A third-generation language is a refinement of a second generation programming language. Where as a second generation language is more aimed to fix logical structure to the language, a third generation language aims to refine the usability of the language in such a way to make it more user friendly.... event-driven programming language
Event-driven programming
In computer programming, event-driven programming or event-based programming is a programming paradigm in which the Program flow is determined by event s — i.e., sensor outputs or user actions or Message passing from other programs or Thread_.... and integrated development environment
Integrated development environment
An integrated development environment also known as integrated design environment or integrated debugging environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development.... (IDE) from Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices.... for its COM
Component Object Model
Component Object Model is an interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages.... programming model. VB is also considered a relatively easy to learn and use programming language, because of its graphical development features and BASIC
BASIC
In computer programming, BASIC is a family of high-level programming languages. The Dartmouth BASIC was designed in 1964 by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, United States to provide computer access to non-science students.... heritage.
In computer programming, BASIC is a family of high-level programming languages. The Dartmouth BASIC was designed in 1964 by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, United States to provide computer access to non-science students.... and enables the rapid application development (RAD)
Rapid application development
Rapid application development is a software development methodology, which involves iterative development and the construction of prototypes.... of graphical user interface (GUI)
Graphical user interface
A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment.... applications, access to database
Database
A database is a structured collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system. The structure is achieved by organizing the data according to a database model.... s using Data Access Object
Data Access Object
In computer software, a Data Access Object is an Object that provides an abstract Interface to some type of database or persistence mechanism, providing some specific operations without exposing details of the database.... s, Remote Data Objects, or ActiveX Data Objects, and creation of ActiveX
ActiveX
ActiveX is a component Object Model developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows. By using the Component Object Model runtime, developers can create Component-based software engineering that perform a particular function or a set of functions.... controls and objects.
A third-generation language is a refinement of a second generation programming language. Where as a second generation language is more aimed to fix logical structure to the language, a third generation language aims to refine the usability of the language in such a way to make it more user friendly.... event-driven programming language
Event-driven programming
In computer programming, event-driven programming or event-based programming is a programming paradigm in which the Program flow is determined by event s — i.e., sensor outputs or user actions or Message passing from other programs or Thread_.... and integrated development environment
Integrated development environment
An integrated development environment also known as integrated design environment or integrated debugging environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development.... (IDE) from Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices.... for its COM
Component Object Model
Component Object Model is an interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages.... programming model. VB is also considered a relatively easy to learn and use programming language, because of its graphical development features and BASIC
BASIC
In computer programming, BASIC is a family of high-level programming languages. The Dartmouth BASIC was designed in 1964 by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, United States to provide computer access to non-science students.... heritage.
In computer programming, BASIC is a family of high-level programming languages. The Dartmouth BASIC was designed in 1964 by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, United States to provide computer access to non-science students.... and enables the rapid application development (RAD)
Rapid application development
Rapid application development is a software development methodology, which involves iterative development and the construction of prototypes.... of graphical user interface (GUI)
Graphical user interface
A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment.... applications, access to database
Database
A database is a structured collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system. The structure is achieved by organizing the data according to a database model.... s using Data Access Object
Data Access Object
In computer software, a Data Access Object is an Object that provides an abstract Interface to some type of database or persistence mechanism, providing some specific operations without exposing details of the database.... s, Remote Data Objects, or ActiveX Data Objects, and creation of ActiveX
ActiveX
ActiveX is a component Object Model developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows. By using the Component Object Model runtime, developers can create Component-based software engineering that perform a particular function or a set of functions.... controls and objects. Scripting language
Scripting language
A scripting language, script language or extension language, is a programming language that allows some control of a single or many Application software.... s such as VBA
Visual Basic for Applications
Visual Basic for Applications is an implementation of Microsoft Event-driven programming programming language Visual Basic, and associated integrated development environment , which is built into most Microsoft Office applications.... and VBScript
VBScript
VBScript is an Active Scripting language, developed by Microsoft, which uses the Component Object Model to access elements of the environment within which it's running .... are syntactically similar to Visual Basic, but perform differently.
A programmer can put together an application using the components
Component-based software engineering
Component-based software engineering is a branch of the software engineering discipline, with emphasis on decomposition of the engineered systems into Functional programming or logical components with well-defined Interface used for communication across the components.... provided with Visual Basic itself. Programs written in Visual Basic can also use the Windows API
Windows API
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems.... , but doing so requires external function declarations.
