MICROSOFT VISUAL BASIC PROGRAMMING
Visual Basic Versions
 Visual Basic
has gone through many changes over it lifetime, and it is now evolving at an ever
increasing pace.
Here is a brief history of Visual Basic.
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Visual Basic 1.0
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1991
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Project 'Thunder' was released for Windows at the Comdex/Windows World trade show
in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Visual Basic 1.0 for MS-DOS
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1992
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This release updated Microsoft's QuickBASIC Professional Development System with
a new library that enabled use of a character-based Windowing system.
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Visual Basic 2.0
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1992
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With VB2, forms became instantiable objects, laying the concepts of class modules
as were later offered in VB4. Included ODBC for database access.
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Visual Basic 3.0
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1993
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VB3 was released in Standard and Professional versions. VB3 included the Microsoft
Jet Database Engine that could read and write to Access databases.
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Visual Basic 4.0
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1995
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VB4 added 32-bit code compilation. Introduced classes, giving VB object orientation
though inheritance. VB4 also replaced the VBX with a new type of add-on called OCX
(OLE Control Extension), based on COM, Microsoft's component programming model.
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Visual Basic 5.0
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1997
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VB5 introduced the ability to create OCX custom user controls, as well as the ability
to compile to native Windows executable code. VB5 no longer supported compilation
to 16-bit executables.
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Visual Basic 6.0
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1998
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VB6 improved in a number of areas, including the ability to create web-based applications.
VB6 has now entered Microsoft's "non-supported phase". VB6 is still in use today
for maintaining existing applications.
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Visual Basic
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2002
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Visual Basic.NET was the first version to target the .NET Framework. VB.NET introduced
full object orientation and cleaned up anomalies in the language. The language was
not fully compatible with VB6 and caused difficulty in migrating existing code.
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Visual Basic
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2005
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The language has continued to evolve, with features like the Using statement for
freeing resources automatically. It supports generic types and nullable types. It
added the ability to modify code while debugging, called Edit and Continue.
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Visual Basic
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2008
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In VB 2008, the language was updated to support Microsoft's innovations in language-integrated
query (LINQ). Other features include extension methods, type inference, anonymous
types and Lambda Expressions. VB has strayed far from its roots as a simple programming
language.
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Visual Basic
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2010
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Most of the new features relate to large programming teams or object oriented programming,
and are of little interest to the Visual Basic programmer. The IDE has a new and
very slow user interface using WPF.
The only new features of interest are:
- Implicit Line Continuation
- Properties created in one-line statements
- The Primary Interop Assembly (PIA) needed for Microsoft Office COM applications
has a reduced footprint size
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