What are the most important functional differences between C# and VB.NET?

Question

Certainly there's the difference in general syntax, but what other critical distinctions exist? There are some differences, right?

Answer 1

The linked comparisons are very thorough, but as far as the main differences I would note the following:

• C# has anonymous methodsVB has these now, too
• C# has the yield keyword (iterator blocks)VB11 added this
• VB supports implicit late binding (C# has explicit late binding now via the dynamic keyword)
• VB supports XML literals
• VB is case insensitive
• More out-of-the-box code snippets for VB
• More out-of-the-box refactoring tools for C#Visual Studio 2015 now provides the same refactoring tools for both VB and C#.

In general the things MS focuses on for each vary, because the two languages are targeted at very different audiences. This blog post has a good summary of the target audiences. It is probably a good idea to determine which audience you are in, because it will determine what kind of tools you'll get from Microsoft.