Short-circuiting in .NET
February 16th, 2010
In the Microsoft .NET Framework, regardless of the particular language in which you write your code, the compiler breaks it down into a lower-level language called CLR (Common Language Runtime). The most popular .NET languages are Visual Basic.NET and C#.NET, but because both are broken down in the same way, they’re identical by the time a program is run. Because of this, the particular language that you use is exclusively a matter of preference.
I’ve put in a good amount of time with both Visual Basic.NET and C#.NET, and my personal preference is C#.NET. Usually, developers gravitate toward the language that they’re most familiar with (which is often C#.NET for those who come from a C++ or Java background, and Visual Basic.NET for those who have a Visual Basic background). In my own case, it all comes down to a single gripe about Visual Basic.NET: it doesn’t handle “short-circuiting.”
Randall Davis
