I am working on co-op at a company as a test engineering specialist. This is not

Question

I am working on co-op at a company as a test engineering specialist. This is not technically a software job, however at the end of the day, I spend most of my time programming.

I am not a programming wiz by any means, but I am very comfortable using VB.NET since that is what projects started at my company previous to my time were written in, and so it is what I have learned and used in the position.

I have gotten the feeling from my time searching for help online when I need it that there is generally more and better support for C# than there is for VB.NET. This has led me to thinking that it may be beneficial for the company going forward to start programming less in VB.NET and more in C#.

However, almost all projects in my department (since several other people work on small programming projects) are currently written in VB.NET. Additionally, most of the software design done in our department is relatively simple I would imagine relative to a software focused area of any company. Probably half of it is generating html pages with graphs to visually illustrate certain data. Taking these two facts into account, there are obvious disadvantages to trying to switch the main programming language used. Also, the vb.net language is very similar to VBA (for excel) and VBScript, which are also used quite a bit in my area of the company.

I am basically not sure if it would be worth the work to change the main language used since there is not a lot of complicated programming done, and similar languages are necessary anyways it seems.

I was curious what additional insight experienced programmers may be able to offer me regarding changing the main language used in my area from VB.NET to C#? What benefits or disadvantages are there that I may not have thought of? How big a role do each advantage and disadvantage play?

What is your overall opinion on the idea of changing from VB.NET to C#?

Explanation / Answer

Speaking broadly, the only reason to switch languages (simplifying the debate a lot), is to improve developer productivity (in the broadest sense). Whatever you can do in one language, you can usually do in another, and that goes especially for .NET languages. So you have to weigh the loss of productivity caused by making switch to a language they don't yet know, and also by having mixing different languages into your codebase, against the gain of productivity that the new language offers.

Given all the facts you cited above, there doesn't seem to be a strong case to switch.

On the other hand, as a developer, you can, and should, personally explore new languages (even new flavors of .NET) yourself, so that you are more versatile, and also know what special features one language has to offer over another. So perhaps you do some small projects that don't directly affect anyone else in C#, just to gain the knowledge and experience.

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