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First, let me ask you to consider this as a real question, and not a subjective one.
That out of the way, here's my situation: We are looking to port our existing classic ASP application to .NET, but we're unsure of what language to use for the new app.
I personally would 'prefer' C#, as I'm more familiar and comfortable with that languages way of doing things, but, the original code is VBScript, so it would possibly be easier to port to VB.NET ... One possible situation I fear would be that, because the code is so similar between the two variants of VB, that we might end up getting stuck on something that is not similar between the two, even though it looks like it would work. A shift to a wholly different language might avoid that kind of situation.
Does anyone have any practical examples of this kind of situation? Insights to illuminate the issue with? Do the potential benefits of a complete paradigm shift outweigh the gains from a high degree of 'copy-and-paste-ability' ?
I have used C#.NET and just recently learned VB.NET and I have to say that once you get around the small syntactical differences, VB is also a very good language. So for you, this is a win win.
That being said, I think a syntax change will help protect the project from any careless copy pastes from the old dirty code base. I believe a fresh start with a fresh language is your best bet for a top notch re-write.
There are 10X as many questions re: C# as there are VB.NET on StackOverflow. That seems to indicate there are more developers using C#, or perhaps a more thriving community (or maybe it just means C# is harder or C# developers don't know as much).
Any gains made due to the similarity of VBScript to VB.NET are far outweighed by the fact that you need to learn the new data types, .NET namespaces, and a new style of web development using webforms or MVC (my preference).
For this reason I think the choice of language should be made independently of what was used before.
3 years ago I had to make this same decision. My preference would have been C# but we ultimately went with VB.Net because that was the closest language available to the developer base we had. All of the developers had experience with VBScript, so learning VB.Net was easier for them. While the framework is the framework and the rest is just syntax and best practices, you'd be surprised the difference in learning curve just by adding a few curly braces for VB developers (the reverse seems to be exactly the same for C# developers going the other way with an itchy semi-colon finger, learning new keywords and relearning event syntax).
You should look at your developer pool and consider what is the easiest for your team to perform development and maintenance. If this is not a serious criteria (because the developers are proficient equally in both), then I would recommend a C# approach. The primary reason is that the VBScript will be relying on outdated methodologies, but converting to VB.Net will not necessarily throw exceptions for these methods whereas C# will. It will also force you to touch every aspect of your application, which (while tedious) will provide your team an opportunity to evaluate how older methods may be refactored into more efficient processes.
Just keep in mind - the "easiest" seeming solution seldom is.
When moving to ASP.NET, I believe that less focus needs to be on the page itself, and more on how you're going to write the business logic. This is a subjective question because different units will have different results.
That said, always play to your strengths. If your team is more familiar with C# than VB.NET, use C#. If they're more familiar with VB.NET, use VB.NET. If they have no real .NET Experience, then you probably want to set up some sample projects with which they can play to see which will be easier to learn. You want the most bang-for-your-buck, and that means making sure the team is as comfortable as possible.
Further, I wouldn't worry too much about copy & paste code, as there are enough differences that any professional developer (as in one who acts professional, not just one who gets paid) will see how much he/she is changing and go back through the rest of the code to ensure it is working properly.
The difference between an ASP.NET and Classic ASP application is already so big, that it will not be an easy copy/paste port anyway.
So I think you should go for the language that you feel most comfortable with (and as another answer suggests, there is a much larger community using C# than VB.Net).
Why are you rewriting the application? What are the short and long term objectives you hope to achieve through this change?
At a high level there is not much to choose between VB and C# - both are extremely functionally rich labguages that compile to teh same IL code.
Personally I moved to C# a few years ago because the vast majority of code examples found on the net are in C#, and the programmer's best friend is the internet where you may just find that nugget of useful information that save you hours of head scratching.
In your situation, by fircing yourself to rewrite the code in a different language will force you to possible rething the implementation and therefore review carefully the code and functionality required - if yuo have the time and budget. If you are up against tight deadlines then VB would be the natural choice, but may negate the benefiots if the rewrite.
I have been in exactly this position, and I urge you not to translate the app in two ways at once--from VB to C# and from classic ASP to ASP.NET.
You have chunks of business logic in your code that will not need to change much, so why change it? You are guaranteed to introduce new bugs in the translation.
I can't count how many times I thought, "this looks exactly the same, why isn't it working?"
Just adapting your code to the new codebehind pattern will be challenging enough. A vast and worthwhile improvement, of course, but not trivial.
VB.NET and C# are so incredibly similar that technically the choice is almost irrelevant. Each language has some minor things they excel in, but overall, the two are practically identical, just with wildly different syntax.
With that said, I highly recommend going with C#, just because it's the language the .NET community really got behind. It will have the most books, websites, blogs, forums, you name it. Not having to translate the oodles of examples out there on the net into VB.NET alone makes C# a better choice. I think in my 10 years of being a .NET developer, I could count the number of people I've ran into that genuinely chose VB.NET on one hand. Most people that are using VB.NET are using it in a "stop gap" fashion, with the intention of ultimately going to C#.
