Visual Basic (classic)
Microsoft's programming language based on BASIC and COM / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Visual Basic (VB) before .NET, sometimes referred to as Classic Visual Basic,[1] is a third-generation programming language, based on BASIC, and an integrated development environment (IDE), from Microsoft for Windows known for supporting rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications, event-driven programming and both consumption and development of components via the Component Object Model (COM) technology.
Paradigm | Object-based and event-driven |
---|---|
Developer | Microsoft |
First appeared | May 1991; 33 years ago (1991-05) |
Final release | 6.0
/ 1998; 26 years ago (1998) |
Typing discipline | Static, strong |
OS | Microsoft Windows and MS-DOS |
Website | learn |
Major implementations | |
Microsoft Visual Studio | |
Influenced by | |
BASIC, Microsoft BASIC, QBasic | |
Influenced | |
Visual Basic .NET, Visual Basic for Applications, Windows Forms, Gambas, Xojo, Basic4ppc, Basic4android, NS Basic and twinBASIC |
VB was first released in 1991. The final release was version 6 (VB6) in 1998. On April 8, 2008, Microsoft stopped supporting the VB6 IDE, relegating it to legacy. The Microsoft VB team still maintains compatibility for VB6 applications through its "It Just Works" program on supported Windows operating systems.[2]
Microsoft significantly changed VB for the .NET technology and rebranded it Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET), and then later rebranded it back to Visual Basic. Therefore, Visual Basic can refer to a classic version, a .NET version or both. This article is about the versions before .NET.
Just as BASIC was originally intended to be easy to learn, Microsoft intended the same for VB.[3][4]
Development of a VB application is exclusively supported via the VB integrated development environment (IDE) ā an application in the Visual Studio suite of tools of that era. Unlike modern versions of Visual Studio that support many languages including VB (.NET), the VB IDE supports just VB.
In 2014, some software developers still preferred Visual Basic 6.0 over its successor, Visual Basic .NET.[5] Visual Basic 6.0 was selected as the most dreaded programming language by respondents of Stack Overflow's annual developer survey in 2016, 2017, and 2018.[6][7][8]