CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netoverlap
froadie
froadie

Reputation: 83053

What are the differences and similarities between the .NET languages?

I'm trying to figure out how much overlap there is between the different languages of the .NET framework, and what the real differences are. Is there an overlap of libraries/methods/functions...? If I'm googling a question for, say, VB .NET, and C# answers come up, what can I take from the C#-relevant info and what differences/incompatibilities should I look out for?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 450

Answers (5)

Max Strini
Max Strini

Reputation: 2338

C# vs. VB are very nearly semantically identical with fairly minor non-syntactic differences. F#, Powershell, Ruby and Python are rather different. F# is an interesting case: basically every C# feature maps to something in F# (sometimes in clever ways), but F# has its own features such as algebraic data types -- these do map to CLR constructs, but I'd class them as "semantic sugar" rather than "syntactic sugar"

Upvotes: 0

Leonidas
Leonidas

Reputation: 2438

Differences: some, for example the legacy-libraries for Visual Basic. See Hidden VB.Net-Features and Hidden C#.Net-Features for a nice compilation of unique things.

Overlap: Intermediate Language. There you'll find all .Net-Features combined and the languages are at this point all equal.

Upvotes: 0

ChrisF
ChrisF

Reputation: 137148

I know it's not directly answering your question, but there are various VB.NET <> C# translators freely available. So if you come across some code in C# (say) and you need it in VB.NET you could get it translated.

A search for "vb.net c# translator" yielded the following as the first few hits.

http://www.carlosag.net/Tools/CodeTranslator/

http://www.developerfusion.com/tools/convert/csharp-to-vb/

http://authors.aspalliance.com/aldotnet/examples/translate.aspx

A word of warning, like all machine translations the results should be double checked. However, having said that they might do a "good enough" job to get you started and over the initial hurdle.

Upvotes: 0

JeffH
JeffH

Reputation: 10482

There's a list of differences that claims to be complete here. And wikipedia has a page comparing them.

Upvotes: 3

FrustratedWithFormsDesigner
FrustratedWithFormsDesigner

Reputation: 27486

In theory, it should only be a syntactic difference, since they all get boiled down to the same runtime language. In reality, there might be some features not implemented in all languages, but I don't actually know of any.

Might be more details here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308470

Upvotes: 1

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