Many people go for C# because they think that VB.Net and C# is only syntactically different which is just not true. VB.Net has better features for handling interactions with COM components for example, like optional parameters (these are now available in C# 4.0). But there are catches too in a line by line conversion of VB to VB.net. A very simple example is the array index. If I'm not mistaken array indexes start from 1 in vb and in vb.net it starts from 0 which causes horrible bugs. Overall, I'd definitely consider going for VB.Net even though I work basically in C#.
I know this question could be similar to others but really I'm looking for reasons why VB6 developers should switch to C#.
My company recently approved project to be written in C#, so we have a lot of VB.Net programmers, however, we have some legacy app developers as well that are in VB6. We have a time frame to re-write those apps into .Net web apps. So no matter what they will have to learn new stuff.
One of the developers today specifically asked "why should we switch to C#?"
I responded that the community largely has decided that C# is the way to go with about 80% of the examples in C#. I am a VB.Net programmer and I am excited to finally cut my teeth on C#, however, being that I'm so new I'm not sure I can answer the "why?" question. My reasons are more because I want to learn it.
So without descending into a VB verses C# I really am curious if there are any resources that I can send to these developers to calm their nerves.
Looking forward to your input!
As far as the migration over to .NET goes, better late than never! As far as my advice goes, your mileage may vary, it's worth every penny you're paying for it!
I personally believe you are making the correct choice. The first instinct for VB developers is to switch to VB.NET. That sounds entirely reasonable, but in my opinion, it's the wrong choice. You really have to break down the reasons for the switch into two categories: Why switch to .NET, and why switch to C#?
Why switch to .NET over VB6:
Multithreading in VB6 is technically possible from a programming perspective, but just about impossible if you want to use the IDE.
I do not believe you can create a 64-bit native application in VB6. That rules out a lot.
No new enhancements are being made to VB6.
OK, there are so many reasons I can think of, I'll probably just stop there.
Why switch to C# instead of VB.NET
Developers may be lulled into a false sense of familiarity with VB.NET - treating resources like they did in VB6 without understanding the full concepts. An example: you often see new converts to VB.NET setting objects to Nothing, believing that it's a magical way to release resources. It is not.
It's true that most examples are now in C#. More importantly, Jeff Richter's book is only in C# now. If you want to understand how .NET really works, IMO his book is pretty much mandatory.
In .NET, you'll find that you will use lambda expressions all of the time, especially when operating with Linq. IMO VB's verbosity really becomes a barrier to comprehension and readability here, in ways where it simply wasn't before: foo.Select(x => x > 50) is, by just about any standard, much more fluent and readable than foo.Select(Function(x) x > 50). It gets worse as the expressions get more complex.
Some of the worst practices with VB6 are impossible or at least much less accessible in C# (such as ReDim Preserve and On Error Resume Next).
VB is saddled with some syntax which makes it pretty cumbersome and confusing to use when creating general-purpose CLR libraries. For example, in C#, you use indexers with brackets[]. In VB, you use parens. That makes it pretty difficult for the user of a subroutine to tell if it's an indexer or a function. If someone tried to use your library outside of VB, the difference would be important, but a VB developer might be inclined to create subroutines which should be indexers as functions, since they look similar.
I don't have any data on this, but if you are trying to hire a good set of programmers, the best ones will generally be less inclined to work in a shop which writes VB.NET over C#. They usually fear that the code their colleagues will be generating is likely to be substandard .NET code, and let's be frank here -- there's a stigma against VB.NET developers and the quality of their code in the community. There. I said it. Let the flames begin...
As a footnote, from my perspective, VB.NET was a real missed opportunity for MS. What it should have been was a way to seamlessly convert your old VB6 code to the .NET world - with dynamic invocation and high-quality COM interop from the start. What it ended up being was a near-clone of C#'s feature set with a more verbose syntax and little to no backward compatibility. Sad, really. It locked a lot of organizations out of .NET for a long time. Then again, maybe it forced a "cold-turkey" clean break from the past...
I've done a LOT of VB6 in the past, and a lot of C/C++, and when our big .NET migration happened I had no doubts that C# was the way to go. Having said that, what the VB6 guys should really be learning is .NET, and the CLR (a proper object-oriented runtime rather than a dumb COM front-end), and not a syntax. Focus on that, and sidestep the religious war.
This may not answer your question, in fact it may even contradict your response and prove your friend right, but here is a good list of the similarities (and differences) between VB.NET and C#:
C# / VB.NET comparison
As you go down this list, you will notice just how similar the two languages have become and with each new version, there may be less and less of a reason to switch. But, in the end, if you do make the switch, the Wikipedia article pretty much summarizes the advantages that C# has over VB.NET quite well:
Wikipedia article listing advantages of C# over VB and vice versa
The VB.net events syntax seems much nicer than C#; though the lack of any means for a class to either unsubscribe all WithEvents handlers to which it has subscribed, or kill all subscriptions other objects have to its events, makes it a little tough to avoid event leaks, it's no worse than C# in that regard.