The final release was version 6 in 1998. Microsoft's extended support ended in March 2008 and the designated successor was Visual Basic .NET
Visual Basic .NET
Visual Basic , formerly called Visual Basic .NET , is an object-oriented programming computer language that can be viewed as an evolution of Microsoft Visual Basic implemented on the .NET Framework.... (now known simply as Visual Basic).
In computer programming, BASIC is a family of high-level programming languages. The Dartmouth BASIC was designed in 1964 by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, United States to provide computer access to non-science students.... programming language, Visual Basic was designed to be easy to learn and use. The language not only allows programmers to create simple GUI
Graphical user interface
A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment.... applications, but can also develop complex applications.
Programming in VB is a combination of visually arranging components or controls on a form
Form (programming)
In software component , a form is an easy way to create a GUI window. A form contains components and controls, which are a high-level representation of standard GUI widgets; it's easier to manipulate the high-level wrappers than to deal with the underlying API.... , specifying attributes and actions of those components, and writing additional lines of code
Source code
In computer science, source code is any collection of statements or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language.... for more functionality.
Since default attributes and actions are defined for the components, a simple program can be created without the programmer having to write many lines of code.
Performance problems were experienced by earlier versions, but with faster computers and native code compilation this has become less of an issue.
Although programs can be compiled into native code executables from version 5 onwards, they still require the presence of runtime libraries of approximately 1 MB in size. This runtime is included by default in Windows 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on business desktops, Laptop, and Server . Released on 17 February, 2000, it was the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the final release of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation.... and later, but for earlier versions of Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces .... like 95/98/NT it must be distributed together with the executable.
In computer graphical user interfaces, drag-and-drop or DnD is the action of clicking on a virtual object and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object.... techniques. A tool is used to place controls (e.g., text boxes, buttons, etc.) on the form (window). Controls have attribute
Attribute (computing)
In computing, an attribute is a specification that defines a property of an object, element, or file. An attribute of an object usually consists of a name and a value; of an element, a type or class name; of a file, a name and extension.... s and event handler
Event handler
In computer programming, an event handler is an asynchronous callback subroutine that handles inputs received in a program. Each event is a piece of application-level information from the underlying framework, typically the GUI toolkit.... s associated with them. Default values are provided when the control is created, but may be changed by the programmer. Many attribute values can be modified during run time based on user actions or changes in the environment, providing a dynamic application. For example, code can be inserted into the form resize event handler to reposition a control so that it remains centered on the form, expands to fill up the form, etc. By inserting code into the event handler for a keypress in a text box, the program can automatically translate the case of the text being entered, or even prevent certain characters from being inserted.
Visual Basic can create executables (EXE files), ActiveX controls
ActiveX
ActiveX is a component Object Model developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows. By using the Component Object Model runtime, developers can create Component-based software engineering that perform a particular function or a set of functions.... , DLL files, but is primarily used to develop Windows applications and to interface web database systems. Dialog boxes with less functionality can be used to provide pop-up capabilities. Controls provide the basic functionality of the application, while programmers can insert additional logic within the appropriate event handlers. For example, a drop-down combination box will automatically display its list and allow the user to select any element. An event handler is called when an item is selected, which can then execute additional code created by the programmer to perform some action based on which element was selected, such as populating a related list.
Alternatively, a Visual Basic component can have no user interface, and instead provide ActiveX objects to other programs via Component Object Model
Component Object Model
Component Object Model is an interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages.... (COM). This allows for server-side
Server-side
Server-side refers to operations that are performed by the server in a client-server relationship in computer networking.Typically, a server is a software program, such as a web server, that runs on a remote server , reachable from a user's local computer or workstation.... processing or an add-in module.
In computer science, garbage collection is a form of automatic memory management. The garbage collector, or just collector, attempts to reclaim garbage , or memory used by Object that will never be accessed or mutated again by the Application software.... using reference counting
Reference counting
In computer science, reference counting is a technique of storing the number of references, pointers, or handles to a resource such as an object or block of memory.... , has a large library of utility objects, and has basic object oriented support
Object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm that uses "Object_" and their interactions to design applications and computer programs.... . Since the more common components are included in the default project template, the programmer seldom needs to specify additional libraries. Unlike many other programming languages, Visual Basic is generally not case sensitive, although it will transform keywords
Keywords
Keywords are the words that are used to reveal the internal structure of an author's reasoning. While they are used primarily for rhetoric, they are also used in a strictly grammatical sense for structural composition, reasoning, and comprehension.... into a standard case configuration and force the case of variable names to conform to the case of the entry within the symbol table entry. String comparisons are case sensitive by default, but can be made case insensitive if so desired.
