Microsoft's programming language based on BASIC and COM
This article is about the Visual Basic language that shipped with Microsoft Visual Studio pre-.NET. For the current Visual Basic language, based on .NET, seeVisual Basic (.NET).
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 tolegacy status. The Microsoft VB team still maintains compatibility for VB6 applications through its "It Just Works" program on supported Windows operating systems.[3]
Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) is based on Classic Visual Basic. Because VB.NET was later rebranded back to Visual Basic, the name is ambiguous: it can refer to either Classic Visual Basic or to the .NET version.
Just as BASIC was originally intended to be easy to learn, Microsoft intended the same for VB.[4][5]
Development of a VB application is exclusively supported via the VBintegrated development environment (IDE), an application in the contemporary Visual Studio suite of tools. Unlike modern versions ofVisual Studio, which support many languages including VB (.NET), the VB IDE only supports VB.
In 2014, somesoftware developers still preferred Visual Basic 6.0 over its successor,Visual Basic .NET.[6] Visual Basic 6.0 was selected as the most dreaded programming language by respondents ofStack Overflow's annual developer survey in 2016, 2017, and 2018.[7][8][9]
As was the intention of olderBASIC variants, VB was intended to have a lowlearning curve. Further, the IDE was intended to promote productivity; even for complexGUI applications. Programming involvesvisually arrangingcomponents orcontrols on aform, specifying attributes and actions for those components, and writingcode that directs behavior. Since components have default attributes and actions, a programmer can develop a simple program without writing much code.
Programs built with earlier versions suffered performance problems, but faster computers and native code compilation made this less of an issue.
Since a VB program is compiled as a native codeexecutable instead of interpreted as old BASIC variants, it runs relatively fast and requires relatively little storage space. But,from version 5 on, it requires relatively large library files to be loaded at runtime; about 1 MB. Core runtime libraries are included by default inWindows 2000 and later, but extended runtime components require extra installation consideration. Earlier versions ofMicrosoft Windows (95/98/NT), require the runtime libraries to be distributed with the executable.
An empty form in Visual Basic 6
Forms are created usingdrag-and-drop techniques. A tool is used to place controls (e.g., text boxes, buttons, etc.) on the form (window). Controls haveattributes andevent handlers 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.
Controls provide the graphical functionality of a GUI application, and programmers attach code to event handlers to perform actions. For example, a drop-down control displays a list of items. When the user selects an item, an event handler is automatically called that executes the code that the programmer attached to the handler.
For a DLL, the VB code generally provides no user interface, and instead provides COM objects to other programs. This allows for capabilities such asserver-side processing or an add-in module.
Via the COM technology, unused memory is recovered for reuse usingreference counting; recovering when the count reaches zero. VB reduces the count when a variable goes out of scope or when assigned toNothing. This design preventsmemory leaks that plague some, older languages such as C & C++. It differs significantly from the more modern approach ofgarbage collection.
VB provides a large library of utility objects, and it provides basic support forobject-oriented programming.
Unlike many other programming languages, VB code is notcase-sensitive – though the IDE transformskeywords into a standard case and variable names to match the case used elsewhere in the project. Of note,string comparison is case sensitive by default.
The VB compiler is shared with other Visual Studio suite languages, C and C++. Nevertheless, by default the restrictions in the IDE do not allow creation of some targets (Windows model DLLs) and threading models, but over the years, developers have bypassed these restrictions.
Allows use of theWindows API via an external function declaration technology
Supports sharing and reuse via the COMcomponent technology. Aprogrammer can create an application using components provided by VB, developed internally or from third parties. Over time the development community produced and shared many components.[6][10][11][12][13]
Unlike older BASIC variants, instead of requiring line numbers to support branching, code is grouped into named blocks delimited bySub...End Sub orFunction...End Function. VB retains line number support[14]
Code statements have no terminating character other than a line ending (carriage return/line feed), and versions since 3 allow for multi-line statements for concatenation of strings or explicitly using the underscore character (_) at the end of a line[15][16]
A code comment is denoted by a single apostrophe (') character, like:' This is a comment
Looping statement blocks begin and end with keywords:Do...Loop, While...End While, For...Next[17]
Chained variable assignment is not allowed; for exampleA = B = C does not result in the values of A, B and C being equal. TheBoolean result of "is B equal to C?" is stored in A
Like other BASIC variants, but unlike many other languages that use 1, BooleanTrue has numeric value −1. VB stores a Boolean as atwo's complement signed integer with all ones in binary for true and zero for false. This is apparent when performing a (bitwise)Not operation on the two's complement value 0, which returns the two's complement value −1, in other wordsTrue = Not False. This inherent functionality becomes especially useful when performing logical operations on the individual bits of an integer such asAnd,Or,Xor andNot.[18] This definition ofTrue 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 asPerl), which have separate logical and bitwise operators. This is a traditional feature of BASIC.
