The Glade 4.0

So this semester I am taking:
Sociology 455 (Soc Movements/Change)
Biology 100 (Gen Bio Non Majors +LAB)
IS 210 (Intro to Program Method)

so I figure...

Sociology covers my multinational requirement, and Biology will allow me to transfer my credits back to CSN and walk for my Associates Degree this fall. This is BIG for me.

I also figure woohoo! Introduction to Program Methodology... neat, I hope they discuss C or C+, C++, COBOL, Etc. you know... something useful in the real world.

Then I go to order my textbooks... this classes required text is "Programming in Visual Basic 2010"

really? For those already in the know about programming... is VB really that important? Or is this pretty much going to be full of douchebaggery until I take something else?

My required Textbooks (for Sociology) are:
Freedom Summer - Doug McAdam
Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America - Dana Fisher
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations - Clay Shirky
American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement's Hidden Spaces of Hate (Violence Prevention and Policy) - Pete Simi

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

The programming language used for that type of class isn't critical. You're learning the programing techniques and methods that apply to many different programing languages. That being said, Visual Basic isn't the language that I'd have used for the course (Java is a good language for that IMO).

Visual Basic is an obsolete language that almost nobody uses in the real world professionally. That said, it can still be a great learning tool. It was the first programming language I learned and it made me enthusiastic about programming in general.

Also, it is a good tool for quickly throwing together a .exe in Windows, but this is no longer useful nowadays for most tasks.

(by the way, I am Lex Luthor. This username is easier to type on mobile so I'm switching to it).

Visual Basic was never intended to be used as anything more than a language for hobbyists and high school level programming classes. That it ever entered business environments was a total fluke. At any rate, I really wouldn't expect COBOL to be taught in an early class because it's use cripples the mind. I would expect a class named Introduction to Program Method to use either Pascal, BASIC, or Visual Basic. Their goal is to teach you fundamental program structure, not a useful language.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Exactly what Corolinth said.

More complex programming languages are, well, more complex, and require concepts that are quite reasonably outside the scope of an Intro to Programming class. Programming in C, for instance, would require more depth on memory management and .dlls than they're really interested in teaching at that point, for instance.

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I'm going to disagree with everybody here. VB.NET is used for the GUI in many healthcare-related database systems. Therefore it is a real programming language and it may benefit you in more ways than just general concepts. But yeah, fewer people are putting their newer product versions on it and are switching to web-driven GUI's.

You're definitely not going to be making video games in it, that's for sure. If they were going to choose a .NET language, it's too bad they didn't give you C#.NET. That would have put you closer to something more widely used.

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The Dude abides.

Compared to other mainstream languages, it is barely used anywhere.

Correct me if I am wrong but VB is the base for VBA that is used in Access, Excel and other Office applications. I write macros for Excel and Access all day for data queries, formatting and presentation.

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It is definitely used though, Screeling is right about that. It isn't widely used, but darksiege, I wouldn't worry too much about that. You aren't taking the class to learn a programming language, you are taking the class to learn how to program. Once you are done with school, you should be able to pick up any programming language with a good book and a week or two.

That said, I still think they should use Java, as it is a good teaching language, and it is also used quite a bit out in the real world, so why not use it?

I'd kinda think of it the other way around. His book is likely VB.NET because I don't think Microsoft puts out any other VB than VBA (which comes with Office) and VB.NET. VB.NET is a true object oriented language. VBA is not but if he learns VB.NET, VBA will flow quite easily.

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The Dude abides.

Oh DS - see if you can find the international version of the text. They sell for much cheaper and are exactly the same thing just a different cover and ISBN.

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The Dude abides.

This site shows the popularity of various programming languages with graphs. So while it is used, the chances you'd use it anywhere outside of a learning environment (or tinkering around) are very low.

http://langpop.com/

Sheesh, Lex. Why so pitbullish on a relatively minor issue?

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Colphax, meet Lex. Lex, Colphax.

