Visual Basic and SharpDevelop

[357mag]

I will probably be using SharpDevelop to work in C# and I'm getting the impression that you can actually use SharpDevelop to work in Visual Basic as well? Is this correct?

I thought Visual Basic was owned by Microsoft and the only way to get it was to buy their IDE and compiler.

[Hack]

Apparently not...

http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/

[357mag]

I found it. The VB.NET folder was hiding at the bottom of the window. Now if SharpDevelop could just implement C++ that would be great.

[JBourgeois]

You are right, contrary to C#, that was made public soon after the launch of the first version of the framework, Visual Basic belongs to Microsoft.

This means that nobody can create a compiler or the equivalent of the Microsoft.VisualBasic library.

However, as I see it, SharpDevelop is simply a text editor in which some features have been added to it.

Note that ShapDevelop works only in a Windows environment. Since the VB compiler is provided with the framework (you do not need Visual Studio, you could program in Notepad if you wanted to), SharpDevelop does provides its own compiler, but simply calls the default one.

Now, the question is: why should you use that stuff, when Visual Studio Express is free, more powerful, and would provide a direct upgrade path to a bigger version of Visual Studio should you ever need to do more?

[357mag]

I have Visual Studio. It's bloated and Microsoft's online help is not very helpful. It's extremely confusing. It even takes at least 20 minutes to install Visual Studio.

I don't need to use XP Service Pack 3 either, which you do with Visual Express.

I think SharpDevelop is pretty cool really.