Silverlight is gay

[TensionToast]

(and by silverlight I mean Microsofts flashlike thingy, not the member on this forum)

I, as you may know, am a developer of apps for windows mobile and recently they have released information on the next version of windows mobile, called "Windows Phone 7 series" which to everyones surprise is a pretty kick ass mobile OS. They re-wrote it from the ground up and completely redid the interface.




One problem with this is its not backwards compatible with apps from previous windows mobile versions.

Up till now, i have been coding in Visual Basic.net which has kept me going.
I learned how to use it at college but have built up knowledge since then through continual usage. I had finally decided to change to a new language as VB does have its limitations.

One of my good friends called Oliver (who is my Coding Yoda) uses C++ as his main language (out of about 4 billion) and i thought "okay, ill give it a go"

I bought a book which ive been going through, learning some basics.
Ive got about halfway thought.
A couple of days ago I learned that apps for windows phone 7 are based upon silverlight for the UI and then .net for the inner workings.
Then yesterday I found out that silverlight doesnt support C++ ¬_¬

So.. my problem is that I want to learn a new language but i cant use C++
so Im going to have to go to C#

Oh well. Anyone out there used C# before?

Bleh. stupid silverlight.

</rant>

[Gionimo]

I think C++ and C# are pretty similar right? Atleast the C#syntax is based on the C++ syntax.
So maybe you are only "upgrading" language

[Ane]

C# and C++ aren't really close to each other except for parts of the syntax and some ideas, such as templates. The language closest to it is Java without a doubt.

Transitioning to C# from VB might be a bit overwhelming at first due to the complex syntax, but thankfully that's the only threshold you'll have to cross. You're familiar with .NET already, so the syntax is the only thing that might cause a problem or two.

As such, your best bet is to just convert some of your old stuff to C# or write and rewrite old paradigms that you found interesting. For example, when learning a new language, I find a language that resembles it and implement some short programs from that resembling language I've written. Then I'd rewrite those programs with the new language. Or, if it's a completely new programming style (say functional programming, eg. Haskell) I'd take my time and write some tentative samples in another language and then port those to the new language. Project Euler isn't too bad for the basics.

Don't be scared by that though. C# in itself isn't a very complex language, most of its design is very straightforward and it's suited for RAD-development. It has plenty of cool features and as imperative languages come and go, it's relatively simple to use and learn, no doubt because of the power using .NET brings.

It's such a damn shame that mobile development isn't standardized and every platform uses a different language. Oh well, that's just like computer programming was 30 years ago... I guess it'll take some time to mature.

[hakim]

...

Last edited by hakim on 14 Apr 2010, 16:06, edited 1 time in total.

[Bloody]

I started with VB6 and switched to C# some 4 years ago, the transistion to OOP and a new syntax was pretty rough but definetly worth it
Today i can't imagine how anyone could do anything usefull in VB.NET, its just that bad in comparison

[hakim]

...

[Commander]

...