). I have also expereience with other langauges, but this is the stuff that i have stuck with. Anyway, needless to say, I was very displeased. When i entered this course i thought, well hell, okay, a free class to do hwk in, since i know everything in there anyway. Well, i was partially wrong, this has proven to be by far the most demanding class (although this might be just because i genuinely care about this course mark and wish to do my best), and it has given me new perspectives on stuff. Having said that, VB still sux 
Okay, first of all, I better go on to elaborate on why VB sux, or I will not be presenting much of an intelligent post, and probably collecting a basketful of flames from VB devotees. The concept of VB is great, but the implementation is poor. In fact (and plz correct if im wrong, even though this fact isnt really all that relevent, and maybe not fact at all) I think it was Borland with their Delphi that first invented that concept of plopping components onto forms. This is a great idea, and for business applications, it makes sense. MS, despite being a billion dollar corporation with more power than the governments of many countries, have created a product far inferior to Delphi. Let''s list a few quick major reasons why Delphi is better, and if you haven''t tried this language, give it a few months of serious learning before you disagree, and be prepared to humble urself
Language
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Borland chose to base their language on Pascal, a language that, while not quite as good as C++ IMO, is sufficiently versatile, neat, and best of all, still not too difficult to learn. MS chose BASIC. Of all the languages in the world, they chose the one that would give them the most trouble. It is not a powerful language, MS had to extend it quite a bit in VB, and programming in it requires far too much typing. The language has far too many oddities, and Visual Basic continues this tradition with even more catches such as "you can''t have an array of withevent objects" and "variables of types with dynamically allocated arrays or variable length strings cant be public". It adds up to an awkward language that requires a lot of awkward solutions. In comparison, Delphi does things relatively neatly.
Components
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Components in Visual Basic are few and poorly featured. VB starts up with a tiny library of only the most basic of Windows controls, and these controls are not implemented as well as their Delphi counterparts. If you wish to add more components, you must go through the process of right clicking, selecting the components thingy, and finding ur component from a list of sometimes cryptic names. And even then, that list is not nearly as big as the rich library of components which Borland have thougtfully included with Delphi. The Delphi IDE is friendly and powerful, and the creation of a form is a pleasure in itself. The VB IDE, while not that horrible either, once again falls short of Delphi, with a few awkward interface "bugs" and clunky project/properties windows. Learning how to use the blasted thing effectively needs a book in itself.
Okay, I''m typing too much and I still have a lot of work in *ick* VB to do for school. The above two heading encompass a lot. If your a VB programmer, go and try Delphi, you might like it!
As far as the C++ vs VB debate goes, it is pointless. C++ is good at what it is used for (games, scientific stuff, etc) while VB does what it is meant for lucklusterly and in the typical Microsoft spirit of "good enuff, but not great, but also severly bloated"
And in response to what can C++ do that VB can''t? Okay, pointers were mentioned as was bitshift. Those two are critical, so lets explore them first:
bitshift: the VB programmer says "but you can use multiplication". The C++ programmer says "but we are using bitshift to avoid multiplication!". Multiplication and division are horrible speed suckers, taking many many many times more cpu cycles than a humble bitshift. When you are in ur main game loop, every cycle counts, and since game calculations (and other speed critical programs) often require much multiplying, the bitshift is a huge performance increase. I was forced to pre-multiply all my coordinate calculations and put them in an array in my Tetris game in VB, because of no bitshifting (performance with multiplication was dismal). The fact that bitshifting is a standard CPU instruction since men (and women) starting walking on two legs, this is a real insult towards VB.
Pointers: Okay, get a book on pointers, they are one of the single most powerful constructs, and their implementation in C and C++ plays a large role in the language''s huge acceptance. From dynamically allocated memory to complex data structures and alogorithms, pointers are incredibly powerful and fast.
Okay, now here are some of the C++ features that I have been crying for since forced into the world of VB:
Assembly! Why the hell not? Near as I can tell, (and i researched this a lot), there is no way to insert assembly directly into ur vb code the same way you can in C++ with Asm (correct me if im wrong once again, but u vb programmers, if u have such knowledge, have never revealed it to me before). This just hurts, because sometimes, (and quite often in a language like VB) u just need assembly.
Proper OOP: I must admit VB6 objects aren''t that bad, but they aren''t as good as C++. The thing is C++ objects work, but whenever i try to use a VB object concept, such as adding events, i get hit in the face with a lot of errors that shows typical MS programming. For example (yes, this is a big pain in the neck), withevents objects cant be arrays! This is ridiculous, espeically since u can have control arrays. This sort of half-done coding that results in all these weird catches is really annoying.
Disclaimer:
Obviously im not an expert VB programmer, so some of the things i may have said are not entirely true, but whenever u have to correct me, that is a slam against VB documentation and the VB community because i have honestly and earnestly researched the points i brought up, since they have personally caused me trouble in my projects. Sorry if I sound a bit negative, or pompus, or whatever, i don''t mean to come off that way, but this is a subject i feel strongly about and im willing to argue it to wit''s end.
