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Visual C# for Visual Basic Programmers
Visual C# is a programming language that has roots in C but is object oriented like Java. Many keywords, symbols, and structures are borrowed from C.
If you’re a Visual Basic programmer, please don’t despair. Over time, Visual Basic and Visual C# have grown much closer, and switching between languages is much less of a burden than it once was. Both languages support the .NET Framework’s classes, and both can use Visual Studio’s programming environment.
Here are variables declared in Visual Basic:
Dim horizontalSpacing As Int32 = 16 Dim statusMessage As String = "OK"
And here are the same variables declared in Visual C#:
Int32 horizontalSpacing = 16; String statusMessage = "OK";
Each declaration contains the same information. The differences include word order, Visual Basic’s added Dim...As, and Visual C#’s line-ending semicolons.
In general, Visual C# tends to prefer symbols for operations where Visual Basic uses words. Here are some logical operators in Visual Basic and Visual C#:
| Logical Operation | AND |
OR |
XOR |
NOT |
Visual Basic |
And |
Or |
Xor |
Not |
Visual C# |
& |
| |
^ |
! |
Of course there are fine points that may trip you up at first. For example, when declaring an array’s size in Visual Basic, you specify the upper bound, while in Visual C#, you specify the number of elements. Here is a 4-byte array in Visual Basic:
Dim buffer As Byte() = New Byte(3)
and here is the same array in Visual C#:
Byte[] buffer = new Byte[4];
The resulting arrays are identical and support indexes 0–3.
If you get stuck on how to do something in C#, code converters such as the one at converter.telerik.com do a pretty good job of converting code snippets from Visual Basic to Visual C#.