Programming language for POS

[weerd]

Hi!
I'm planning to hire a person to make a POS program, but I'm unsure of which language I should choose.

I've talk to two people, the first recommended VB6, and the second one recommended VB.NET.

I don't have any knowledge of programming languages, but my first thought was to go for C++ or C#/.NET

I'm afraid that if I get one of these programmers to do this in VB6 or VB.NET, I would go for a programming language that's a little old, and not very nice for the future. Since this will be a desktop application and will be updated on a regular basis, for many years.

As stated earlier, I don't have any experience with this, so any thoughts will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[quincarroll]

Hi

vb6 is old and no longer supported by Microsoft.

I work in vb.net and c#, and I seriously doubt that either language is going anywhere near the garbage can any time soon.

Most c# developers will tell you that c# is far superior to vb.net, but in my humble opinion that isn't all that true.

Anything that can be done in c# can also be done in vb.net.
It all compiles to the same thing once compiled too.

c# does seem to be a little less cluttered with unnecessary code, and is a little quicker to develop in.

I would suggest that you go with c#, mostly because it seems to be preferred these days.

[BioPhysEngr]

I echo quincarroll's comments. I have written in many languages and my general thought is that C# will provide rapid development in an environment that has a lot of available library support and be maintainable into the foreseeable future. C++ is too low-level for efficient development I think. Don't use VB6: as noted, it is an older language and been supplanted with .NET languages (VB.NET and C#). Note that VB.NET basically shares all the same good qualities that C# does. My personal preference is for C#, but that's all it is: a preference.

[ptclin_2007]

i suggest using c++ or c, it's suitable for POS device programming.
C# only run at window system, hard to port.

[BioPhysEngr]

C# only run at window system, hard to port.

I've had good experiences running C# programs in Linux under Mono: http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

[eransmith02]

I echo quincarroll's comments. I have written in many languages and my general thought is that C# will provide rapid development in an environment that has a lot of available library support and be maintainable into the foreseeable future. C++ is too low-level for efficient development I think. Don't use VB6: as noted, it is an older language and been supplanted with .NET languages (VB.NET and C#). Note that VB.NET basically shares all the same good qualities that C# does. My personal preference is for C#, but that's all it is: a preference.

Agreed with the BioPhysEngr