Practical Standards for Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET, Second Edition

Directives

6.1 Do not place multiple statements on a single line.

Visual Basic .NET is a robust language whose roots run deep. Many of its current features originate from early forms of Basic such as BASICA and GW-BASIC. While many of these “features” have survived a long time, it’s time for some of them to die. One of these features is the ability to use the colon (:) to place multiple statements on a single line.

In the old days of Basic, code was often written on a screen that supported only about 80 characters (across) by 24 lines (down). Frequently, this meant that programmers had to pack as much information as possible into the tiny screen space. Some languages even restricted the number of characters or lines in a program. Whatever the ...