what's the difference between declaring as new and as something = new something in vb.net?

Question

I have see code like this

Dim s as something = new something
Dim s as new something

what's the difference? is there any?

Answer 1

A slight difference.

The first allows you to do:

Dim s as ParentType = new InheritedType

The second doesn't.

The "advantage" of this is s can be a number of different types related to ParentType without it exploding at runtime.