Project Euler Forum

Hello there,

I just love this project! Finally I found something challenging and fun that's right down my alley!

There's just one tiny thing I'm missing: I'm used to programming in Visual Basic 2005, so I use it for the project, but it is not in the list of preferred languages. BASIC is in there, but there are a lot of fundamental differences between BASIC and Visual Basic, so I would really like to see this language included in the drop-down list on the profile page.

Thanks a lot,
Alex.

Hi Smakkie, and I'm glad you're enjoying it!

Initially when I put together the list of languages I tried to create "catch-all" categories. But programming languages have evolved so much that the "children" have become languages in their own right. I use VB myself and as this started happening I toyed with the idea of putting VB in the list. However, the reason I decided against it in the end was that, although VB has evolved into something quite different with immense capabilities, it is still the BASIC component that we use to solve these problems. In other words, with all its bells-and-whistles, none of the "visual" features give you any advantage, and so for the purpose of comparison it does not make it essentially any different to other versions of BASIC.

I imagine the same is true of a number of languages I have added to the list over the years, but I am not familiar with so many of them I was not in any position to make that call.