Seeing how this is the first post in the .Net section. I thought I would start off with an emotional subject for Microsoft developers.

I was listening to a podcast from dotNETrocks and they where interviewing someone from Micrsoft who said that there latest research showed that there are more VB.Net developers then C#. In fact, C# came third with C++ coming second.

What do people think about this? Do you think there is a need for VB.Net and C#? Will one ever replace the other?

My personal thoughts on VB.Net being more popular is simply that it has always traditionally been easier to learn from the early VB days. C# and VB.Net are now built on the same CLR framework so the simularities between the two languages are vast, but I believe there are still things you can do in C# which you cannot do in VB.Net.

Over to you....

Personally I hate VB. it's too wordy.
C# is a really nice clean language.

I think that, as was stated, VB.Net's popularity over C# is due to the legacy of VB programmers who, when they made the switch to .Net, naturally followed the VB.Net path.

I personally came to .Net from a Java, Perl and PHP background and was therefore drawn towards C# (afterall, a real programming language requires curly braces and semi-colons, right?). But I've since ended up in a 9-to-5 that mandates VB.Net so now that's what I am accustomed to.

So what things are still only possible in C# (other than using sweet tools like ReSharper?).

VB.net and C# source code can actually be converted back and forth...(Sharp Develop development studio).

I personally like C# better because it's a much cleaner, compacter and easier to read.

When I started .net I started with VB since that was the main language the company used. I had PHP experience so it was a bit strange to use vb since, like alex said, it was a bit too wordy for my taste. After the start it became very natural to code it and I kinda liked it.

My current job uses C# so I had to switch again and now I have to say that I like c# far more than vb. PHP experience helped me a lot to learn c# syntax and c# feels better to me now. I wouldn't mind switching back to vb but I prefer c#.

I have to say VB is the easier of the two languages, because of its ease to understand, its easier to develop with intelSense, and its the easiest language to learn.

Oh - and the fact that the Seal Portal open source language is VB.net.