Newsgroup: it.comp.lang.visual-basic
Titolo: Development time comparison?

If someone knows VC++ and VB very well, and writes the same program in both
languages, what would be the difference in development time and in whose
favour. I figure that VB would be the fastest. But by how much?
Andrew

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I would expect the VC++ programmer to finish first and deliver a better,
faster, more stable product.  Let me explain.  I remember a fairly large
project I participated in where management insisted that we did it with
Visual Basic because it was "easier" and "faster". Needless to say we
had to use VB.  By the time we finished writing all sorts of DLLs in C
to "help" VB do the job we ended up with a major kludge that was a
maintenance nightmare.
In my opinion there is a place for VB in Corporate America when the apps
are relatively simple, dialog-driven (or should I say form-driven). Also
in my opinion, the minute you start getting "fancy" VB quits and you
have to start writing DLLs in C...
Things may have changed a bit in favor of Visual Basic with version
5.0.  I am not familiar with the changes but it may be worth looking
into. I hope my humble opinion helped your decision.
Good luck!
Carlos
http://www.simple-sw.com

...
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As a general rule, if it takes more than 3 weeks (some say 2) to write in
VB, you are better off writting it in VC++.  VB is for putting components
together.  VC++ is for writting software.
Yes VB is very easy to learn, and yes you can do a lot very easily. The
first problem is that if it does not do exactly what you want, it is not
easy. I can't count the number of VB programs I ve seen that have bad
behavior because the author had to make compromises. I know they must be
out there but I have never seen a VB program that I would consider
commercial quality. When I have read these VB vs. VC++ threads in the past
I have been amazed at what the proponents of VB thought were large
commercial programs. For example someone in the financial industry wrote
something like: "reads data from a database, writes reports and displays up
to 64 graphics windows. Used internally by many people". This is an example
of what VB is very good for. Putting components together with a nice,
simple interface. With very little code someone with not much experience
can write a very useful program. The problem is that none of the components
were written in VB. VB becomes very messy as the project becomes large. It
takes a lot more code in VB to do difficult things (and things just the way
you want).
MFC provides a framework that encourages an organized programming style
(Good VB programmers will of course impose there own organization so that
things don t become too messy).
VB is a good choice if your project:
Is small
Accesses a database
Involves putting together components
Is used internally
You don t have the need or time to learn VC++ 
If your project is large or commercial. VC++ is a much better choice.
The downside to VC++ is the learning curve.  You should learn C, C++, OOD,
WinSDK, and MFC plus all the technologies (ODBC, OLE, multi-threading,
etc.).  Object oriented design is the important one here (and most over
looked) because without it you can write code that is as hard to maintain,
extend, and reuse as in VB.  As a plus, there are lots of very good books
and lots of source code in C/C++.
BTW I write things like neural network and genetic algorithm libraries.
Without an object oriented language this is very messy, very difficult, and
almost impossible to make flexible . With an object oriented language it s
still difficult, but very elegant, powerful, flexible, and extendible.
When I first learned OOP I didn t like it. As I used it more and more I got
to the point that I really love it. It s difficult to explain why it s
better. But I could never go back. Of course they will probably try to add
parts of OOP to VB which will help.
BTW I don t consider the speed and size issue to be important for most
things. It s what do you want to do. If you are doing lower level stuff
that must be small and fast you probably want straight C or even assembly
language. If your writing algorithms and lots behind the seens code C++ is
great. For putting components together VB is very useful.
-David
 Andrew Grillage wrote in article <01bc8d5d$072e96e0$9b406ac2@andrew>...
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Here are my $2.00 (inflation, you know):
Visual Basic is excellent for developing client software.  It is quick
and easy to use for simple network applications that simply need to
send user input to a server or receive data from a server and
display/print/whatever it for a user.  Client sides can be developed
very quickly as long as most of the "real" functionality is in a
different piece of software.  In other words, for simple clients, VB
is probably faster than VC++.
For seriously "functional" software, however, I would not recommend
VB.  Projects of reasonable complexity will often require features
that Visual Basic does not have or that do not work well (the Berkeley
"send" and "recv" functions come to mind).  You will spend more of
your time trying to work around VBs limitations than developing the
actual software.  You also have to live with an event-driven paradigm,
which we all know isn't fun.
I hope that helps.  I think of Visual Basic as more of a scripting
language (like awk or IBM's JCL) than as a tool for serious
development (like C or perl).
-- 
Daniel Odom, software engineer
dan...@danodom.com
http://www.danodom.com/

 Visual Basic is excellent for developing client software.  It is quick
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