Also, in vb.net, it's possible to have a Finally handler know what exception occurred (if any) in its Try block without having to actually catch it. If any exceptions occurs in the Finally block, the original exception can be included in the CleanupFailedException (along with the other exception(s) that occurred in the Finally block). That seems like a nice advantage.
"Developers may be lulled into a false sense of familiarity with VB.NET - treating resources like they did in VB6 without understanding the full concepts." (#Markle)
I haven't used this for an argument before, but it's a very good point. When I picked up a VB.NET app written by a bunch of new-to-.net VB programmers, it was littered with legacy compatibility calls to the old VisualBasic namespace. CStr(), VbNewLine, Mid(), etc... Working in a language which isn't designed to support legacy code conversion prevents the use of those relics. (So does removing the reference to the legacy namespace, FYI.)
I switch between VB.NET and C# pretty regularly. Whenever I go from VB to C#, I think "This is different, it'll take me a few minutes to adjust." Whenever I go from C# to VB, I think "This is an inefficient programming language; there's way too much typing required, how annoying."
I think the other answers have done a good job of covering the technical points. I would also point out to your vb6 developers that there are not only more books aimed at c# and more questions on SO on c#, but perhaps more importantly to them, more job listings as well.
A quick search on SO careers:
92 job postings for c#
11 job postings for vb.net
1 job posting for vb6
reasons why VB6 developers should switch to C#
Others have given technical reasons for C# over VB.NET, but I think you are dealing with a people issue, so I'll offer what I think is the most compelling reason why the developers should prefer it:
C# developers get paid more than VB.NET developers, for doing exactly the same thinking, just typing different source code after doing that thinking
Also
ReSharper for C# is better than ReSharper for VB.NET
Other than technical / social advantage is more business oriented,
Mainstream support for VB6 already ended and Extended support which is surely expensive would end soon.
Moving to a new platform in this case make more business sense.
Also the IDE is no more supported by microsoft so in case of issue you would be SOL, and installing it on shiny new laptop might provide an unenjoyable experience.
Note that they don't need to port every application, only deprecate the part that need to be replaced with com exposed .Net assemblies.
On the other hand having experience in porting software from obsolete platform to a new one will make these guys rich, providing they are willing to learn the new platform.
The biggest advantage C# has over VB6 proper has got to be inheritance.
(OK, to be fair it's my personal favourite, so I am totally biased.)
Other advantages:
Formal accessors
Exception types (I don't think VB6 has exception types, but please correct me if I'm wrong)
Generics
Lambda expressions
And the following are more related to the .NET platform than languages themselves:
Very rich library
Visual Studio refactoring and other goodies
Finally, the popularity argument is always icky (popular <> good), but it does give an idea of the community size of each and therefore what help is available out there and what the industry is going towards in general.
Questions on SO:
[C#]: 116,337
[VB.NET]: 11,740
[VB6]: 1,897
VB6 is not fully object oriented and lacks a decent set of collections/structures. VB.Net and C# are both fully object oriented and include a decent set of collection classes as a part of .NET. .NET 2 also added generics for even more flexibility.
I would agree with those who think VB.Net is a bit superfluous - it fixed the problems with VB6 and ended up being a bit of a "me too" alongside C#. Having said that, I do a lot of COM interop and find VB.Net's old fashioned ON ERROR construct a convenient way of handling timeouts and function retries. You can do it with try...catch just it is more complex.
Questions on SO:
[C#]: 116,337
[VB.NET]: 11,740
[VB6]: 1,897
That proves nothing.
VB6 existed long before SO did. All the good VB programmers learned what they need to know and MSFT had done away with VB6. Most of the new MSFT beginners flocked to C# because of their irrational hatred of anything BASIC (that still exits - just look at Xojo) and of course MSFT marketing.
But how do they feel now with C# getting short change compared to C++ on the Windows 8 platform? (eg XNA is gone).
The market pretty much demands C# over VB.net.
I'm not considering this - I'm comfortable with C# and VB, but an expert in neither. But, some on my team have expressed an intention to do this since we're moving toward C# as a standard.
Hell's no. Just an absolute waste of time.
I would use VB over C# (or C# over VB) only if the language enabled functionality that was not available in the other.
For example, making late bound calls to COM interop objects is much easier in VB than it is in C# (although that is going to change in C# 4.0).
That being said, I'd stick with the language that your team is using, or what you prefer (if that is an option).
Sounds like a recipe for disaster or at least countless WTF-moments with no actual gains.
.net Assemblies are compatible regardless of language (it's all IL at the end anyway), so there is no gain from that.
I would get comfortable in C#, which shouldn't take too long. Writing in VB and then converting would just be a waste of time IMO.
Besides, what happens when they need to read some C# code if they're not comfortable in the language?
I would not do this. I would start using C#.
It is easier to go from programmer's intent to source in either language than it is to go from one to the other.
You should use the language you intend to use.
