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Add to SafariWhen comparing Visual Basic vs Wolfram Mathematica, the Slant community recommends Wolfram Mathematica for most people. In the question“What are the best (productivity-enhancing, well-designed, and concise, rather than just popular or time-tested) programming languages?” Wolfram Mathematica is ranked 60th while Visual Basic is ranked 74th.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Very simple and efficient language (in terms of number of lines of code)
Pro Easy to learn
Pro Capable language
Compiling to the same intermediate language as C# and compiling against the same .NET libraries, the differences between C# and VB are largely syntactic. Most VB features even have a 1:1 correspondence with C#.
Pro Huge community
Being Microsoft's introductory language, visual basic has a strong and large community.
Pro English-like syntax
Pro Flexible, won't get in the way of a beginner
A beginner developer can worry about the code logic first, and then learn the language. Visual Basic lets you do basically anything if you really want, while still having the power to be a fully statically-typed and object oriented.
Pro Sibling to C#
If you don't want to start with C# because of its high learning floor, you can start with VB. It is dead easy to switch between the two.
Pro Easy to deal with Win32API
Using platform invoke, it's very easy to use the win32 api in vb.net. Neat and clean syntax. Not a mess like c# (meaning those "{}"s).
Pro Lots of functionality
Pro Built-in CPU Parallelization
Pro Very mature
Wolfram Mathematica has been around for a long time without any major changes in the basic design.
Pro Coherent API over different domains
Pro Supports units and can do much more than just maths
Other platforms severely lack this useful feature.
Pro Fully integrated symbolic processing
Pro Very powerful and fast, also possible to get for free
Cons
Con Almost as bad as Python, but less used
Con Bad reputation
Being a visual basic programmer, you're unlikely to be taken seriously by other programmers. According to the 2015 Stack Overflow survey, it was voted the second most dreaded language among developers.
Con Tends to get clunky due to prebuilt assets
Con Unintuitive data types and strange assignment statements
Representation of data still remains highly fragmented technically and one fumbles between data types and stumbles on strange assignment statements to attempt conversions of meaning.
Con Proprietary
