What do you think about visual basic ? What is the difference between visual basic and vb.net and is it interesting to learn ?

Question

Visual basic

Answer 1

Classic Visual Basic as a compiled language is a legacy platform that hasn't been supported by Microsoft since 2008. Visual Basic 6.0 was the last stable version, released 20+ years ago in 1998, a few years before the release is .NET.

VBA is still supported as a scripting language for Microsoft Office products. It good for automating and extending functionality from within MS Office files.

VB.NET is replaces classic Visual Basic 6.0 and is the counterpart language to C#.

Although C# and VB.NET have various language level differences, they both compile to the same Intermediate Language (IL) and have the same capabilities.

It should be noted that since the initial release of .NET, Microsoft has been committed to seeing both languages maintain parity with each new release. That is... until recently, when Microsoft announced that they will no longer be maintaining that parity giving favor to C# over VB.NET.

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Answer 2

This announcement is a strong indication that VB.NET will likely become less and less a priority for Microsoft over the coming years.

Aside from knowing that Microsoft's language strategy will result in a widening feature gap between C# and VB.NET, I would recommend anyone attempting to break into professional software development pass on VB.NET and focus solely on C#.

C# is the language of preference among most developers choosing between the two. C# also offers more platform options with Unity3D Game engine and Xamarin for Mobile Development, neither of which support VB.NET. Enterprise market demand also leans more towards C# over VB.NET.

Hopefully, this is helpful information.

Answer 3

TheCoder | Yep, that's me I've always struggled with the accuracy / relevance of the TIOBE index and the use of search data as the basis for popular languages.

The fact that VB.NET ranks #5, just above C# at #6 or Javascript at #7 gives even more reason to doubt their assessment methods.

Microsoft has provided metrics indicating that there are millions of C# developers while VB.NET currently has only a few hundred thousand developers. They also indicate that many of the VB.NET developers may have transitioned to C#. Microsoft does say that there are twice as many learners using VB.NET than C#, which may be the reason the TIOBE index ranks VB.NET higher.

In my professional circles, throughout my many years of software development, VB.NET is simply an unpopular choice and treated as a legacy and less preferred option. 😉

Answer 4

Here are a couple of supporting links for review:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/02/our_strategy_for_visual_basic_has_shifted_microsoft_to_focus_on_core_scenarios/

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/the-net-language-strategy/

Answer 5

David Carroll thank you for the insight!