Questions For Gurus (.NET)

I was wanting to find out some questions about using VB.NET

1. Is there alot of bugs with VB.NET?
2. How is multithreading? Is it reliable?
3. Does it work well if using to do a lot of database work?
4. Is the learning curve from VB6 to VB.NET a long time?
5. Have there been a lot people develop full working applications using it yet?
6. Is it more efficent than VB6?

I am looking at devloping a large app that will be doing database work as well as communicating
and controlling several devices. Both TCP/IP and Serial. I have done this before in VB6 but it
was not very efficent and I need the ability to multithread. So I want to find out if VB.NET
might be the way to go. I would like to hear from anyone that has experience with this.
Thanks in advance!!!

Kris
Software Engineer
Phoenix,AZ

1) Beta2 is almost a full working product, so bugs should be at a minimum, but are present.

2) In beta1, multithreading doesn't work, in beta2 it does, and it works just fine.

3) I assume so, don't know for sure. .Net comes with a serie of specific data providers for each type of data, wich are highly optimized. Take for instance the SQLConnection, which is specifically written for SQL Server, which is about 35% faster as the ADO-OLEDB-way.

4) It depends. First of all, there are some syntax changes, some bad habbits we need to lose and stuff. This is quite a list and is something wze all must go through. For the rest, if you have any eperience with object oriented programming (or component based), the curve will be significantly shorter.

5) .Net is only in beta, so there aren't many full blown applications out there written in .Net. Most applications are written as a demo, but there are some live up-and-running applications using .Net.

6) Definitly. VB.Net has a way greater performance than VB6. The fact that it is now fully OO-based brings along a lot of advantages (inheritance and stuff). Throw in multithreading, and the fact that all .Net languages are compiled against the same runtime, makes VB.Net (almost) as powerfull as C++ or C#.

For the rest...
About the application you have developed. It is possible to use compoinents created in .Net in VB6 (if correctly configured and required files installed). This allows you to bring your multithreaded components to VB6, resulting in you only having to rewrite the components, and not the entire application.



Tom Cannaerts
[email protected]

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

Thanks for the info! Do you know of any GOOD books on VB.NET?

Kris
Software Engineer
Phoenix,AZ