Microsoft backs off changes to VB.Net

by Carol Sliwa

April 10, 2001 —

In response to developer feedback, Microsoft Corp. has retreated from some changes to Visual Basic.Net.

Microsoft had planned to make the modifications to make Visual Basic (VB) consistent with other languages, such as C++, according to product manager Ari Bixhorn.

However, developers told Microsoft they would prefer to see those parts of Visual Basic.Net remain the same as they are in Visual Basic 6.0.

When Microsoft releases the second beta version of Visual Basic.Net, developers will find the following:

• The value of "true" won't be changed to 1 and instead will remain -1, as it is in VB 6.0.

• Planned VB.Net modifications to the words and and or will be scrapped. Microsoft had planned to change the behavior of the words to function only as logical operators, and it planned to add new operators for bitwise operations. Instead, the Boolean operators and and or will remain the same as they are in VB 6.0.

• Arrays, or collections of elements, will be declared by specifying the upper boundary, as they are in VB 6.0. For instance, an array numbered from 0 to 10 would carry the number 10. In VB.Net, Microsoft had planned to make a change so that the number of elements would be declared. As such, a 10-element array would have been numbered from 0 to 9.

Computerworld