The Visual Basic compiler is shared with other Visual Studio languages (C, C++), but restrictions in the IDE do not allow the creation of some targets (Windows model DLL's) and threading models.
Characteristics present in Visual Basic
Visual Basic has the following traits which differ from C-derived languages:
In computer science, the Boolean algebra datatype, sometimes called the logical datatype, is a primitive datatype having one of two values: Truth value and false.... constant True has numeric value -1. This is because the Boolean data type is stored as a 16-bit signed integer. In this construct -1 evaluates to 16 binary 1s (the Boolean value True), and 0 as 16 0s (the Boolean value False). This is apparent when performing a Not operation on a 16 bit signed integer value 0 which will return the integer value -1, in other words True = Not False. This inherent functionality becomes especially useful when performing logical operations on the individual bits of an integer such as And, Or, Xor and Not. This definition of True is also consistent with BASIC since the early 1970s Microsoft BASIC implementation and is also related to the characteristics of CPU instructions at the time.
Logical and bitwise operators are unified. This is unlike some C-derived languages (such as Perl
Perl
In computer programming, Perl is a high-level programming language, List of programming languages by category, Interpreter , dynamic programming language.... ), which have separate logical and bitwise operators. This again is a traditional feature of BASIC.
In computer science, an array is a data structure consisting of a group of element s that are accessed by index . In most programming languages each element has the same data type and the array occupies a contiguous area of computer memory.... base. Arrays are declared by specifying the upper and lower bounds in a way similar to Pascal and Fortran
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose programming language, procedural programming language, imperative programming language programming language that is especially suited to numerical analysis and scientific computing.... . It is also possible to use the Option Base statement to set the default lower bound. Use of the Option Base statement can lead to confusion when reading Visual Basic code and is best avoided by always explicitly specifying the lower bound of the array. This lower bound is not limited to 0 or 1, because it can also be set by declaration. In this way, both the lower and upper bounds are programmable. In more subscript-limited languages, the lower bound of the array is not variable. This uncommon trait does exist in Visual Basic .NET
Visual Basic .NET
Visual Basic , formerly called Visual Basic .NET , is an object-oriented programming computer language that can be viewed as an evolution of Microsoft Visual Basic implemented on the .NET Framework.... but not in VBScript
VBScript
VBScript is an Active Scripting language, developed by Microsoft, which uses the Component Object Model to access elements of the environment within which it's running .... .
OPTION BASE was introduced by ANSI, with the standard for ANSI Minimal BASIC in the late 1970s.
Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces .... and the Component Object Model
Component Object Model
Component Object Model is an interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages.... .
Rounding involves reducing the number of significant digits in a number. The result of rounding is a "shorter" number having fewer non-zero digits yet similar in magnitude.... as the default behavior when converting real numbers to integers with the Round function.
Integers are automatically promoted to reals in expressions involving the normal division operator (/) so that division of an odd integer by an even integer produces the intuitively correct result. There is a specific integer divide operator (\) which does truncate.
By default, if a variable has not been declared or if no type declaration character is specified, the variable is of type Variant
Variant type
Variant is a data type in certain programming languages, particularly Visual Basic and C++ when using the Component Object Model.In Visual Basic the Variant data type is a tagged union that can be used to represent any other data type except fixed-length string type.... . However this can be changed with Deftype statements such as DefInt, DefBool, DefVar, DefObj, DefStr. There are 12 Deftype statements in total offered by Visual Basic 6.0. The default type may be overridden for a specific declaration by using a special suffix character on the variable name (# for Double, ! for Single, & for Long, % for Integer, $ for String, and @ for Currency) or using the key phrase As (type). VB can also be set in a mode that only explicitly declared variables can be used with the command Option Explicit.
Evolution of Visual Basic
VB 1.0 was introduced in 1991. The drag and drop design for creating the user interface is derived from a prototype form generator developed by Alan Cooper
Alan Cooper
Alan Cooper, an advocate of interaction design, runs a design company and writes books about how to make software user interfaces more Usability.... and his company called Tripod. Microsoft contracted with Cooper and his associates to develop Tripod into a programmable form system for Windows 3.0, under the code name Ruby (no relation to the Ruby programming language
Ruby (programming language)
Ruby is a dynamic programming language, reflection , general purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features.... ).