There are other considerations not mentioned. Notably, if you're converting your VB code to C# using automated software, you can count on there being numerous conversion issues. Do not let anyone lure you into a false sense of confidence regarding the amount of work that conversion entails: VB.NET and C# are further apart from each other than you may think. Converting from one language to the other will introduce a large amount of work into your schedule, and will possibly rewrite portions of your code in unexpected ways.
Take it from someone who's done it.
If you don't have a truly compelling reason to port your existing code to C#, it's likely far more cost effective to leave it in that language, and simply write newer code in C#. Also, if your developers aren't entirely comfortable with the change to the new language, you may have to deal with the discomfort that some of them may feel. Whether we agree with it or not, some employees may feel so strongly about it that they will leave, which will incur a signficiant cost when you have to replace them.
Just my two cents.
I would be opposed to that approach.
If the intent is to move to C# as a standard why wait to start using it? I also find it far too easy to imagine the conversion never happening. When it comes to crunch time and the choice is between converting and adding/fixing features then conversion is likely the first to go.
In the vein of it being a people problem. Why the move to C# in the first place? Are you sure everyone is on board with that being the standard?
As a huge fan of VB I would say that this is essentially a very bad idea. If C# is being used, write in C#.
Actually, .NET makes it quite easy to mix multiple languages in one project as long as it is divided into multiple assemblies. A priori nothing speaks against this practice. However, as soon as one language is established as a standard in the project, all developers should stick to it.
Converting is a waste of time and money since there exist no automatic, error-free conversion tools (that I am aware of) so it would always involve some manual post-processing. This shouldn't be acceptable. Additionally, learning C# when you know VB is pretty straightforward and shouldn't create a barrier that offsets the cost of converting code.
I wouldn't recommend it. It just doubles the work imho.
If you need two different applications to talk to each other, I suggest using web-services or some open format (XML) for transporting data. That way you can keep both VB and C# apps.
I prefer C# but if the majority of developers are VB.NET guys, why are you moving to C#? That will be a learning curve with no gain in productivity. Also I am assuming the majority are VB.NET people, if not well then you have a huge PR nightmare on your hands.
The approach we have is the VB.NET guys develop in VB.NET and the C# guys in C#, we are lucky enough to have well defined modules which can interact on the IL level without any issues.
No. NO! Just... say... no.
My boss suggested that at one point because many of the engineers (note.. structural engineers, NOT programmers) knew VB6 and were comfortable with VB, but he wanted to use C# as a standard.
I immediately wanted to deck him to knock some sense into him, however I restrained myself and calmly discussed the options with him. I was finally able to convince him that -- while .NET is .NET -- VB.NET with slices of VB6 that the users are sure to squeeze in for "ease of coding" is NOT the same as C#.NET.
There are enough differences that -- at least for us -- the learning curve of C# was worth the time instead of the coding curve of converting from one .NET language to another.
I've been jumping from C# to Java an awful lot and the "differences" between the two are a bit of an annoyance.
Would it be possible to write a set of extentions/plugins that would merge the two languages syntaxes.
I'm talking about adding either IDE support or using language constructs that would for example:
treat these two lines equivalently:
System.out.println("Blah");
Console.out.writeline("Blah");
Automatically notice that when you type in string you mean String
Recognise common API calls and translate them in the background.
The end goal being to be able to write a java/C# program and to pick at compile time which VM/Runtime you are targeting.
If you could do this would it be a good idea?
If not why not?
The two languages are so similar it's painful in some aspects but in other aspects they are really different.
I've seen Code that will translate a C# project into Java and I'm assuming there is probably the reverse, what I am proposing is a middle ground, so we can all just "get along".
No, absolutely not. Certainly not in the languages themselves (as implied by the title) and preferably (IMO) not in the IDEs (as requested in the body).
They are different languages. The idioms and conventions are subtly different. I don't want to be thinking in Java when I'm writing C# or vice versa. I believe developers should be actively encouraged to separate their thinking. It's not too hard to switch between the two, but that switch should be present, IMO.
While I totally agree with Jon Skeet, if you must have this why not create your own library of Java API so you can create System.out namespace which has a method call printLn which calls Console.Writeline()?
That gets you close to what you want.
Just because Java and C# share some similar syntax you need to see past this and think in terms of Java Platform and .NET Platform. The two are distinctly different, so my answer is definitely not.
There actually already is a Java language for the .NET framework, developed by microsoft: J#
This way you get the java-syntax but you are still developing with the .NET framework.
But i am not recommending anyone to use it.
I knew Java before i knew C# so i tried out J# because i thought it would be an easier transition. At first I liked it but after I tried C# I'm never going back. First of all, nobody uses J# so it's kinda hard to find examples and tutorials. Second, C# has (IMO) much more convenient syntax, specially for events, properties, lambda, anonymus methods and alot of other things, it's also being updated every now and then with even more syntax sugar which i don't think J# is.
Maybe if you often write Java and sometimes have to write a .net app it might be a good option.
