I am about to take a class and I have the option of taking programming being taught using either VB.NET, C#, or pseudo. I took a Logic and Design class in Pseudo and would like to start learning an actual program.

So given the choice between learning .NET or C# as your first language which would you choose? Which will be most useful, I am not so much worried about ease of learning, as I am sure is the same with most people here, because I learn fairly quickly.

I agree with Chris, from a security perspective neither one of those languages is really ideal because they hide a lot of the internal/low-level stuff that goes on.

But, if those are your only choices, here are a few considerations for picking your poison:

1) Chris is right, from what I've seen VB.NET is used more than C#. Also, when reverse engineering, programs written in VB and/or using the .NET framework are also vastly different than those written in C or C++. So learning VB.NET could help you out down the road if you are interested in RE. VB is also a great language for easily writing Windows apps, but it's not that great if you want to do low-level stuff (my experience with it is limited however).

2) I've never used C# so I don't know how similar it is to C or C++, but I do know that it hides a lot of the low-level stuff that C/C++ don't. However, learning C# could help you pick up C more quickly (which is a good language for a security professional).

So I suppose it all really depends on what you want to do. If in doubt, I'd probably go with Chris's suggestion of VB.NET, but you might want to Google for comparisons between the two languages before you decide.

Soolari,

I'm confused by the question, without going into a direct comparison of the two languages if you 'need' learn VB then surely VB is better than C# in your case. Or am I missing something obvious?

I have doen the C# thing and it is a .NET laguage just like VB.NET. It does however, have its roots in C/C++ and there for, might be a better chouice to learn as a gateway to C/C++.

I used to be a developer and coded in both C# and VB.Net and between the two I'd definately recommend C#. It is much tighter than VB and it is the way Microsoft is going. As recently as a few years ago (it may or may not still be the case) there were some caveats posted by Microsoft about VB, things that could only be done in C# and not in VB.

C# and VB.Net aren't too much different from a difficult level any more. There is a pretty tight convergence between the two especially since all the underlying objects are the same.

I (contrary to everyone else) would recommend staying away from C++ unless you are intending to work in security. No chance for buffer overflows or such bugs to create security holes.

Perl, stay away from that. I've used it and I don't like it. I have heard it refered to as the "read-only language". You can write something and it works, but you can't figure out what by looking at the code.