Unlike for many languages which use zero for the lower bound of anarray, VB allows the lower bound to be any value – like inPascal andFortran. TheOption Base statement can be used to set the default lower bound, but some claim that its use leads to confusion when reading code and is best avoided by always explicitly specifying the lower bound. This uncommon language trait does exist inVisual Basic .NET but not inVBScript.
OPTION BASE was introduced by ANSI, with the standard for ANSI Minimal BASIC in the late 1970s.
Banker's rounding as the default behavior when converting real numbers to integers with theRound function.[19]? Round(2.5, 0) gives 2,? Round(3.5, 0) gives 4.
An integer type value is automatically promoted to a floating point type in expressions that involve the normal division operator (/) so that division of one integer by another produces a result that may seem more intuitive from a mathematical perspective. VB provides an integer divide operator (\) that does truncate.
By default, if a variable has not been declared or if no type declaration character is specified, it acts like avariant. However this can be changed with Deftype statements such asDefInt,DefBool,DefVar,DefObj,DefStr. There are 12Deftype 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 phraseAs (type). VB can be set up to require variable declarations viaOption Explicit.
Alan Cooper created the drag-and-drop design for the user interface of Visual Basic.
BYTE reported in 1989 that, based on its experience with Macintosh software development, Microsoft "wants to provide a development environment that mimics the delivery environment". BASIC's string handling was preferable to C, the company's Greg Lobdell said, when developing the mostly transaction-processing applications Microsoft expectedobject-oriented programming tools to create.[20]
Visual Basic 1.0 was introduced in 1991. The drag and drop design for creating the user interface is derived from a prototype form generator developed byAlan Cooper and his company calledTripod.[21][22][23] Microsoft contracted with Cooper and his associates to develop Tripod into a programmable form system forWindows 3.0, under the code nameRuby (no relation to the laterRuby programming language). 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 loaddynamic link libraries containing additional controls (then called "gizmos"), which later became the VBX interface.[24]
Project 'basic Thunder' was initiated in 1990.[25] Thunder persisted through to the last release of Visual Basic in the name of the primary internal function, "ThunderRTMain".
Visual Basic 1.0 (May 1991) was released for Windows at the Comdex/Windows World trade show in Atlanta, Georgia.
Visual Basic 1.0 forDOS was released in September 1992. The language itself was not quite compatible with Visual Basic for Windows, as it was the next version of Microsoft's DOS-based BASIC compilers,QuickBASIC and BASIC Professional Development System. The interface used atext-based user interface, usingextended ASCII characters to simulate the appearance of aGUI.
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 theJet Database Engine that could read and write Jet (or Access) 1.x databases.
Visual Basic 4.0 (August 1995) was the first version that could create32-bit as well as16-bit Windows programs. It has three editions; Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. It also introduced the ability to write non-GUI classes in Visual Basic. With VB4 the language was separated from the GUI library, and made available as VBA, in which form it was embedded with the Office 95 suite. To ease migration of Office macros and scripts, features from WordBasic, Excel Basic and Access Basic were incorporated into the language. 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 for32-bit 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 to 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 ofActiveX controls. 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[26] including the ability to create web-based applications.
