language. Which I believe that I have stated clearly.

Which is why I was stil puzzled as to why I was called out as a Microsoft basher. I didn’t even mention Bill Gates. I don’t blame the poster, maybe he had his fair share of microsoft and VB basher. Which is why he annoyed at “yet another one”. I’ve just felt that I was really sincere in my posting and not flamebaiting. Maybe the language of the internet is a lacking in communicating some of the emotion in a sentence. Or whatever. Anyway the poster was a regular with 1000+ post, so I didn’t bother to reply, I’d just look like newbie trying to pick a fight with a regular. No amount of reason can win that fight. And even the poster said that he’s signing off on the conversation cause he’s tire of this old debate and the thread already starting to veer into another direction. So I let it go.

The thing that gets me about this is that I really was sincere in trying to help the thread starter and also sincere in my believe that you should start out with a good programming laguage that teaches you go programming practices. I’m not trying to bring the debate here. Just making my point and saying my peace. No offence intended to anyone.

The thread:
http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/660021