Sometimes, we cannot choose what language to implement a project in. Be it because of environmental restrictions (everything else is programmed in language X) or just because there’s an existing code base that needs to be extended and improved. This is when our polyglot programming mindset will be challenged. In a recent project, we picked up the current incarnation of VisualBasic, a language most of us willfully forgot after brief exposure in the late nineties, more than 10 years ago.
Spaceward Ho!
So we ventured into the land of VisualEverything, installing VisualStudio (without ReSharper at first) and finding out about the changes in VisualBasic.NET compared to VisualBasic 6, the language version we used back in the days. Being heavily trained in Java and “javaesque” languages, we were pleasantly surprised to find a modern, object-oriented language with a state-of-the-art platform SDK (the .NET framework) and only little reminiscences of the old age. Microsoft did a great job in modernizing the language, cutting out maybe a bit too much language specific stuff. VisualBasic.NET feels like C# with an uninspired syntax.
Making the transition
To ease our exploration of the language features of VisualBasic.NET, one of our student workers made a comparison table between Java and VisualBasic.NET. This cheat sheet helped us tremendously to wrap our heads around the syntax and the language. The platform SDK is very similar to the Java API, as you can see in the corresponding sections of the table. And because it helped us, it might also help you to gain a quick overview over VisualBasic.NET when you are heading from Java.
I have to thank Frederik Zipp a lot for his work. My only contribution to this cheat sheet is the translation from german to english. I can only try to imagine his effort of putting everything together. And while you might read the whole comparison in about 21 minutes (as stated in the title), it’s worth several hours of searching.
The downloads
And without much further ado, here are the download links for the HTML and PDF versions of the “Java vs. VisualBasic.NET cheat sheet”:
You may use and modify the documents as you see fit. If you redistribute it, please adhere to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Thank you.
Schneide Blog 
Going from VB to Java
Great resource
Thanks
Thanks for that, going from Java to VB!
Great document! By chance, do you provide a subatomic microscope to read the PDF printout?
The link is broken – can you tell me how to get the document?
Hi Steven,
thank you for the hint. The link is adjusted and should work again. If it still does not, I can also e-mail you the document on request.