Welcome to Goto100 - a C# free zone for UK developers!
Hello folks and welcome to Goto100. The obvious question is - what is Goto100? There is a short answer and a longer answer to that.
The short answer:
It is resource for developers in the UK. For developers using Visual Basic .NET and developers faced with the challenge of maintaining, advancing or replacing Visual Basic 6 applications. This blog will be C# free - except when there are opportunities to gloat! If you are C# developer then you are in the wrong place - unless you fancy being that little bit more efficient :-)
The long answer:
We have been discussing over the last couple of months whether we have the right balance in the work my group has been doing - both in terms of "old vs new vs very new" technology and "C# vs Visual Basic .NET". We realised that we have become very C# heavy over the last couple of years - all of us have settled on C# as our main development language. As a result virtually all our demos were being doing in C#, virtually all events, all screencasts, all blog posts etc.
However as a group we meet lots of developers and companies working with Visual Basic 2005 (and now Visual Basic 2008) as well as lots of companies with Visual Basic 6 applications currently working out how to move them to .NET. Visual Basic .NET is strong in the UK - and we are pretty much ignoring it :-(
On July 1st I switch roles and move back to regularly working with Visual Studio alongside Mike and Mike. As I haven't really coded much in the last four years I decided I would return to development using Visual Basic rather than C# for much of what I do - when I demo, when I screencast, when I blog. I would also dig into the challenges of taking Visual Basic 6 applications forward onto .NET and champion the UK Visual Basic development community internally as best I can. My blog will contain a lot more posts with a Visual Basic spin and I will ensure the best of those make it onto Goto100.
This blog should evolve over time to become a great starting point for UK developers transitioning from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic .NET as well as for those already using .NET. But I need your help. I am new to Visual Basic .NET - I haven't yet found the best blogs, the best resources, the best tools. Hence I would welcome contributions to help it achieve a solid foundations of resources and articles as soon as possible. Thanks folks.
The end goal - UK Visual Basic developers will see a few less semicolons from here on in and C# developers will occasionally have to ponder about that strange line continuation character.
Eric
Comments
Anonymous
June 10, 2008
My team mate Eric has just launched a new blog focusing on Visual Basic Development called  GotoAnonymous
June 10, 2008
A welcome arrival. Long live VB. My company spans 4 continents with developers in all time zones using VB.Net exclusively (no C#)Anonymous
June 13, 2008
Hi Bill - great to hear that you are (another) company successfully using VB.