I think no. I also switch from java to c#. But if the syntax is identical was is to stop someone from trying to compile c# in a Java compiler, or vice-versa.
Visual Studio actually ships with a Java to C# converter, which tries to do some of the things you mention. Unfortunately it fails miserably (1) for anything beyond the simple hello world application.
Despite being very similar on the surface, there are many significant differences between Java and C#, so you would achieve very little by doing what you suggest imo.
(1) To be fair, it actually does a fairly good job if you consider the limitations given for such a task, but in practice the resulting code is of limited use and you have to do a lot of clean up after the conversion.
Firstly what you are describing is not a difference in language syntax but a differences in class libraries. Both languages are relatively simple in terms of keywords and features but understanding or knowing the libraries and how they operate requires considerable learning.
The mistakes you are describing are things that the developer should not be making to begin with - the IDE should not be guessing. There are going to be many cases where you can't easily / trivially translate between java or dotnet. In the end a skilled developer learns and knows when and which class libraries to use.
Actually in the beginning there was no dotnet - microsoft was behind java. They however proceeded to change java in ways not compatible with the java plstform standard. To paraphrase sun sued microsoft and won I'm court. Following that ms proceeded to create dotnet and particularly c# which became microsofts VM platform. Of course along the way a whole stack of things got changed. Microsoft introduced many things which broke Javas run anywhere etc. They have done the same thing with dotnet which have cause problems for the mono team to be able to faithfully reimplemwnt everything for other non windows platforms.
• String vs string.
• lowercase method names (java) v uppercase method names(dotnet).
• Giving java keywords new names - "package".
In the end dotnet was microsoft response so they can control the platform and do their own thing instead of following a standar
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I wonder why would a C++, C#, Java developer want to learn a dynamic language?
Assuming the company won't switch its main development language from C++/C#/Java to a dynamic one what use is there for a dynamic language?
What helper tasks can be done by the dynamic languages faster or better after only a few days of learning than with the static language that you have been using for several years?
Update
After seeing the first few responses it is clear that there are two issues.
My main interest would be something that is justifiable to the employer as an expense.
That is, I am looking for justifications for the employer to finance the learning of a dynamic language. Aside from the obvious that the employee will have broader view, the
employers are usually looking for some "real" benefit.
A lot of times some quick task comes up that isn't part of the main software you are developing. Sometimes the task is one off ie compare this file to the database and let me know the differences. It is a lot easier to do text parsing in Perl/Ruby/Python than it is in Java or C# (partially because it is a lot easier to use regular expressions). It will probably take a lot less time to parse the text file using Perl/Ruby/Python (or maybe even vbscript cringe and then load it into the database than it would to create a Java/C# program to do it or to do it by hand.
Also, due to the ease at which most of the dynamic languages parse text, they are great for code generation. Sure your final project must be in C#/Java/Transact SQL but instead of cutting and pasting 100 times, finding errors, and cutting and pasting another 100 times it is often (but not always) easier just to use a code generator.
A recent example at work is we needed to get data from one accounting system into our accounting system. The system has an import format, but the old system had a completely different format (fixed width although some things had to be matched). The task is not to create a program to migrate the data over and over again. It is to shove the data into our system and then maintain it there going forward. So even though we are a C# and SQL Server shop, I used Python to convert the data into the format that could be imported by our application. Ultimately it doesn't matter that I used python, it matters that the data is in the system. My boss was pretty impressed.
Where I often see the dynamic languages used for is testing. It is much easier to create a Python/Perl/Ruby program to link to a web service and throw some data against it than it is to create the equivalent Java program. You can also use python to hit against command line programs, generate a ton of garbage (but still valid) test data, etc.. quite easily.
The other thing that dynamic languages are big on is code generation. Creating the C#/C++/Java code. Some examples follow:
The first code generation task I often see is people using dynamic languages to maintain constants in the system. Instead of hand coding a bunch of enums, a dynamic language can be used to fairly easily parse a text file and create the Java/C# code with the enums.
SQL is a whole other ball game but often you get better performance by cut and pasting 100 times instead of trying to do a function (due to caching of execution plans or putting complicated logic in a function causing you to go row by row instead of in a set). In fact it is quite useful to use the table definition to create certain stored procedures automatically.
It is always better to get buy in for a code generator. But even if you don't, is it more fun to spend time cutting/pasting or is it more fun to create a Perl/Python/Ruby script once and then have that generate the code? If it takes you hours to hand code something but less time to create a code generator, then even if you use it once you have saved time and hence money. If it takes you longer to create a code generator than it takes to hand code once but you know you will have to update the code more than once, it may still make sense. If it takes you 2 hours to hand code, 4 hours to do the generator but you know you'll have to hand code equivalent work another 5 or 6 times than it is obviously better to create the generator.
Also some things are easier with dynamic languages than Java/C#/C/C++. In particular regular expressions come to mind. If you start using regular expressions in Perl and realize their value, you may suddenly start making use of the Java regular expression library if you haven't before. If you have then there may be something else.
