This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by John Martin. Original Post: Re: Abandon Java for VB.NET Feed Title: The Lone Programmer Feed URL: http://www.lonepixel.com/loneprog/javablogs-index.rdf Feed Description: Just another lazy programmer. (Java and UI Design channels only.) Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by John Martin Latest Posts From The Lone Programmer

Michael Yuan says that the University of Texas have switched their entry level programming course to VB.NET from Java. That's pure evil. If using .NET, why not go C#? Does VB have any redeeming qualities?

Personally, I don't think Java should be taught as an entry level langauge either. There is just too much baggage for somebody new to programming. At the time I was at Sydney Uni the entry level course there featured an in-house language called BLUE. It was an object-oriented language with Pascal-like syntax and was created specifically for teaching programming. It got a lot of flak at the time, but I thought it was great, at least for it's intended purpose. The thing I hated about it was that there was no formal program entry, ie no main(). Programs were executed by creating an instance of one of your classes in the graphical class browser. This always bothered me. It seemed so arbitrary. I understand that it was done in order to preserve the object paradigm, but I think the confusion that it created outweighed any benefit.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I tend to think that plain old procedural Pascal is still a great way to learn programming. (I have a soft spot for THINK Pascal on the Mac.) It's easy to understand and it is close enough in syntax to C/C++/Java that transitioning to those languages is straight-forward. And I think that you better appreciate the why's of object-oriented programming if you spend some time in procedural land.