We get a lot of emails from Programmer's Heaven users. Amongst the requests that we do people's homework, which we ignore, we also get some more interesting questions sent to us too. We figured that when we do, we may as well share our answers more widely, and also this gives other folks a chance to give their input too. Recently we got one from someone who had discovered us through the C# School e-book and asked, "please kindly advise which of the two, C# and VB .NET is better for developing commercial applications like Payroll".

The Similarities

Both languages run in the Common Language Runtime and allow you to have full access to the .Net Class Library. This means that pretty much whatever is in the .Net Class Library is equally available to both VB.NET and C#.NET. Both languages have a similar feature set too, providing strong support for Object Oriented Programming, which is good for developing database-backed applications, as your Payroll surely will be.

If you take the list of additions to C# 3.0 and the list of additions to VB 9.0, both released at the same time along with Visual Studio 2008, they are not too far from identical. Both added support for Linq, both added type inference, both added anonymous types and so on. In fact, there's only one thing I see in the VB 9.0 list that wasn't in the C# 3.0 list: they've supported XLinq (queries over XML) with some special syntax in addition to normal queries. If you're not working with XML, you may find that of limited value, though.

Spot The Difference

The single biggest difference is syntax. Basically, VB.NET uses syntax derived from the BASIC language family, whereas C# uses syntax derived from the C language family. What you prefer will be just that: a preference. I know that I find VB.NET a bit harder to read, basically because it's more verbose and it's that little bit harder to pick out names of variables, methods and types (because more of the syntax is expressed in words, whereas C# uses non-alphanumerics). However, other people may find that more real words being used in the syntax makes it more readable.

There is the odd feature difference. For example, C# has no equivalent to the With blocks in VB, which let you topicalize. I wish it did have one, so that's a minor point I have to award to VB. More importantly, C# allows you to write unsafe code (that is, code that does direct memory operations and pointer arithmetic), while VB provides no way to do this. However, for a payroll application you just won't need to do this. Heck, I've been writing C# for a couple of years and haven't ever needed to use this feature. There are, of course, use cases, but they aren't ones you're going to run across while implementing a payroll application.

Then there are just different ways to do things. C# chose to let you use the "this" keyword on a parameter to denote an extension method, whereas VB gets you to mark it with an attribute. But at the end of the day, that's not much more than a syntactic difference either.

Does it matter?

From a technology point of view, I really don't think that it matters which language you choose. I know which I prefer and I can give reasons why I prefer it, but it's little more than that: a preference. You're going to be able to write the same application in VB.NET or C#.NET. The differences are really not much more than syntax deep, so much so that there are translators out there that will take your code in one and turn it into the other, retaining comments. The other thing to realize is that you've only got one set of concepts to learn to know both languages, and two lots of syntax. And syntax is easier to learn than semantics.

Other than your own personal preference, you might want to consider the backgrounds of anyone else who will be working on the project, or may maintain or contribute to it in the future. If they have programmed before, their background may suggest which language they'll be most comfortable with, and if it doesn't matter much to you then then you may want to base your decision on that.

Conclusion

The differences between the languages are not much more than skin deep. They have a near identical feature list, and the features have near identical semantics - basically, those provided by the underlying .Net Common Languages Runtime. Both are suitable for your project, and I doubt the outcome will be greatly affected by which one you choose. Pick one and go for it. If you need to, you'll be able to learn the other one easily later anyway.

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