I will leave you with one last example of a task that would have been great for a dynamic language. My work mate had to take a directory full of files and burn them to various cd's for various customers. There were a few customers but a lot of files and you had to look in them to see what they were. He did this task by hand....A Java/C# program would have saved time, but for one time and with all the development overhead it isn't worth it. However slapping something together in Perl/Python/Ruby probably would have been worth it. He spent several hours doing it. It would have taken less than one to create the Python script to inspect each file, match which customer it goes to, and then move the file to the appropriate place.....Again, not part of the standard job. But the task came up as a one off. Is it better to do it yourself, spend the larger amount of time to make Java/C# do the task, or spend a much smaller amount of time doing it in Python/Perl/Ruby. If you are using C or C++ the point is even more dramatic due to the extra concerns of programming in C or C++ (pointers, no array bounds checking, etc.).
Let me turn your question on its head by asking what use it is to an American English speaker to learn another language?
The languages we speak (and those we program in) inform the way we think. This can happen on a fundamental level, such as c++ versus javascript versus lisp, or on an implementation level, in which a ruby construct provides a eureka moment for a solution in your "real job."
Speaking of your real job, if the market goes south and your employer decides to "right size" you, how do you think you'll stack up against a guy who is flexible because he's written software in tens of languages, instead of your limited exposure? All things being equal, I think the answer is clear.
Finally, you program for a living because you love programming... right?
I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet. Learning a new language can be fun! Surely that's a good enough reason to try something new.
I primarily program in Java and C# but use dynamic languages (ruby/perl) to support smoother deployment, kicking off OS tasks, automated reporting, some log parsing, etc.
After a short time learning and experimenting with ruby or perl you should be able to write some regex manipulating scripts that can alter data formats or grab information from logs. An example of a small ruby/perl script that could be written quickly would be a script to parse a very large log file and report out only a few events of interest in either a human readable format or a csv format.
Also, having experience with a variety of different programming languages should help you think of new ways to tackle problems in more structured languages like Java, C++, and C#.
One big reason to learn Perl or Ruby is to help you automate any complicated tasks that you have to do over and over.
Or if you have to analyse contents of log files and you need more mungeing than available using grep, sed, etc.
Also using other languages, e.g. Ruby, that don't have much "setup cost" will let you quickly prototype ideas before implementing them in C++, Java, etc.
HTH
cheers,
Rob
Do you expect to work for this company forever? If you're ever out on the job market, pehaps some prospective employers will be aware of the Python paradox.
A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.
- Wayne Gretzky
Our industry is always changing. No language can be mainstream forever. To me Java, C++, .Net is where the puck is right now. And python, ruby, perl is where the puck is going to be. Decide for yourself if you wanna be good or great!
Paul Graham posted an article several years ago about why Python programmers made better Java programmers. (http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html)
Basically, regardless of whether the new language is relevant to the company's current methodology, learning a new language means learning new ideas. Someone who is willing to learn a language that isn't considered "business class" means that he is interested in programming, beyond just earning a paycheck.
To quote Paul's site:
And people don't learn Python because
it will get them a job; they learn it
because they genuinely like to program
and aren't satisfied with the
languages they already know.
Which makes them exactly the kind of
programmers companies should want to
hire. Hence what, for lack of a better
name, I'll call the Python paradox: if
a company chooses to write its
software in a comparatively esoteric
language, they'll be able to hire
better programmers, because they'll
attract only those who cared enough to
learn it. And for programmers the
paradox is even more pronounced: the
language to learn, if you want to get
a good job, is a language that people
don't learn merely to get a job.
If an employer was willing to pay for the cost of learning a new language, chances are the people who volunteered to learn (assuming it wasn't a mandatory class) would be the same people to are already on the "fast track".
When I first learned Python, I worked for a Java shop. Occasionally I'd have to do serious text-processing tasks which were much easier to do with quick Python scripts than Java programs. For example, if I had to parse a complex CSV file and figure out which of its rows corresponded to rows in our Oracle database, this was much easier to do with Python than Java.
More than that, I found that learning Python made me a much better Java programmer; having learned many of the same concepts in another language I feel that I understand those concepts much better. And as for what makes Python easier than Java, you might check out this question: Java -> Python?
Edit: I wrote this before reading the update to the original question. See my other answer for a better answer to the updated question. I will leave this as is as a warning against being the fastest gun in the west =)
Over a decade ago, when I was learning the ways of the Computer, the Old Wise Men With Beards explained how C and C++ are the tools of the industry. No one used Pascal and only the foolhardy would risk their companies with assembler.
And of course, no one would even mention the awful slow ugly thing called Java. It will not be a tool for serious business.
So. Um. Replace the languages in the above story and perhaps you can predict the future. Perhaps you can't. Point is, Java will not be the Last Programming Language ever and also you will most likely switch employers as well. The future is charging at you 24 hours per day. Be prepared.
Learning new languages is good for you. Also, in some cases it can give you bragging rights for a long time. My first university course was in Scheme. So when people talk to me about the new language du jour, my response is something like "First-class functions? That's so last century."
