Option Strict On and .NET for VB6 programmers

by

Yes! Option Strict is definitely a best practice with .Net. Emphasize that .Net is at it’s core a strongly typed platform, and will be until the DLR is more completely supported. With few exceptions, every Dim and Function should have an explicit type declared to go with it. Things like LINQ or Boo and JScript are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Here are some other things to point out. I’m sure you’re well aware of all this, but I’ve had to work with and maintain a lot of VB.Net code written by former VB6ers, and so this is something of a sore spot for me:

  • Don’t use the old string functions: LEN(), REPLACE(), TRIM(), etc
  • Hungarian warts are no longer recommended. oMyObject and sMyString are not kosher. Show them the reference in Microsoft’s Design Guidelines if they don’t believe you.
  • Make sure they learn about the new AndAlso/OrElse logical operators
  • PARAMETERIZED QUERIES and modern ADO.Net. Can’t emphasize that enough. They should never need to call CreateObject() again.
  • Scope works differently (and is more important) in .Net than it was in VB6. VB.Net still has modules, but they’re now more analogous to a static class. It’s important to understand how developing in a real object oriented environment be different, as opposed to the partial OOP support provided by VB6. There’s no good reason anymore to allow methods to run to ungodly lengths.
  • Make sure they get an introduction to Generics and Interfaces (including IEnumeralbe(Of T)), and learn why they should never use an ArrayList again.

I could keep going, but I’ll just point you to the Hidden Features of VB.Net Question to close out this rant.

More Related Contents:

  1. VB.NET: impossible to use Extension method on System.Object instance
  2. What do Option Strict and Option Explicit do?
  3. Clean up Excel Interop Objects with IDisposable
  4. Reference variables and objects elsewhere in a form
  5. Parse Delimited CSV in .NET
  6. Using related data stored in a 2 dimensional array
  7. Is the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace “true .NET” code?
  8. How do you get a string from a MemoryStream?
  9. Searching values via a datagridview
  10. Which is generally best to use — StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase or StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase?
  11. How do I create an event handler for a programmatically created object in VB.NET?
  12. BitmapImage in WPF does lock file
  13. Does End Using close an open SQL Connection
  14. Does this code prevent SQL injection?
  15. Analyze colors of an Image
  16. Deserialize using JSON.net
  17. Cause this VB6-like smell, which VB.NET allows, to error instead: WinFormType.InstanceProp=Value [DISABLE My.Forms]
  18. Sorting a Data Table
  19. How to print datagridview table with its header in vb.net?
  20. How to draw a signature and save it to disc as a Bitmap?
  21. Form’s TransparencyKey leaves ghastly colored edging [closed]
  22. Redirect Trace output to Console
  23. How to find the main() entry point in a VB.Net winforms app?
  24. Accept self-signed TLS/SSL certificate in VB.NET
  25. How to make a Windows Forms .NET application display as tray icon?
  26. LinqToSql declare and instantiate DataContext best practice?
  27. Process.Start a file without Extension
  28. Is there a way to define an implicit conversion operator in VB.NET?
  29. String manipulation with & or + in VB.NET
  30. ‘Shadows’ vs. ‘Overrides’ in VB.NET

Leave a Comment