Review: C# & VB.Net Conversion

I'm not sure about others, but I find quite often I need to convert from one language to the other. Now, I feel I'm fairly well versed in both C# and VB.Net; however, VB.Net is more natural for me because I originally started programming with VB 3.0.

I've taken the time to learn and apply some of my knowledge towards C#; and I'll admit there are some very nifty parts to C# that you won't find in VB.Net. But, the same goes with VB.Net having some features that C# lacks. I'm not writing this to debate which language is better; in my opinion both have their strong and weak points, and depending on the situation you may find one language will handle the requirements better than the other. It all seems to come down to personal taste; I've yet to meet a challenge that one language could perform that the other one could not. Now, I've had challenges where performing something was easier in one language over the other, but the other language could still perform the same feat with a little more ingenuity.

This all leads up to the fact that both languages have strong examples for certain features or code samples; and there are times when it is difficult to convert the language over. The other day I picked up a book from Amazon.com called "C# & VB.Net Conversion". To my surprise this book covers .Net 1.1 and earlier; yet, it still very much applies to converting code that is used in .Net 3.5 and earlier!

This book is well laid out, once you glance over the conventions used and table of contents. You can quickly find information for one language and then immediate see the equivalent feature (or method to accomplish this feature) for the other language.

I'd give this book a rating of 3.5 out of 5, only because I couldn't find a more recent version of the book. There have been some changes in both languages that make less than 10% of this book obsolete; so, this isn't the 'solve all conversion problems' book. But, my research indicates that as of this writing there isn't really a book that will do any more than the one I picked up.

I wanted to pass along this finding to anyone who reads this book and has a need to learn to convert between the two languages; it's well worth the time to read to make this process easier. Especially since you can get used versions of this book that are in great condition from Amazon.com for around $6 or less (including shipping).

Until next time, Happy Coding!