So I went to Borders and got the VB.NET Deluxe Learning Edition™. I guess I have officially crossed over to the Dark Side™. Here’s how it happened.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I have begun to do some non-web programming using VB 6. After about 2 weeks using VB 6 I realized that this was some potent shit. VB as a language is basically crap but VB as a platform is 100% geared towards fast & easy.

I made some GUI forms with VB and basically figured it was pointless to ride the learning curve on a dead product, so I decided to go .NET or bust on a new project I’ve got comng up.

VB.NET is a slick package. Within a couple hours I had made a trivial Web service, hooked a trivial ASP.NET page and a trivial GUI to it.

VB.NET allows you to consume a web service by typing a URL. The IDE generates a proxy class which makes the remote methods transparent to the local class. This is extremely nice and would certainly be useful in my current gig.

VB.NET also has the butt-easiest deployment – just publish to a web server via FPSE. It’s a button-push.

I’m still not 100% sold on this just yet. I have to admit that ADO.NET looks like another confounding database API™.

The acid test, for me, will be ASP.NET. Going from no class inheritance, flakiest typing and horrible scoping to what essentially is a “Real” programming language is gonna be interesting.

From my impressions of ASP.NET, it seems like the holy grail of instant webapps might be upon us. Will they be faster to build than with my current toolkit? I seriously doubt it – in the short term.

Also, I have FINALLY given up IE and am now using ForeFox !! IE Sucks!