Tripod did not include a programming language at all. Microsoft decided to combine Ruby with the Basic language to create Visual Basic.
The Ruby interface generator provided the "visual" part of Visual Basic and this was combined with the "EB" Embedded BASIC engine designed for Microsoft's abandoned "Omega" database system. Ruby also provided the ability to load dynamic link libraries
Dynamic-link library
Dynamic-link library , or DLL, is Microsoft's implementation of the shared library concept in the Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems.... containing additional controls (then called "gizmos"), which later became the VBX
Visual Basic Extension
In computer programming, a Visual Basic Extension or custom control, was the software component used in Microsoft Visual Basic versions 1.0 to 3.0.... interface.
Timeline of Visual Basic (VB1 to VB6)
Project 'Thunder' was initiated
Visual Basic 1.0 (May 1991) was released for Windows at the Comdex/Windows World trade show in Atlanta, Georgia.
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is a shorthand term for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me.... was released in September 1992. The language itself was not quite compatible with Visual Basic for Windows, as it was actually the next version of Microsoft's DOS-based BASIC compilers, QuickBASIC
QuickBASIC
Microsoft QuickBASIC is an Integrated Development Environment and compiler for the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft Corporation.... and BASIC Professional Development System. The interface used the "COW" (Character Oriented Windows) interface, using extended ASCII
Extended ASCII
The term extended ASCII describes eight-bit or larger character encodings that include the standard seven-bit ASCII characters as well as others.... characters to simulate the appearance of a GUI
Graphical user interface
A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment.... .
Visual Basic 2.0 was released in November 1992. The programming environment was easier to use, and its speed was improved. Notably, forms became instantiable objects, thus laying the foundational concepts of class modules as were later offered in VB4.
Visual Basic 3.0 was released in the summer of 1993 and came in Standard and Professional versions. VB3 included version 1.1 of the Microsoft Jet Database Engine
Microsoft Jet Database Engine
The Microsoft Jet Database Engine is a database engine on which several Microsoft products were built. A database engine is the underlying component of a database, a collection of information stored on a computer in a systematic way.... that could read and write Jet (or Access) 1.x databases.
Visual Basic 4.0 (August 1995) was the first version that could create 32-bit
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295 or -2,147,483,648 through 2,147,483,647 using two's complement encoding.... as well as 16-bit
16-bit
16-bit architectureThe HP 2100#Descendants and variants , introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor.Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816.... Windows programs. It also introduced the ability to write non-GUI classes in Visual Basic. Incompatibilities between different releases of VB4 caused installation and operation problems. While previous versions of Visual Basic had used VBX controls, Visual Basic now used OLE controls (with files names ending in .OCX) instead. These were later to be named ActiveX controls.
With version 5.0 (February 1997), Microsoft released Visual Basic exclusively for 32-bit
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295 or -2,147,483,648 through 2,147,483,647 using two's complement encoding.... versions of Windows. Programmers who preferred to write 16-bit programs were able to import programs written in Visual Basic 4.0 to Visual Basic 5.0, and Visual Basic 5.0 programs can easily be converted with Visual Basic 4.0. Visual Basic 5.0 also introduced the ability to create custom user controls, as well as the ability to compile to native Windows executable code, speeding up calculation-intensive code execution. A free, downloadable Control Creation Edition was also released for creation of ActiveX control
ActiveX
ActiveX is a component Object Model developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows. By using the Component Object Model runtime, developers can create Component-based software engineering that perform a particular function or a set of functions.... s. It was also used as an introductory form of Visual Basic: a regular .exe project could be created and run in the IDE, but not compiled.
Visual Basic 6.0 (Mid 1998) improved in a number of areas including the ability to create web-based applications. VB6 has entered Microsoft's "non-supported phase" as of March 2008. Although the Visual Basic 6.0 development environment is no longer supported, the runtime is supported on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 .
