Where communities thrive


  • Join over 1.5M+ people
  • Join over 100K+ communities
  • Free without limits
  • Create your own community
People
Activity
    Cristian FRC
    @cristianlt23

    @DualBrain

    I guess I'm confused as I see the article; is there something I'm missing?

    if you go to: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/
    and start browsing the blog, you'll notice there's no news about VB unless you use the magnifying glass to search and type "VB"

    However, this news
    https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/whats-new-for-visual-basic-in-visual-studio-2022/

    was visible on the blog and now doesn't come with all the other news anymore.

    I joined the blog on November 8, 2021 and saw the news about Kathleen's VB, now if you don't look in the magnifying glass you won't find it on the blog.

    I found it strange that this happened

    Cristian FRC
    @cristianlt23
    Today I answered the Jetbrains survey and it is clear that VB.NET was the most used language in my daily life
    https://surveys.jetbrains.com/s3/Ssrvey-panel-validation
    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain

    Looks like there might be something taking place regarding language change...

    The feature is called CallerArgumentExpression with the C# spec found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-reference/proposals/csharp-10.0/caller-argument-expression

    The VB specific activity can be found at dotnet/roslyn#54132

    There's also a conversation taking place regarding setting the default language version to be the same as the latest; or at the very least setting the "default" language version in VS2022 to be 16.9. I very much agree on both accounts... dotnet/roslyn#57093
    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain

    The TLDR of this is that Visual Studio 2022 v17.1 should see VB "16.9" being the default language version (it is currently "16.0").

    For anyone interested about the process of getting changes done around "language changes" that will impact developers; take a moment to review:

    dotnet/roslyn#57688

    Keep in mind that this a conversation among members of the Roslyn team about a change requested (initiated) by a manager. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see this type of thing taking place... just because some people think that it is a "small change" that most likely won't affect anyone, the policies are in place to help ensure/guarantee that things are looked at. When outsiders encounter this level of "push-back", there are complaints that the team is resisting change... but I don't see this as being the case. If you want to contribute something, you have to do so following the same level required by the team members. I just find the chain of events and conversation in this pull request enlightening and take some solace in the idea that we really do have people on the team doing their best to ensure we continue to have a high quality product that requires a consistent high-bar with regard to changes being made.

    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain
    What if it were possible to do the following in VB?
    10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"

    Right now, to do the same thing:

    Imports System

Module Program
  Sub Main(args As String())
     Console.WriteLine("HELLO WORLD!")
  End Sub
End Module

    or more accurately...

    Imports System

Module Program
  Sub Main(args As String())
10:
     Console.WriteLine("HELLO WORLD!")
  End Sub
End Module
    With the concept of Top-Level Code, the theory would be that it would look something like:
    Imports System

10:
  Console.WriteLine("HELLO WORLD!")
    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain

    The reason why I include line numbers in the first example is to think about the following example:

    10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
20 X = X + 1
30 IF X > 10 THEN GOTO 50
40 GOTO 10
50 END

    which would (theoretically, if Top-Level Code existed in VB) to:

    Imports System

Dim x As Integer

10:
  Console.WriteLine("HELLO WORLD!")
  x=x+1
  If x > 10 Then GoTo 50
  GoTo 10

50:
  End

    or, depending on if you had certain Project options set appropriately...

    10:
  Console.WriteLine("HELLO WORLD!")
  x=x+1
  If x > 10 Then GoTo 50
  GoTo 10

50:
  End

    For a really insane option, what about the following?

    ? "HELLO WORLD!"

    What if, indeed...

    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain

    AND... what if... and I do ask this in all seriousness... this were possible WITHOUT changing the VB compiler? It might just indeed be possible to support this with the tools that currently exist where (once available) all you would have to do is simply add a nuget reference.

    Which then leads me to ask what would PRINT (or ?) do for different project types? In a Console application it would output text to the, well, Console. In a WinForms application, would it be equivalent to a Debug.Print or for "logging"? In an ASP.NET type application, would it be for sending content to the browser (HTML)?

    DISCLAIMER: This may be something that requires a team of people to participate in (ultimately) to accomplish.

    Paul M Cohen
    @paul1956
    It would be fantastic count me in
    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain

    I'm in the process of learning more about Roslyn (navigating through syntax trees) and in the process of exploring how I want to handle certain things I discovered that ? is something that is specifically looked for. Just for giggles, tried the following code in a method:

      ? "HELLO WORLD!"

