Thanks Eric for acknowledging my post.
Eric, sorry about misusing Mort and Matt. I didn’t see the comments of Peter Torr and your responses until after I wrote my long rambling post (yes I agree, it was long and rambling, intentionally.)
Actually, I feel my comments apply both to Matt and Mort. Mort still has to deal with learning curves; I’ve seen many Morts stuck in a rut of doing something that same old way simply because they don’t have time or won’t take the initiative to learn newer techniques. Making those newer techniques easier to learn would minimize this problem.
Further, you reference that you are going to eschew whimsical names in the future. I for one think they help, but then I am probably heavily influenced by Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm which has oft been referred to as “The High Tech Marketer’s Bible.” Moore recommends segmenting prospective customers and then naming each one so that it is easier to get a mental picture when discussing. Clearly that is what you at MS have done internally, and I think it helps.
Next, you said:
“And Mike has good ideas — of course, I only say that because I proposed most of them to the VB.NET team years ago. :)”
My response: “Only?!?” :)
And you further state:
“Based on that experience, I absolutely 100% disagree that fracturing VB into a FOURTH variant — VB6, VBScript, VB.NET and the proposed VBScript.NET — is a good way to achieve the laudable goal of lessening the VB learning curve. We can improve VB without fracturing it into yet another variant.”
I’m not necessarily going to disagree. Maybe the things I suggested can just be added to VB.NET? Really all I was suggesting was a layer on top of VB.NET anyway. I definitely don’t want to see a VBScript.NET that forks off VB.NET.
However, you didn’t address the IDE. VS.NET is just far too difficult for many, and I honestly can’t see it ever being easy enough for the occupational programmer and and powerful enough for the professional programmer. Just like there was a need for WebMatrix, there is a need for something for would-be scripters.
So in summary, though I think it would be cool to have a VBScript.NET as I proposed, I more just wanted to bring the issues to the surface because I hadn’t seen anyone address the issue of the .NET and the occupational programmer anywhere else. Thanks again Eric for your comments.