Converting Van. Net to C#

Hi Zach,

In terms of language flexibility, I think people from VB6 background prefer VB.Net and people who are more comfortable with C/C++ family prefer C#.

Over the period of years, Microsoft has brought VB.Net performance to the level of C# so I do not think that slight performance advantage should not matter (ideally).

Benefits are highly controversial when it comes to VB.net and C#. I would like to discuss the differences.

1. VB.Net has historically been treated as a second class citizen - Most of the advancement happen in C# and then they are ported to VB.Net
2. Many a times, ISVs and their add-ons - examples/sample codes are based on C# and sometimes it is really hard to get them in VB.Net.
https://docs.microsoft.com is a really good attempt at having both VB.Net and C# code samples but I still do see some gaps.
3. If you use InterOps, many codes on PInvoke.net are only available as C# code
4. In general, it is easy to get experts on C#.
5. If you are new to C#, you will have some learning curve and you might feel frustrated as things will move slowly - I jumped from VB6 to C# in 2 to 3 days - I know that pain.
6. Some of the language features which you write in VB.Net will look really really hard in C# (but the same thing applies to C# guys when they look at VB.Net code)

As long as the conversion is concerned, please give this one a try:
https://www.tangiblesoftwaresolutions.com/product_details/vb-to-csharp-converter.html

This one is a major disappointment, if you ask me: http://converter.telerik.com/, I suggest you should just blacklist them for any serious conversion.

And of course, my current favorite: https://dotnetfiddle.net/

Regards,
Chinmay.

I am a bit confused by Chinmay's comment. Are you trying to convert from VB6 or VB.Net?

Converting some code from VB.Net to C# can be done using tools like http://converter.telerik.com/ but none are perfect.

Maybe the greatest benefits of C# (over VB.Net) is that almost everything you find in books/magazines/websites/... are C#. It is usually easier to find C# developers (at least in my North America market).

If you have a large vb project, what does it need to bring it to the c# world granting that budget is not an issue?

What strategy or plan to do it? Where to start?

What does it takes to convert vb.net to c#? Is it worth the effort?

Well, what problem are you hoping to solve by converting? That may have an impact on your decision to migrate.

I hope you realise just how .net works.  Someone codes in a .net language, that is then precompiled to an intermediate code, the intermediate code is then converted on the end user machine.
That means that code in vb.net converted to c# will precompile to identical intermediate code.  Which means zero difference in performance.

The difference for you is how good you (or your colleagues) are in vb.net and c# in terms of maintaining and writing new code.

Also bear in mind you can compile vb.net code into a dll which will run seamlessly with other code written in c# which uses that dll and the code it contains.

How other write why you want convert a VB.NET project in C#?
What is the reason why you do not want to keep it in VB.NET?

Great