"VB and C#"

A couple of weeks ago, I started consciously paying attention to people in Microsoft presentations mention the various languages of .NET. I noticed a couple of things:

• C++ is extremely rare in being mentioned.
• J# is usually mentioned in jest… but still very rarely.
• C# is usually mentioned primarily with VB mentioned secondarily.

On the last point, from a historical perspective and a number of users perspective, I’d kind of expect VB to be mentioned firstly and C# secondarily. If you had more than one child, you’d mostly introduce them in passing from the eldest to the youngest. Of course this is not always the case, but from my experience, it’s been the case thus far. C++, VB, C# and J# are kind of like children… so why not the same ordering?

Anyway, I was extremely happy to notice that (non-other than) Don Box mentioned almost every time in his presentation “VB and C#”.

Not trying to start a huge debate on this, just that it was something that I kind of noticed and started paying attention to… in the end it’s really no big deal… in the end a person is probably going to mention their primary language first. This is completely understandable; but I think when discussing Microsoft presentations that they should be conscious of this behavior. To me it would help lead to a (possibly even subconscious) improvement in VB’s place in the world.