    And the error one receives will be similar to "Expression statement is only allowed at the end of an interactive submission."

    This statement, though, is completely recognized and parses correctly since it is legal in the interactive side of things and, at least to me, it's interesting to see entry.Kind = SyntaxKind.PrintStatement.

    This will make it a little more difficult (in some ways) to do what I'm wanting to do... however, it also makes it easy to detect (since it already can do so).

    Point being that ? is does (technically) exist in VB (Roslyn) but is only used (assumption) in limited scope (interactive")... (NOTE: It might not actually be used outside of the error checking, I'm making an assumption that the very limited interactive stuff in VS is using this; it might not be as it could still be using the old way* since we don't have VB scripting available to us.) I may explore this more in the future; but if anyone else knows any more details, please share.

    Paul M Cohen
    @paul1956
    After a long wait my fix to handling formatting _ ‘ is in the current release of Visual Studio 2022. I want the thank @CyrusNajmabadi and @SamHarwell for making it happen. This continues to give me hope to be able at add additional feature to VB by community in the future.
    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain

    After a long wait my fix to handling formatting _ ‘ is in the current release of Visual Studio 2022. I want the thank @CyrusNajmabadi and @SamHarwell for making it happen. This continues to give me hope to be able at add additional feature to VB by community in the future.

    AWESOME!

    Paul M Cohen
    @paul1956
    It was announced today but is actually in next update/preview.
    Cristian FRC
    @cristianlt23
    Congratulations @paul1956
    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain

    This continues to give me hope to be able at add additional feature to VB by community in the future.

    My view is that the answer has (all along) not been a (hard) "No!"... but rather the bar is pretty high in order to get a "Yes!". Also, "no plan" doesn't mean "nothing is going to happen"; or, more specifically, plans can and do change over the course of time. Changes are indeed taking place both within Roslyn as well as in .NET / Visual Studio / WinForms / etc. that DIRECTLY impact VB.

    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain

    to answer your question about VB, I'm working on trying to make things more async, and to work on perf not causing blocking issues in it in the typing experience -- @CyrusNajmabadi

    Can you take a moment to update about the work you were referring to when you posted this a while back?

    Mohammad Hamdy Ghanem
    @VBAndCs
    I see no value of using ? for printing, even if it possible. In C#, we use cw+tab shortcut for Console.writeline snippent, which doesn't exist in VB, and there is an issue about that dotnet/roslyn#37049
    However, we can add this snippet to vs. Add this to a file and name it writeline.snippet: 
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CodeSnippets xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
    <CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
        <Header>
            <Title>Console.WriteLine</Title>
            <Author>M. Hmdy Ghanem</Author>
    <Shortcut>cw</Shortcut>
        </Header>
        <Snippet>
            <Code Language="VB">
                <![CDATA[Console.WriteLine($msg$)]]>
            </Code>
  <Declarations>
    <Object>
      <ID>msg</ID>
      <Type>System.String</Type>
      <ToolTip>The message you want to write.</ToolTip>
      <Default>"Hello"</Default>
    </Object>
  </Declarations>
        </Snippet>
    </CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>
    Install this snippet in VS as described here
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/walkthrough-creating-a-code-snippet?view=vs-2022
    Now, write cw and press tab, to get:
    Console.WriteLine("Hello")
    The "Hello" text will be highlighted so you can replace it.
    Mohammad Hamdy Ghanem
    @VBAndCs
    It will be helpful to have this snippet added to VS to be available for all vb users. I will add a comment to that issue and vote for it.
    Note: I tried to use ? as a shortcut for the snippet, but didn't work as it is used to show the snippet context menu. It would be nice ;)
    Mohammad Hamdy Ghanem
    @VBAndCs
    One more anointing thing: After writing cw, you need to press Esc to dismiss the auto completion list before pressing Tab, otherwise the editor will convert cw to ChrW!
    one solution to avoid this, is to change the snippet shortcut to cwl.
    or any other shortcut that has no corresponding auto-completion word. I go for cw to be the same as C#.
    Mohammad Hamdy Ghanem
    @VBAndCs
    Of course it would be better if intellisense take snippets shortcuts into account.
    CyrusNajmabadi
    @CyrusNajmabadi
    please file issues and/or fixes.
    currently snippets are in maintenance mode only
    so this would be backlogged unless you can contribute the fixes.
    we've mentioned this before, but backlog items are already lower pri than what the team can currently afford to look at.
    Mohammad Hamdy Ghanem
    @VBAndCs
    I am putting these notes if the filed isue dotnet/roslyn#37049
    Adam Speight
    @AdamSpeight2008

    @CyrusNajmabadi
    Does the visual basic specification and compiler, assert atomicity within "multi-part" block structures.
    For example the ElseIf in an If Then ... End If block.