My point isn't that it's not used, it certainly is. Microsoft itself did not expect VB to actually be used in any sort of professional environment, however. They released it as a toy for people to screw around with. No serious programmers expected VB to ever be used, and the reason why it took off was because small businesses could have people with a passing familiarity in VB write small-time programs for in-house use. It is a simple, easy-to-learn language, and that makes it very good for virgin forays into programming.

What I'm getting at is that the usefulness of a programming language is not the primary concern of Programming 101, which is what DS is taking. It has a different name and course number, because it's Programming 101 for people who will never use it for the rest of their degree and are only taking a required computer course. Programming is a very mathematically rigorous exercise once you get down to flow control and the structure of data. DS is in a class where his classmates will never take a math course above algebra, and perhaps have not yet even had that. There is no delusion in the computer science department that any of his classmates will write a single line of code for the rest of their lives, whether in their professional lives or in future classes.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Sadly, it seems like the text book is a custom edition written for UNLV College of Business: much like my Business Writing was last semester.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Lol, cue my Don Quixote tendencies :p. For my next trick, I shall ask gravity what it's preoccupation with down is...

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

Real schools start you out in Assembly language Seriously though, VB was designed as a teaching tool. No, you're not going to be writing graphics drivers in it, but why not use it to learn fundamental programming concepts?

Anyway, the learning part aside, there are businesses out there that still develop in VB. It's a quick and easy way to bang out a UI. In the 90s when the prevalence of web-based front ends was a lot more limited, VB was an easy way to get what you needed done. If you're going to some mythical company where they have unlimited cash and can redesign their entire system every year, then no you probably won't see much VB6 in use. In the real world, there are places that are going to have stick with their VB6 apps, if for no other reason than funding. Someone else mentioned VBA... it's scary how many companies still use Access databases (or Excel) as some part of their core business processes.

Besides, .NET is a lot different than standard VB. If you can develop in VB.NET, it's not that huge of a jump to C#.

Honestly, your best strategy (if you want to go into software development) is to widen your base; learn as many programming languages as you can. First off, you'll start to see what a small difference there is between languages once you get the concepts straight. Second, you'll get yourself in the habit of how to learn a programming language. As time goes on, software developers have to be able to adapt to the new languages coming on the horizon, and old ones that might pop up again. Any developer who rejects learning a language solely based on its percieved "popularity" risks limiting themselves from seizing future opportunities.

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I guess it really depends on how one defines "useful in the real world". If you define it as "useful in a job", then that changes the criteria quite a bit from what langpop uses. Three out of their seven datasets come from open source repositories or the like... not particularly useful for job-related functions. If you use the feature on langpop to remove those data, VB comes up the list quite a ways, in the same range as SQL - SQL is hardly dead or a toy. The only job site they use to collect data is Craigslist. How many people in IT management / recruiting use Craigslist as a reliable source for hiring qualified software developers? If you remove that dataset as well, VB is fourth on the list.

Good site, but I don't think the variety of available data is as useful in this context.

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VB is used more as a robust scripting language to replace batch files in windows rather than a software development language. For this one purpose, it does see a fair bit of "use in the real world."

Of course, this is mostly a result of the fact that DOS was terrible for scripting, and the command-line interface for windows still having only the functionality that was in DOS.

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i want to see Life released as an actual programming language, rather than as a game to watch on your screen. It's Turing-complete.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

VBA is going away, incidentally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_for_Applications#Future

I'm not sure why Lex's posts are perceived as "pitbullish" in this case. He's not wrong. VB was never a serious development language, and whatever use it may have found for scripting/macro purposes is slated for extinction. Yes, they made .NET bindings for VB, but it never really took off due to C#. I would predict that VB's usage is only going to decline further in the future.

While it's true that your choice of first language usually doesn't make a whole lot of difference, you may as well learn something useful while you're at it. VB makes an odd choice at this point in time. Python would have been a lot more practical.

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Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
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And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Usually doesn't matter. My local community college does this too. You can usually find the non-school-specific version and it has the EXACT same text. My history class was that way and my Chemistry class is this way.

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The Dude abides.

Darksiege:

Your sociology class is going to suck; and I can tell from the reading list you'll be graded primarily on political conformity.

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Oh, man, I just noticed the Soc. class reading list...

Good luck.

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