(I wish I'd come up with the line I used in the title, but some guy at Reddit came up with it first.)
The actual headline at Dr. Dobb's Portal reads Developers Embrace Java, Drop Visual Basic, but the title of this entry sums up my opinion on the matter. But I'll go with the news first and then editorialize.
The recently-released results of an Evans Data Corporation of 430 developers indicate that:
- Use of pre-.NET Visual Basic is down 35% since the spring
- Use of Visual Basic .NET is down 26%
This news shouldn't be too surprising. The last pre-.NET version of Visual Basic, version 6.0 was released in 1998, back during my VB contract development days. The support window for it must be coming to a close, and my guess is that only a few die-hards are using it for new application development rather than maintenance (I myself wrote my last new VB application in 2001 and my last VB maintenance work in 2003).
The development landscape was different back during those VB6 days. A fast home connection meant one of those new 56K modems, a new CD-ROM store seemed to be opening every week and the browser war had only recently turned in Microsoft's favor. The predictions were that the web was just a phase we were passing through; the future was in fat clients, which could provide a rich experience that web apps couldn't. VB6's design made only a few concessions to the web: there was an experimental feature called “HTML forms”, in which you could create VB application forms using HTML instead of VB's form builder (I'm not sure why), and there were countless demo apps showing how easy it was to embed IE into your apps. It certainly wasn't made for the development of web applications. My guess is that aside from a few die-hards — if there are FoxPro die-hards, there must exist VB6 ones — most VB6 use is in the realm of maintenance, not new app development.
VB.NET is a different case: there really isn't much that separates it from C#; it uses the same libraries and for the most part C# in Basic clothing. Given that the difference between VB.NET and C# is so slight, VB's verbosity, the similarity of syntax between Java and C# and that the “VB stigma” meant that a C# programmer would get paid more than a VB programmer, it's not surprising to see the drop in VB.NET use either.
The survey reports that these languages have the top spots:
- Java: 45%
- C/C++: 40%
- C#: 32%
As for the title of this entry, I have to admit that Java development doesn't excite me terribly. Writing Java applications requires a lot of mise en scene with libraries and supporting objects to accomplish the simplest of tasks — why do I have to declare a class just to write a “Hello World” application? Why does there have to be a 294-page book on using arrays? Why are some of Java's brightest lights abandoning ship for things like Ruby?
You can keep your grass clippings and tree bark. I'll take my steak and caesar salad in the form of PHP, Python and Ruby instead.