Why?

Not for higher pay, but because there are about 6X’s more jobs requiring C# over VB.NET.

C# = Job Security!

Did anyone notice who the big pusher of C# were, and did you also notice how many abundant examples, tutorials, videos suddenly started springing up in C#.

Another thought is “Does this change in languages from vb to c# generate large new revenue streams where the old ones were becoming too stable and perhaps even declining?”

:)

Further to this the wheels of salary will turn someday to some extent!

Why?

Well, due to the large proportion of companies now requiring C# will mean slowly but surely a lack of supply in VB6 and VB.NET programmers which in turn will mean when the time is right you may be able to get way more $$$ as an old VB programmer HOWEVER bear in mind that demand will be small but lucrative at that time in yrs to come to have your vb.net/vb6 skills brushed!

A great Example is the old Cobol mainframe programmers who are earning very well due to the lack of supply in their very tight banking and other large corporate niches!

Till then develop in whatever pays well at the time or whatever makes you happy(C#, F#, Charl#) and if you get in early as in any market (gold,stock,property,new language taking off) and at the correct timing then you will be generously rewarded

Having said this im only getting into C# now (late!)

Cheers all

You have several good points.

It is possible that we will see a salary convergence as well as a language convergence in the future. This might be particularly true where a company has a VB.NET code base and, to get sufficient programmers, they have to hire some who have a strong C# background or vice versa.

Looking back in time, at one point it certainly could be assumed that C++ programmers would have much more experience than their VB counter-parts (although there were plenty of exceptions), for reasons similar to those expressed earlier.

I suspect that the origins for this perception are pretty ancient - possibly going back to Dartmouth BASIC in 1964, which was conceived as a training language to FORTRAN. Indeed, Niklaus Wirth’s Pascal (arguably a training language) has suffered some derision too (eg: “Quiche eaters use Pascal”).

My blog article Language Convergence observes that the current trend (certainly amongst .NET languages) is for languages to become increasingly similar, which obviously suggests that there should be little difference between the salaries paid to developers of the same experience level in the future, since they can easily jump ship.

I would agree that a good number of VB6 programmers have moved directly to C#, probably because C# continues to demand higher salaries…!

As an employer, my question to a potential employee is: “How many languages can you program in?”

It would be nice if employers took the same view as you did.

I agree one should learn both although I think the syntax differences and other language specific features account for more differences than just 2% even though under the hood it’s all the .NET Framework.

The general industry observation, at least from around 2005, was that most VB6′ers were moving to C# or Java/LAMP if they weren’t sticking with VB6. VB.NET wasn’t that popular of a destination. I’m not sure how much this has changed since although I suspect the numbers have ticked up slightly for VB.NET.

Of course, marketing perception has a big impact on the free market and VB is often seen as the “old and busted” vs. “the new hotness” of C#, Ruby on Rails and others.

I don’t know for a fact, but I suspect that there are more C# and Java projects than there are VB.Net projects. And there might be more VB.Net programmers than there are C# programmers (given the enormous number of VB6 programmers who likely migrated to VB.Net).

There are anomalies, like Ruby on Rails, which, while quickly gaining popularity, isn’t as common as .Net or Java, but because it’s new the talent pool is relatively small. This keeps Rails programmers pretty well paid.