And of course, you get more stuff done with a high-level language.
Learning a new language is a long-term process. In a couple of days you'll learn the basics, yes. But! As you probably know, the real practical applicability of any language is tied to the standard library and other available components. Learning how to use the efficiently requires a lot of hands-on experience.
Perhaps the only immediate short-term benefit is that developers learn to distinguish the nails that need a Python/Perl/Ruby -hammer. And, if they are any good, they can then study some more (online, perhaps!) and become real experts.
The long-term benefits are easier to imagine:
The employee becomes a better developer. Better developer => better quality. We are living in a knowledge economy these days. It's wiser to invest in those brains that already work for you.
It is easier to adapt when the next big language emerges. It is very likely that the NBL will have many of the features present in today's scripting languages: first-class functions, closures, streams/generators, etc.
New market possibilities and ability to respond more quickly. Even if you are not writing Python, other people are. Your clients? Another vendor in the project? Perhaps a critical component was written in some other language? It will cost money and time, if you do not have people who can understand the code and interface with it.
Recruitment. If your company has a reputation of teaching new and interesting stuff to people, it will be easier to recruit the top people. Everyone is doing Java/C#/C++. It is not a very effective way to differentiate yourself in the job market.
Towards answering the updated question, its a chicken/egg problem. The best way to justify an expense is to show how it reduces a cost somewhere else, so you may need to spend some extra/personal time to learn something first to build some kind of functional prototype.
Show your boss a demo like "hey, i did this thing, and it saves me this much time [or better yet, this much $$], imagine if everyone could use this how much money we would save"
and then after they agree, explain how it is some other technology and that it is worth the expense to get more training, and training for others on how to do it better.
I have often found that learning another language, especially a dynamically typed language, can teach you things about other languages and make you an overall better programmer. Learning ruby, for example, will teach you Object Oriented programming in ways Java wont, and vice versa. All in all, I believe that it is better to be a well rounded programmer than stuck in a single language. It makes you more valuable to the companies/clients you work for.
check out the answers to this thead:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76364/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-ski#84112
Learning new languages is about keeping an open mind and learning new ways of doing things.
Im not sure if this is what you are looking for, but we write our main application with Java at the small company I work for, but have used python to write smaller scripts quickly. Backup software, temporary scripts to manipulate data and push out results. It just seems easier sometimes to sit down with python and write a quick script than mess with classes and stuff in java.
Temp scripts that aren't going to stick around don't need a lot of design time wasted on them.
And I am lazy, but it is good to just learn as much as you can of course and see what features exist in other languages. Knowing more never hurts you in future career changes :)
It's all about broadening your horizons as a developer. If you limit yourself to only strong-typed languages, you may not end up the best programmer you could.
As for tasks, Python/Lua/Ruby/Perl are great for small simple tasks, like finding some files and renaming them. They also work great when paired with a framework (e.g. Rails, Django, Lua for Windows) for developing simple apps quickly. Hell, 37Signals is based on creating simple yet very useful apps in Ruby on Rails.
They're useful for the "Quick Hack" that is for plugging a gap in your main language for a quick (and potentially dirty) fix faster than it would take to develop the same in your main language. An example: a simple script in perl to go through a large text file and replace all instances of an email address with another is trivial with an amount of time taken in the 10 minute range. Hacking a console app together to do the same in your main language would take multiples of that.
You also have the benefit that exposing yourself to additional languages broadens your abilities and learning to attack problems from a different languages perspective can be as valuable as the language itself.
Finally, scripting languages are very useful in the realm of extension. Take LUA as an example. You can bolt a lua interpreter into your app with very little overhead and you now have a way to create rich scripting functionality that can be exposed to end users or altered and distributed quickly without requiring a rebuild of the entire app. This is used to great effect in many games most notably World of Warcraft.
Personally I work on a Java app, but I couldn't get by without perl for some supporting scripts.
I've got scripts to quickly flip what db I'm pointing at, scripts to run build scripts, scripts to scrape data & compare stuff.
Sure I could do all that with java, or maybe shell scripts (I've got some of those too), but who wants to compile a class (making sure the classpath is set right etc) when you just need something quick and dirty. Knowing a scripting language can remove 90% of those boring/repetitive manual tasks.
Learning something with a flexible OOP system, like Lisp or Perl (see Moose), will allow you to better expand and understand your thoughts on software engineering. Ideally, every language has some unique facet (whether it be CLOS or some other technique) that enhances, extends and grows your abilities as a programmer.
If all you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail.
There are times when having a screwdriver or pair of pliers makes a complicated problem trivial.
Nobody asks contractors, carpenters, etc, "Why learn to use a screwdriver if i already have a hammer?". Really good contractors/carpenters have tons of tools and know how to use them well. All programmers should be doing the same thing, learning to use new tools and use them well.
