It's time again to to comment on the vb.net vs c# ongoing discussion. I actually use and train in both languages, in fact I often do asp.net courses where I present in both languages at the same time (I split the screen and type vb in the top half and c# below) which actually works amazingly well on a few levels. Firstly it slows me down a bit (I sometimes have a tendancy to go too fast for my delegates) and secondly it demonstrates to everyone how similar the languages are. But that's not the point of this post.
My point is that the capabilities, performance and features of the two languages are so similar that there is really very little discussion to make on them, and in fact the real decision comes down to inhouse resources (have I got a vb or c# team?) and the ide and editor. The last point being an important one that I don't often hear being made, but it can have a big impact on productivity. C# has some nice stuff like the built-in XML Documentation and the way it adds event handlers for you with the += syntax (you press tab twice and your done, where-as with vb and AddHandler it's all manual), together with compiler warnings, but the killer benefit for me and the thing that makes me more productive on balance in VB is the BACKGROUND COMPLIER. I'm talking about "instant wiggley underline technology" which I think is the correct technical term. I just move off the line and I can see the compiler errors straight away. With C# I'm constantly hitting CTRL+SHIFT+B to do that check. Vber's should make more of this if they want to p*ss off c#ers! Java has background compilers (certainly in the amazing IntelliJ product - have you seen that? I was blown away) so why hasn't c#? It may seem like a relatively small thing but it's these little bits that make the dev experience better.
With VS2005 I thought the refactoring tools would finally make c# my prefered language (based on productivity), but now DevExpress have added much better refactoing to VB2005, I think I'm probably back to that as my favourite...though if the c# team ever add a background complier with the sort of help IntelliJ gives you then, I'd be sold on that! I dunno, decisions, decisions...
Cheers
Ian