Coding Horror: Choosing between .NET Pepsi and .NET Coke

February 17, 2006

Choosing between .NET Pepsi and .NET Coke

I've increasingly come to believe that the debate between C# and VB.NET is a red herring. Choosing between C# and VB.NET isn't a meaningful choice. It's like choosing between .NET Pepsi and .NET Coke.

Pepsi vs. Coke

Either way, you're getting a cola flavored carbonated beverage.

If C# is Coke and VB.NET is Pepsi, then Python is Yoohoo. It's more than mild differences in syntax. It's a completely dynamic language with Duck typing where indentation is used in place of squigglies or End statements.

Wasn't this the promise of the .NET runtime-- that we'd have real, meaningful choice of language? That's why I'm so excited about IronPython. IronPython has been a fine proof of concept, but it had no IDE integration. Until now.

As documented in Aaron Marten's blog, the latest CTP of the Visual Studio SDK finally makes Python a first-class citizen in the Visual Studio 2005 IDE:

Visual Studio 2005 New Python Project

And here's the requisite Hello World example:

Visual Studio 2005 Python 'Hello World' Project

I can't see any obvious way to build a web or winforms app in Python yet. But it's coming.

Posted by Jeff Atwood View blog reactions

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Comments

Python and C#/VB are totally different types of languages! This blog only shows you don't know the difference.

Try comparing PHP and Python.

Teekey on May 24, 2007 5:19 AM

Can the above poster be serious? Did you not mention Python is like Yoohoo.... As far as I'm concerned Pepsi and Yoohoo are totally different beverages.

Shane on December 3, 2007 1:11 PM

the first poster must either be on drugs or trolling

lars on March 9, 2008 11:49 AM

I think c# is faster than all other languages.

Juegos on August 13, 2008 3:30 PM

Juegos,
Lke Jeff says, there's no meaningful difference between C# and VB.NET (at least there wasn't when he made this posting originally, since then MS have widened the gap somewhat to address the marketing problems inherent in having two such closely related languages). There's no reason why C# would be faster - write some code in both and look at the generated IL to see how "different" they are.

tragomaskhalos on August 13, 2008 3:50 PM