ASP.NET - C# vs VB.NET - Indirect differences and things you might not initially consider

Question

I'm not interested in starting another "who has the bigger member" VB vs C# debate (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/158229/what-are-the-pros-of-vb-net seems to cover that already) though I am interested in indirect differences which may influence developing in one vs the other. All my commercial .NET development was desktop apps in VB until the last 3 months where I had a web project and decided it was a good opportunity to force myself to learn C#. In the course of doing so I've noticed a few non-technical differences:

• A lot more mature open source apps and thorough examples are available in C# than for VB.

• Third party vendors of add-ins for things like refactoring and documentation tend to support C# better than VB (if at all), with VB support for similar features from comparable C# versions often lagging behind or absent.

• ASP.NET jobs targeting C# seem to pay around 15-20% more on average than otherwise identical jobs in VB (at least in Australia, looking on seek.com.au and careerone.com.au for reference).

The jump to ASP.NET, MVC and C# presented a lot of speed humps at once but I think was well worth it. The decision I need to make now is whether to put more energy into pursuing C# for future .NET development or if I might as well stick to VB. Are there any other points of difference between the language (other than direct language feature comparisons already covered) that one should consider in this instance?

Answer 1

• At the Microsoft 2009 Mix Web developer conference, all the presentations that I attended included code examples in C#, not VB.

• In StackOverflow, notice how questions tagged c# largely outnumber vb.net and vb.

• John Skeet wrote C# in Depth, not VB in Depth.

Answer 2

I find that VS does more automatic code completion for VB than C#.

It's very useful to know both languages and I personally have to get better acquainted with C# so that I'm comfortable applying for C# jobs which should triple my options.