<p>I was just wondering if there is any difference between the two different new object initializers or is it just syntactic sugar.  </p>

<p>So  is:</p>

<pre><code>Dim _StreamReader as New Streamreader(mystream)
</code></pre>

<p>and different to:</p>

<pre><code>Dim _StreamReader as Streamreader = new streamreader(mystream)
</code></pre>

<p>Is there any difference under the hood? or are they both the same?  Which one do you prefer to use?</p>

I'm not a VB guy, but as far as I can tell they're equivalent. According to
MSDN's description of the Dim statement
:
If you do not specify datatype, the
  variable takes the data type of
  initializer. If neither datatype nor
  initializer is present, by default,
  the data type is Object Data Type. If
  you specify both datatype and
  initializer, the data type of
  initializer must be convertible to
  datatype.
I won't pass comment on preference, as I don't use VB (except when answering statements).