Visual Basic vs python

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 12, 2009 at 3:01pm

The reason is that VB and C# are the Microsoft defaults. They are awarded the most attention from the Microsoft core development teams.

VB is also much friendlier than Python (imho). I don't like languages which are case-sensitive and I certainly don't like languages that are indentation sensitive.

But, as with so many things in life, personal preference is not a good reason to make decisions for the collective. The real reasons why we have C# and VB available in the current version but not Python is two-fold:

1) The DotNET framework ships with compilers for VB and C#, but not for Python.
2) IronPython was breaking certain OOP rules, circumventing interfaces and calling methods on supposedly out of reach classes. This didn't play nice with the way the old Rhino SDK was structured causing very complicated crashes. As soon as we have a new SDK available which no longer has this weakness we'll re-instate the Python script component.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Seattle, WA

ps. Care to share why you feel that VB and C# are not 200x languages? The versions we're using all stem from 2005 and 2008.

Permalink Reply by Olivier Pasquet on October 13, 2009 at 4:40am

ooooh ok. I understand. Thanks for your clear answer!
I was a bit exaggerating when I wrote VB was not a 200x language. This is in fact because I do not know many people working with VB anymore. This is probably only a fact on my little planet.

O.///\

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on October 13, 2009 at 11:51am

watch out for D#!!!

Word on the street is that will Autodesks new language for live associative modelling in their current apps...at least autoCAD. Saw a demo in Berlin. Not sure how it will connect to the world outside of AutoCAD. I could not find much on it, just references to D.

Permalink Reply by Greg S on October 14, 2009 at 6:57am

I saw something a year ago from them and it was called F# at the time.

Permalink Reply by Marc Hoppermann on October 14, 2009 at 9:12am

Hey Luis,
I've seen the presentation, too and I have really enjoyed it but I am curious how long it will take them to implement it in their products... but definately worth following what they come up with...
I've uploaded his Robert Aish's paper of the conference for the ones that are interested in it.

I have to admit that it sounds like a great idea to develop a "design language" but for now I think that GH found the right balance between coding and a graphical way of dealing with the logic of a definition.

Attachments:

• D#_RobertAish.pdf, 955 KB

Permalink Reply by Damien Alomar on October 14, 2009 at 10:34am

Marc,

Thanks for the paper. Its definitely an interesting read as someone from the perspective of not only a designer, but an software developer as well. Where exactly did you get this paper, so that I can put it in the proper reference?

-Damien

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on October 14, 2009 at 4:56pm

Damien,
Marc is referencing from the CD which came with the book given at the Design Modelling Symposium Berlin 2009. The cd is a big PDF of the book.

Permalink Reply by Damien Alomar on October 14, 2009 at 6:38pm

Thanks Luis...Its great that they are starting to put all those proceedings in PDF form for the attendees of the conference. The ACADIA conference last year in Minneapolis did that and I thought it was great.

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on October 14, 2009 at 11:25am

There are several thing i don't agree with in that paper (who cares):

It's true there is no conscious intent in evolution by natural selection. There is no brain that holds a simulation of the natural world and can try to predict what would happen after taking action. But natural selection is designed, none the less. Living beings didn't just pop up randomly, they were designed by God... oops, no, not God. They were designed by the unconscious process of natural selection. Ok, this is probably a semantics issue, but we humans have a tendency to think that there has to be some sort of consciousness overseeing things for maximum efficiency, this is not necessarily so.

He also compares markets to evolution in the sense that markets can't look into the future. This is not true at all, in fact, a market grows BECAUSE humans can try to look into the future and predict future benefit in exchange for present self sacrifice and savings. The main problem is savings. Right now there is very little real savings so there is no incentive to invest in long term projects. The higher savings a society has, the higher demand for long term investments.

It is my complete irrational belief that if governments didn't interfere with markets, stimulated spending and devalued our currencies, the big businesses wouldn't be as obsessed with the next quarterly profit and have really cool investments only thought previously possible by governments (space exploration, etc.).