C# and Visual Basics have been close siblings when it comes to web developing in .NET. C# is, without doubt, popular among developers. It will continue to pick up more complex features. For instance, C# 7.0 is adding integrated support for pattern and tuples matching syntax, the latest language features that show considerable influence from functional programming languages, such as Haskell and ML.
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MIGRATION TO THE .NET PLATFORM FOR WEBSITE DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
The migration to .NET offers a lot of development options. The following explains why C# is an important offering and why a developer should consider moving to the programming language. When moving to .NET and already knowledgeable of Java, C++ or C#, then C# is a logical choice.
- Modernized language
The language is a modernized version of C++. Originally, there was the language C, which was used widely. C# brings fast development paradigm of VB to the C++ developers’ world, with some apparent changes. It takes advantage of the .NET framework, meaning that one could gain access to a powerful forms engine, the same as VB developers have had for years. New types of data have been added, such as the decimal data type for doing financial calculations.
- Object-oriented
While many argue that C++ is object-oriented, C# proceeds to another level. Even simple data types could be considered as objects, which means that it has INT methods associated with it. For instance, a developer could use the ToString method to have a string value for INT, such as int Counter=14.
- Type-safety
The language is type-safe, which means various things. For instance, a developer could not use uninitialized variables. In C++, it’s easy to declare a variable and check its value, whatever was in the memory address given to the variable would be shown then. This could create havoc on an app. The C# compiler would notify if one attempts to use a variable before initializing it to some valid value.
- XML Comments
C# supports XML comments introduction. Far from just another way of adding comments to the code, XML comments actually could turn into the documentation. The comments are put into XML format and could then be used as needed for documenting code. The documentation could include parameters, example code and references to other topics. To a developer, it finally makes sense to document his or her code, since the comments actually could be documentation independent of the source code.
- Simplified Syntax
Although C++ is a very powerful language, typically it has not been considered easy. C# tries to simplify the syntax to be more logical and consistent while also removing several of the more complex C++ features. For instance, C# does away with pointers. As a type-safe language, it does not allow direct memory manipulation, thus pointers are no longer required in C#.
- Not only Microsoft
C# isn’t just about Microsoft anymore. Microsoft has released C# to ECMA and has been published as a standard. Additionally, the Mono project is an effort of making an open source .NET framework version and an open source C# version, all for Linux.
- All about components
Building components is straightforward, as referencing the components in code. C# namespaces replace many problems from the COM world wherein one has to perform registry lookups and instantiate objects and worry on things like IUnknown and IDispatch. With C#, one could simply import a namespace and start using the classes in that component, without COM plumbing or registry lookups required.
- Cross-language capabilities
The programming language has the ability to enable one to interoperate with any other language on .NET. A lot has been said on how to create a component in a single language and inherit and extend the component in another language, that’s something that was hard, if not impossible, with COM. Also, C# supports the error handling concept across various languages. Unfriendly HResults are gone. Rather, one has access to .NET exceptions that are consistent across any language of .NET.
- Power to be unsafe
Much is made on C#’s type-safety. However, to drive without a seatbelt, one is free to do so. If one has to use pointers, for instance, the unsafe keyword could be used to mark a block of code. This lets code to bypass the type-safety checking of the framework, meaning that one could manipulate memory directly. This makes C# extremely powerful.
- It could be worth more
When it comes to building .NET apps, the choice between C# and VB.NET typically is not important. Nevertheless, it’s quite possible that organizations are willing to pay more for C# developers. Developers of C++ typically have been harder to find compared to Visual Basic developers and better compensated. It’s likely that there would be more VB.NET developers instead of C# developers, so the trend could well continue into the future.
C# in the future will become a more powerful programming language. Already, developers are using it to build applications in the .NET framework.