    We have the following code (as is).

    ' statements 0
If someCondition = True Then
   ' statements 1
ElseIf someCondition = False Then
   ' statements 2
Else
   ' statements 3
End If
' statements 4

    is transformed into 

    ' statements 0
If someCondition = True Then
   ' statements 1
Else
  ' *** What prevents evaluate of someCondition being different from prior evaluation.
   If someCondition = False Then
      ' statements 2
   Else
      ' statements 3
   End If
End If
' statements 4

    Is someCondition asserted to be atomic ( non-changing ) between each usage?
    As from my knowledge the lowered form does not seem to have that "ambient property", or does the transformation production obtain that "ambient property" from the transformation of an ElseIf statement.
    If it doesn't would a copy of the value of "someConditon" into "tmp" prior to the If Block, and rename the usage of "someCondition" with on this block to "tmp". Gain that guarentee.

    I think this is something to do with Side-Effects and/or Contract propagation.

    CyrusNajmabadi
    @CyrusNajmabadi
    1. it entirely depends on what 'someCondition' is (like a field/prop/parameter/local).
    if it's a field/prop, definitely not. indeed, it's the opposite. each time it will be read from teh original source
    if it's a parmaeter/local. sure. however, it will depend on what is in the rest of hte method
    for example, if it's captured by some lambda and the lambda mutates it, then it will be different
    so, absent any more info about the code, i cannot say
    but i can certainly say you can only depend on this if your code operates in a very specific fashion.
    Adam Speight
    @AdamSpeight2008
    @CyrusNajmabadi
    How do we advise the programmer that this suitable exists, and is a code fix possible? I can only think of using sencasing it within a SyncLock(someCondition) ... End SyncLock We'd need the notion of immutable usage, and enforcement.
    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain
    * What prevents evaluate of someCondition being different from prior evaluation.
    You could put this variable in an immutable property/class...

    Otherwise, if the variable you are testing is not a local variable but instead a property of a class... the class could literally return a different result each and every check.

    Alternatively (I believe) this could be resolve by using Select Case.

    If it doesn't would a copy of the value of "someConditon" into "tmp" prior to the If Block, and rename the usage of "someCondition" with on this block to "tmp". Gain that guarentee.

    This would only be true if the developer honored this restriction.

    (Unless, of course, that variable was some sort of immutable property.)
    Adam Speight
    @AdamSpeight2008
    I like the notion of constexpr everything from c++
    https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/06/27/use-constexpr-for-faster-smaller-and-safer-code/
    Adam Speight
    @AdamSpeight2008
    'Select Caseis predominantly is lowered to anIf ... Then` structure, so same suitable effect exists. In a "pure" single threaded non-eventing/interuptting evaluation it trivial and can be ignored. In a non-linear evaluation environment it does, so assisting the programmer to have awareness, or code-fix.
    Cory Smith
    @DualBrain
    I suppose I'm not following what is trying to be resolved here. I mean I do get the idea that the value could change under some conditions... but there are many ways to ensure that the code executed against a variable is safe (isn't going to change). If you pass in a variable to a method, that variable is (if Byval) local to that routine... so the only code that will modify that variable within the scope of the If checking is completely within the context of the If statements. So multi-threaded code shouldn't be an issue (in this example - which I feel is more common). In the event the value does change, there is a high possibility this was what the developer desired/intended. Now if we talk about properties... the value of the property is controlled by the object and one would have to wonder under what conditions that this would be an issue. In some circumstances, the value changing between the If statements may actually be desired. There are also two very different Select Case models (lowering)... as you said there is one that is basically a bunch of individual If statements while the (ultimately) desired lowering would be the "jump list". To my knowledge, the "jump list" version would evaluate the value once and is significantly faster than and something I tend to try to setup for under normal conditions. If the desire is to make the variable unchanging, there are (of course) mechanisms in place to assist with that as well. But I don't think there is a "blanket" mechanism or even warning that would cover all the scenarios and my gut is telling me this would create more confusion than it would potentially address any sort of pitfall. In other words, I can't imagine how one would look at the code a know whether or not this might be a potential issue across all the possible scenarios that could exist. I could, of course, be missing something... so there is always that. ;-)