Chapter 19. The My Namespace

The great debate is always the same: which is better, Visual Basic or Visual C#? Because of the .NET Framework, the Common Language Runtime (CLR), and the IL language, the languages’ evolution brought both VB and C# to do the same things. Of course, there are some differences, and one language has some features that the other one does not have. One example is async and await in try..catch blocks in C#, which aren’t available in VB yet, or VB’s XML literals that C# does not have. Differences are obvious. One of the Visual Basic features that does not have commonalities with other managed languages is the My namespace, belonging to VB starting from Visual Basic 2005. This chapter examines the My namespace, which can help you write code more efficiently, in keeping with the philosophy “less code, more productivity.” Keep in mind that what you learn in this chapter does not apply to Windows Store apps; in fact, even if the My namespace still exists in that platform, it does not expose anything. This is an important clarification and will no longer be repeated through the chapter.