Microsoft Eliminates Comments From VB2008

The upcoming version of Visual Basic, formerly code-named “Orcas,” will be chock full of new technological breakthroughs and productivity features, but one standard feature will be absent. The commenting feature has been stricken from the final release of Visual Basic 2008. This commenting feature allowed you to insert descriptive content alongside source code by starting a line with a single quote character or the “REM” keyword.

The Beta 1 release of VB2008, sometimes known as VB9, still had the ability to use comments, but Beta 2 is missing the feature that has been part of the language since version 1.0. Soma Somasegar, corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Developer Division pushed for the removal. “We weren’t sure if we would be able to expunge all of the commenting code for the VB2008 release window, but it was a feature our team felt it was unimportant enough to remove, so we made an extra effort running up to the Beta 2 release.”

Normally, when a feature is removed from the Visual Basic language, Microsoft includes the modification in its list of “breaking changes.” However, for this deprecation, Microsoft made no formal announcement. “Nobody was using comments in their code anyway; we don’t expect anyone to even notice the change. It’s kind of like when we removed the GoSub statement. Who noticed?” said a Visual Basic engineer at Microsoft who asked to remain anonymous.

Microsoft’s other internally developed language, C#, will still include its own commenting feature, but John Schlink in the Microsoft Languages group explains why this was needed. “Visual Basic enforces a certain layout and structure on the source code, but there are no such restrictions in the C family of languages. You can indent and flow your source code anyway you want. This lets you design really cool looking shapes in your code, and keeping the comments intact expanded that ability even more. I made a program last week that had code in the shape of a butterfly. Do you want to see the pretty butterfly?”

But not everyone is happy with the changes. Tim Patrick, author of several books on Visual Basic, insists that comments serve an important function in software development. “No programmer is born with an innate ability to read and write Visual Basic code, or to immediately interpret the thoughts of their peers. Sprinkling useful comments in your source code reduces the chance that a complex section of code will be misunderstood.” Some of Tim Patrick’s books include sage advice on bringing quality to application source code through the strategic use of comments.

Microsoft, for its part, is not put off by protests such as these. “There are always going to be those who want to keep us in the dark ages of software development,” explains Anders Hejlsberg, one of the key language designers at Microsoft. “If it were up to people like Mr. Patrick, we’d all still be using variable names longer than three letters. Would you want to program in such an environment?”