Mainstream Support for Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 ended on March 31, 2005. Extended support ended in March 2008. In response, the Visual Basic user community expressed its grave concern and lobbied users to sign a petition to keep the product alive. Microsoft has so far refused to change their position on the matter. (but see ) Ironically, around this time (2005), it was exposed that Microsoft's new anti-spyware offering, Microsoft AntiSpyware
Windows Defender
Windows Defender, formerly known as Microsoft AntiSpyware, is a software product from Microsoft to prevent, remove and quarantine spyware in Microsoft Windows.... (part of the GIANT Company Software
GIANT Company Software
GIANT Company Software, Inc. developed internet security products, including GIANT Spam Inspector, GIANT Popup Inspector, and GIANT AntiSpyware.... purchase), was coded in Visual Basic 6.0.Its replacement, Windows Defender, was rewritten as C++ code.
Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices.... has developed derivatives of Visual Basic for use in scripting
Scripting language
A scripting language, script language or extension language, is a programming language that allows some control of a single or many Application software.... . Visual Basic itself is derived heavily from BASIC
BASIC
In computer programming, BASIC is a family of high-level programming languages. The Dartmouth BASIC was designed in 1964 by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, United States to provide computer access to non-science students.... , and subsequently has been replaced with a .NET
.NET Framework
The Microsoft .NET Framework is a software framework that is available with several Microsoft Windows operating systems. It includes a large Library of coded solutions to prevent common programming problems and a virtual machine that manages the execution of programs written specifically for the Software framework.... platform version.
Visual Basic for Applications is an implementation of Microsoft Event-driven programming programming language Visual Basic, and associated integrated development environment , which is built into most Microsoft Office applications.... (VBA) is included in many Microsoft applications (Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a popular set of interrelated desktop applications, servers and services. Microsoft Office is collectively referred to as an office suite, for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.... ), and also in many third-party products like SolidWorks
SolidWorks
SolidWorks is a 3D computer graphics mechanical CAD program that runs on Microsoft Windows and was developed by SolidWorks Corporation - now a subsidiary of Dassault Syst?mes, S.... , AutoCAD, WordPerfect Office 2002
WordPerfect Office
WordPerfect Office is an office suite developed by Corel Corporation. As of April 2008, the latest version is WordPerfect Office X4 , which is available in various editions, including Standard, Professional, Home & Student and Family Pack Edition.... , ArcGIS
ArcGIS
ArcGIS is the name of a group of geographic information system software product lines produced by ESRI. At the desktop GIS level, ArcGIS can include: ArcReader, which allows one to view and query maps created with the other Arc products; ArcView, which allows one to view spatial data, create maps, and perform basic spatial analysis; ArcEdi... and Sage Accpac ERP
ACCPAC
Accpac is a vendor of accounting, Customer relationship management and business management software. Primarily serving small and medium sized businesses, Accpac attracts customers due to its use of Web Services as platform for business application deployment.... . There are small inconsistencies in the way VBA is implemented in different applications, but it is largely the same language as VB6 and uses the same runtime library.
VBScript is an Active Scripting language, developed by Microsoft, which uses the Component Object Model to access elements of the environment within which it's running .... is the default language for Active Server Pages
Active Server Pages
Active Server Pages , also known as Classic ASP, was Microsoft's first server-side scripting Active Scripting for dynamic web page. Initially released as an add-on to Internet Information Services via the Windows_NT_4.0#Option_Pack, it was subsequently included as a free component of Windows Server .... . It can be used in Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces .... scripting and client-side web page
Web page
A web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser.This information is usually in HyperText Markup Language or eXtensible HyperText Markup Language format, and may provide Navigation bar to other web pages via hypertext Hyperlink.... scripting. Although it resembles VB in syntax, it is a separate language and it is executed by vbscript.dll as opposed to the VB runtime. ASP and VBScript should not be confused with ASP.NET
ASP.NET
ASP.NET is a web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, web applications and web services.... which uses the .NET Framework
.NET Framework
The Microsoft .NET Framework is a software framework that is available with several Microsoft Windows operating systems. It includes a large Library of coded solutions to prevent common programming problems and a virtual machine that manages the execution of programs written specifically for the Software framework.... for compiled web pages.
Visual Basic , formerly called Visual Basic .NET , is an object-oriented programming computer language that can be viewed as an evolution of Microsoft Visual Basic implemented on the .NET Framework.... is Microsoft's designated successor to Visual Basic 6.0, and is part of Microsoft's .NET
.NET Framework
The Microsoft .NET Framework is a software framework that is available with several Microsoft Windows operating systems. It includes a large Library of coded solutions to prevent common programming problems and a virtual machine that manages the execution of programs written specifically for the Software framework.... platform. Visual Basic.Net compiles and runs using the .NET Framework. It is not backwards compatible
Backward compatibility
In technology, for example in telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backwards compatible if it allows input generated by older devices.... with VB6. An automated conversion tool exists, but for most projects automated conversion is impossible.