But before we use any power tools, lets
take a moment to talk about shop safety. Be sure
to read, understand, and follow all the
safety rules that come with your power
tools. Doing so will greatly reduce
the risk of personal injury. And remember
this: there is no more important rule
than to wear these: safety glasses
-- Norm
I think the main benefits of dynamic languages can be boiled down to
Rapid development
Glue
The short design-code-test cycle time makes dynamic languages ideal for prototyping, tools, and quick & dirty one-off scripts. IMHO, the latter two can make a huge impact on a programmer's productivity. It amazes me how many people trudge through things manually instead of whipping up a tool to do it for them. I think it's because they don't have something like Perl in their toolbox.
The ability to interface with just about anything (other programs or languages, databases, etc.) makes it easy to reuse existing work and automate tasks that would otherwise need to be done manually.
Don't tell your employer that you want to learn Ruby. Tell him you want to learn about the state-of-the-art in web framework technologies. it just happens that the hottest ones are Django and Ruby on Rails.
I have found the more that I play with Ruby, the better I understand C#.
1) As you switch between these languages that each of them has their own constructs and philosophies behind the problems that they try to solve. This will help you when finding the right tool for the job or the domain of a problem.
2) The role of the compiler (or interpreter for some languages) becomes more prominent. Why is Ruby's type system differ from the .Net/C# system? What problems do each of these solve? You'll find yourself understanding at a lower level the constructs of the compiler and its influence on the language
3) Switching between Ruby and C# really helped me to understand Design Patterns better. I really suggest implementing common design patterns in a language like C# and then in a language like Ruby. It often helped me see through some of the compiler ceremony to the philosophy of a particular pattern.
4) A different community. C#, Java, Ruby, Python, etc all have different communities that can help engage your abilities. It is a great way to take your craft to the next level.
5) Last, but not least, because new languages are fun :)
Given the increasing focus to running dynamic languages (da-vinci vm etc.) on the JVM and the increasing number of dynamic languages that do run on it (JRuby, Grrovy, Jython) I think the usecases are just increasing. Some of the scenarios I found really benifited are
Prototyping- use RoR or Grails to build quick prototypes with advantage of being able to runn it on the standard app server and (maybe) reuse existing services etc.
Testing- right unit tests much much faster in dynamic languages
Performance/automation test scripting- some of these tools are starting to allow the use standard dynamic language of choice to write the test scripts instead of proprietary script languages. Side benefit might be to the able to reuse some unit test code you've already written.
Philosophical issues aside, I know that I have gotten value from writing quick-and-dirty Ruby scripts to solve brute-force problems that Java was just too big for. Last year I had three separate directory structures that were all more-or-less the same, but with lots of differences among the files (the client hadn't heard of version control and I'll leave the rest to your imagination).
It would have taken a great deal of overhead to write an analyzer in Java, but in Ruby I had one working in about 40 minutes.
Often, dynamc languages (especially python and lua) are embedded in programs to add a more plugin-like functionality and because they are high-level languages that make it easy to add certain behavior, where a low/mid-level language is not needed.
Lua specificially lacks all the low-level system calls because it was designed for easeof-use to add functionality within the program, not as a general programming language.
You should also consider learning a functional programming language like Scala. It has many of the advantages of Ruby, including a concise syntax, and powerful features like closures. But it compiles to Java class files and and integrate seamlessly into a Java stack, which may make it much easier for your employer to swallow.
Scala isn't dynamically typed, but its "implicit conversion" feature gives many, perhaps even all of the benefits of dynamic typing, while retaining many of the advantages of static typing.
Dynamic languages are fantastic for prototyping ideas. Often for performance reasons they won't work for permanent solutions or products. But, with languages like Python, which allow you to embed standard C/C++/Java inside them or visa versa, you can speed up the really critical bits but leave it glued together with the flexibility of a dynamic language.
...and so you get the best of both worlds. If you need to justify this in terms of why more people should learn these languages, just point out much faster you can develop the same software and how much more robust the solution is (because debugging/fixing problems in dynamic languages is in my experience, considerably easier!).
Knowing grep and ruby made it possible to narrow down a problem, and verify the fix for, an issue involving tons of java exceptions on some production servers. Because I threw the solution together in ruby, it was done (designed, implemented, tested, run, bug-fixed, re-run, enhanced, results analyzed) in an afternoon instead of a couple of days. I could have solved the same problem using an all-java solution or a C# solution, but it most likely would have taken me longer.
Having dynamic language expertise also sometimes leads you to simpler solutions in less dynamic languages. In ruby, perl or python, you just intuitively reach for associative arrays (hashes, dictionaries, whatever word you want to use) for the smallest things, where you might be tempted to create a complex class hierarchy in a statically typed language when the problem doesn't necessarily demand it.
Plus you can plug in most scripting languages into most runtimes. So it doesn't have to be either/or.
The "real benefit" that an employer could see is a better programmer who can implement solutions faster; however, you will not be able to provide any hard numbers to justify the expense and an employer will most likely have you work on what makes money now as opposed to having you work on things that make the future better.
The only time you can get training on the employer's dime, is when they perceive a need for it and it's cheaper than hiring a new person who already has that skill-set.