What is VB.net? Is Visual Basic still functional in 2024?

Recently, Microsoft has stopped using the classic Visual Basic for a long time. This is intending to modernize its development tools and improve language interoperability, among other things. It has also sought to simplify its language offering and adopt programming that is much more goal-oriented. To understand if the current tool or Visual Basic is more convenient, we want to tell you about VB.NET, the new preferred version.

Something that made Visual Basic famous was, fundamentally, its ease of use and its simplicity. This is what allowed it to be used by both non-technical people and completely new users. However, the classic version of this tool was abandoned in 2008, and VB.NET (Visual Basic . NET) was declared the successor.

Why Was It Decided To Discontinue Visual Basic?

According to information that can be found on the Velneo website, Microsoft had, 20 years ago, the largest community of developers in the world. They turned to Visual Basic as a reference tool. However, by 2002, it had already been announced that that language was being replaced by something different that, at the same time, would be incompatible. The primary keys that we must take into account to understand this event are the following:

The Windows API

The first point is the API. This is the Windows low-level programming interface. It is primarily a C interface. It is important to understand that all Windows programming tools compile code that makes calls to that API.

COM

Secondly, we find COM, a mechanism aimed at linking and uniting software components. It is defined as a binary standard, which means that it works with compiled code at runtime. It is actually considered a family of tools, among which we find ActiveX controls, located in both Visual Basic and Internet Explorer.

.NET Framework

Finally, Microsoft chose the .NET environment as a replacement for COM because it failed. It is a binary standard with a high coupling, making it weak for web applications. It is very complex, making this one of the main reasons why many developers were switching from traditional Visual Basic to Java. Today, with the family called Indigo, a new standard is born, built on the second version of the .NET framework.

The Emergence Of VB

In this scenario, and understanding the different complaints from developers who found shortcomings in the classic Visual Basic, Microsoft decided to launch another tool. Thus, he created a completely new product that was compatible with VB6 only in the aspects that could be done without damaging the new language. This new product resolved many of the problems that appeared in VB6, eliminating most of the anomalies.

Furthermore, this new product managed to fully support goal orientation, eliminating the classic dependency on a single development environment. The latter, thanks to the fact that VB.NET has a command line compiler. On the other hand, in general, VB.NET manages to eliminate the walls and obstacles present until now, generating a transformation: it equates VB with any different .NET language.

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