So is it best practice to only use C# for SharePoint development?

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

Posted in Development, SharePoint | Comments

I found it very interesting to see that the MSDN article Best Practices: Using Disposable Windows SharePoint Services Objects only provides code samples in C#, can we assume that it is NOT best practice to use VB.Net to develop for SharePoint or is it just the lack of the using Statement that has kept these examples out?

[Update] I was wrong: There is a Using statement in VB.Net

Using site As New SPSite(“http:///portal.company.com”) Using web As SPWeb = site.OpenWeb() Console.WriteLine(web.Title) End Using End Using

Thanks to Paul Liebrand for pointing this out and helping all you VB.Net SharePoint developers to develop using best practice.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Development, SharePoint. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Andrew Woodward

Becky,

I have to confess that I am also one of the many people who made the switch to C# from VB6, and I think your observations are correct in that most development teams now use C# as the primary language and only do VB.Net as a translation, if they really have to.

But now the MSDN site supports comments perhaps the VB.Net users out there can start to share your VB.Net translations?

Becky Isserman

I find it incredibly odd that there are no webpart templates from MS for VB .Net. It feels as though the Sharepoint Development Team is more swayed towards C#. I also think that most of the .Net community uses C# over VB .Net. I have created a few VB .Net webparts and it felt like an incredible amount of pain just to get a single web part out.

Andrew Woodward

Thanks Paul, not being a VB.Net user I was not aware of this. Hopefully this tongue in cheek post will help to spread the word :)

Paul Liebrand

I hate to be the one to inform you, but VB.NET does have a using statement. Here is a perfectly good example:

Using site As New SPSite("http:///portal.company.com")

Using web As SPWeb = site.OpenWeb()

Console.WriteLine(web.Title)

End Using

End Using

I do agree -- there should be both C# and VB.NET examples out there for those who need it.

Agile Sharepoint development by 21apps and Andrew Woodward MVP