StarOffice Basic is a dialect of BASIC that is included with the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice office suites.Although StarBasic itself is similar to other dialects of Basic, such as Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications, the application programming interface is very different, as the example below of a Macro illustrates.... is a Visual Basic compatible interpreter included in StarOffice
StarOffice
StarOffice is Sun Microsystems' proprietary software office suite Computer software. It was originally developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun in August 1999.... suite, developed by Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982.... .
In software development, Gambas is an object-oriented dialect of the BASIC programming language, along with an integrated development environment to accompany it, which runs on Linux and other Unix-like computer operating systems.... is a Visual Basic inspired free software
Free software
Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware... programming language for GNU
GNU
GNU is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software. Its name is a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix; it was chosen because its design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code.... /Linux
Linux
Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license... . It is not a clone of Visual Basic, but it does have the ability to convert Visual Basic programs to Gambas.
Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware... programming language for Linux, Mac and Windows. It is not a clone of Visual Basic, but it does have the ability to convert Visual Basic programs to KBasic.
Performance and other issues
Earlier counterparts of Visual Basic (prior to version 5) compiled the code to P-Code
P-code
P-code can refer to:* p-code machine * Code used in the UCSD p-System * P-code is also part of the Global Positioning System signal* In the automotive industry, P-codes are engine diagnostic codes displayed by an OBD-II scanner.... or Pseudo code only. Visual Basic 5 and 6 are able to compile the code to either native or P-Code as the programmer chooses. The P-Code is interpreted by the language runtime, also known as virtual machine, implemented for benefits such as portability and small code. However, it usually slows down the execution by adding an additional layer of interpretation of code by the runtime although small amounts of code and algorithms can be constructed to run faster than the compiled native code. Visual Basic applications require Microsoft Visual Basic runtime MSVBVMxx.DLL, where xx is the relevant version number, either 50 or 60. MSVBVM60.dll comes as standard with Windows in all editions after Windows 98 while MSVBVM50.dll comes with all editions after Windows 95. A Windows 95 machine would however require inclusion with the installer of whichever dll was needed by the program.
Other criticisms levelled at Visual Basic editions prior to VB.NET include:
Versioning problems associated with various runtime DLL's (see DLL hell
DLL hell
In computing, DLL hell is a colloquial term for the complications that arise when working with dynamic link library used with Microsoft Windows operating systems, particularly legacy 16-bit editions.... )
In computer science, a thread of execution is a Fork of a computer program into two or more Concurrency running task s. The implementation of threads and process es differs from one operating system to another, but in most cases, a thread is contained inside a process.... applications, without resorting to Windows API calls
Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems.... support
On Microsoft Windows operating systems, a Windows service is a long-running executable that performs specific functions and which is designed not to require user intervention.... s
Variant is a data type in certain programming languages, particularly Visual Basic and C++ when using the Component Object Model.In Visual Basic the Variant data type is a tagged union that can be used to represent any other data type except fixed-length string type.... s have a greater performance and storage overhead than strongly-typed programming language
Strongly-typed programming language
In computer science and computer programming, the term strong typing is used to describe those situations where programming languages specify one or more restrictions on how operations involving values having different data types can be intermixed.... s
Legacy Development and Support
All versions of Visual Basic from 1.0 to 6.0 have been retired and are now unsupported by Microsoft. Visual Basic 6 programs can still run on Windows versions up to and including Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7, and the runtime is supported by Microsoft on these versions.. Development and maintenance development for Visual Basic 6 is possible on Windows XP and Windows 2003 using Visual Studio 6.0. Documentation for Visual Basic 6.0, its application programming interface and tools is best covered in the last MSDN release before Visual Studio.NET 2002. Later releases of MSDN focused on .NET development and had significant parts of the Visual Basic 6.0 programming documentation removed. Development for this type of legacy system is typically done using a virtual machine with Windows 2003 or Windows XP, Visual Studio 6.0 and MSDN documentation. As of August 2008, both Visual Studio 6.0 and the MSDN documentation mentioned above are available for download by MSDN subscribers.
Example code
Here is an example of the language:
Code snippet that display a message box "Hello, World!" as the window Form loads:
Private Sub Form_Load
MsgBox "Hello, World!"
End Sub
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