Anyone have Any information about the new VB Syntax with VB 7 yet?

Will this be released soon? or is there a place you can go to start freshening up now?

Check this page out, but I'm warning you, you might just get a little disappointed (at least I was wehen I first found out ;).http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/tec...e/language.asp

Tom Cannaerts
[email protected]

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning -- Rich Cook

The public Beta is available now.

In release 1 there are several significant syntax changes that make the language much more object oriented but the learning curve is very steep.

For example, the Set var = Object syntax no longer has Set, Property Get/Let is now one function, Functions now have a return keyword rateher than the less readable Functionname = Value syntax etc etc.

However, the IDE is absolutely brilliant (although being a Beta it has bugs) and the new language elements do make your code a lot more readable/sensible.
Moreover, the new Winforms class is much more flexible and powerful than what it replaces - it certainly makes my EventVB extensions to VB5 irrelevant.

HTH,
Duncan

-------------------------------------------------
Ex. Datis: Duncan Jones
Merrion Computing Ltd
http://www.merrioncomputing.com

Well, to be honest, I don't like it, I don't like it at all. The beta doesn't have any bugs, it is one big bug. It takes me up to 3 minutes to start the IDE (Pentium III 750, 128MB Ram). Hopefully, they optimize this when Beta 2 comes out (should be in july).
Better readability with the new IDE? Yes and no. There are several things like regions etc which make it easier, but other stuff (like the pre generated code to initialize the form) are a waste of screen space. I've talked to several Microsoft programmers but haven't found any changing that code.
Syntax changes. When reading it the first time the idea came in mind that they better gave us what stayed the same, that list's probably shorter (irony)
Take the messagebox, OK MsgBox is still supported (via the VB6 compatibility library), but the correct VB.Net syntax is MessageBox.Show. Ok, OO, I've got the hang of it, but a lot of us don't and will have a hard time getting used to it.
The disappearance of default properties. How much code does man write using default properties. Ok, I don't use thing like Text1 = "Sometext", but I do use rst("fieldname"), which now is invalid. Ok, eventually it will lead to better coding, but is it all worth it. The reason why VB is so popular is because of the ease of use, and all that stuff, a lot of those things are gone with the wind.
Don Box (co-founder of developmentor.com) defined VB.Net as C#, with the difference that the VB.Net compiler will place the ; at the end of each line for you.

Of course, it,s not all that bad. Take the immediate initialization ( Dim Rst As Recordset = New Recordset ), inheritance, multithreading (however I haven't got it working yet) and API accessibility through the base class, all features that make VB a power language. The difference between C and VB has become way smaller, escpecially the performance, because they are all compiled to IL (intermediate language), which is then JIT-compiled to the common runtime when needed.

Ok, so VB has grown a lot, gained a lot of power, the question I'd like to ask is where the 'Basic' in Visual Basic has gone.

Tom Cannaerts
[email protected]

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning -- Rich Cook

I think I agree with your last statement, where has the basic gone in visual basic?

My other question is "How is this a better product than the regular VB?" The regular VB absolutely rocked for creating easy to use user interfaces at lightning speed and being able to toss in predefined extensability to the project in just a few lines of code. This looks more like a bad java rip off too me.

I say bad java rip off since, basically it is compiled to an intermediate language = slow performance. Then the syntax is much harder as well since you have to remember not only 1 level of . notation but more like 4 levels just to get any basic thing to happen. Hopefully this will be worked out by beta 2, but as it stands now, the syntax I have seen so looks more like C++ than anything simple.

And whats with the HUGE amount of unchangable pregenerated code?

Well, Microsoft likes to describe it this way:
It has the the ease of VB, the power of C and the elegance of Java.
On the other hand, they are saying this for VB.Net, C++ and C#. Ok, they all look alike, but since when is a programming language 'elegant'

The thing you said about the IL and slow performance, well, you'de be surprised to find out how good performance is. The reason why they choose IL is because it's binary, so every system that has an IL compiler can run it, and I mean every (PC, Mac, Linux, Toaster, Car, you name it). This is part of Microsoft's wanna be everywhere strategy.

About the . notation, that's very unlikely to change. Well, there are still default properties, but only if they are parameterized.
[vbcode]
rst("myfield") = "value" ' error
rst("myfield").value = "value" ' no error
rst.fields("myfield") = "value" ' error
rst.fields("myfield").value = "value" ' no error
[vbcode]
I think this is just something we will have to get used to, and something we can already start doing.

I think VB like we know it is dead, but will never die. Ok, this might sound weird, but VB is dead in that way that it is what it is, it won,t change anymore. So don't expect anything new for VB.
It won't die because there are to many programmer out there who use it, and will continue using it. A lot of people don't want (or dare) to go to .Net, but hey, can we blame them?

Tom Cannaerts
[email protected]

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning -- Rich Cook