Mainstream Support for Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 ended on March 31, 2005, andExtended support ended in March 2008.[27] However, primary components of the Visual Basic 6runtime environment run in all 32-bit versions of Windows up to and including Windows 11.[28]
Classic Visual Basic was released before the commercial Internet, so learning VB programming skills involved using digital help resources shipped with the product, attending user group meetings, and buying books and magazines. A range of book publishers supplied materials for new and experienced VB programmers, including Microsoft Press, IDG Books, Howard W. Sams, O’Reilly, Osborne McGraw-Hill, Que, Sybex, Ventana Press, Wiley, Wrox, and Ziff Davis Press.[29]
When Visual Basic 1.0 was released, just a few commercial books were available, but publishers caught up with demand by Visual Basic 3.0 (1993), a release designed to coincide withWindows 3.1.[30]
Popular VB programming books included:
John Clark Craig'sMicrosoft Visual Basic Programmer’s Workshop (1991), a book-and-software toolkit for Visual Basic 1.0 programmers.
Ross Nelson’sRunning Visual Basic for Windows (1992), one of the first introductory primers for new programmers, released for Visual Basic 2.0 and updated for Visual Basic 3.0.
Michael J. Young'sVisual Basic—Game Programming for Windows (1992), an early game programming book for Windows that featured ready-to-run strategy games and fractals.
Michael Halvorson'sMicrosoft Visual Basic 4 Step by Step (1995), a book that introduced Visual Basic 4.0 programming by focusing on the newWindows 95 user interface and topics like event-driven programming, managing data, using toolbox controls, processing text, and debugging.
Bruce McKinney’sHardcore Visual Basic: Secrets, Shortcuts, and Solutions for Programming Windows without Using C (1995), a text for advanced VB users that taught Windows programming techniques usually implemented inMicrosoft C.
Dan Appleman’sVisual Basic 5.0 Programmer’s Guide to the Win32 API (1997), which included information from theWindows SDK about using the features of Windows 95 andWindows NT 4.0.
John Connell'sBeginning Visual Basic 6 Database Programming (1998), written for VB programmers who needed to access information in corporate databases, a topic of major interest in the late 1990s and 2000s.
Microsoft developed many derivatives of VB (classic), including:
Visual Basic .NET is Microsoft's successor to Visual Basic 6.0, and part of Microsoft's.NET ecosystem (which over time has sometimes been called framework and core). It is notbackwards compatible with Visual Basic 6.0. An automated conversion tool exists, but fully automated conversion for most projects is not possible.[31]
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)[32] is ascripting language embedded in many Microsoft applications such asMicrosoft Office, and third-party products likeSolidWorks,AutoCAD,WordPerfect Office 2002,ArcGIS,Sage 300 ERP, and Business Objects Desktop Intelligence. There are small inconsistencies in the way VBA is implemented in different applications, but it is largely the same language as Visual Basic 6.0 and uses the same runtime library. Visual Basic development ended with 6.0, but in 2010 Microsoft introduced VBA 7 to provide extended features and add 64-bit support.[33]
VBScript is the default language forActive Server Pages. It can be used inWindows scripting and client-sideweb page scripting. It resembles VB insyntax, but is a separate language—executed by vbscript.dll instead of the VB runtime. ASP and VBScript should not be confused withASP.NET, which uses the.NET Framework for compiled web pages.
Gambas is a Visual Basic inspiredfree software programming language for the Linux operating system. It is not a clone of Visual Basic, but it does have the ability to convert Visual Basic programs to Gambas.
Versions before 5 compiled the code toP-Code – which is interpreted at runtime. The benefits of P-Code include portability and smaller binary file sizes, but it usually slows execution, since an interpreter adds a layer to the execution environment. VB applications require the Microsoft VB runtime MSVBVM##.DLL, where ## is a version number, either 50 or 60. MSVBVM60.dll comes standard with Windows in all editions from Windows 98 to Windows 11 although some editions of Windows 7 do not include it. For Windows 95 however the application installation process requires the DLL needed by the program. VB 5 and 6 can compile code to either native or P-Code but the runtime is still required for built-in functions and forms management.
All versions of the Visual Basic IDE, from 1.0 to 6.0, are no longer supported by Microsoft. The associated runtime environments are also unsupported, except for the Visual Basic 6 core runtime environment, which Microsoft officially supports for the lifetime ofWindows 10[37] andWindows 11.[38] Third party components that shipped with Visual Studio 6.0 are not included in this support statement. Some legacy Visual Basic components may still work on newer platforms, despite being unsupported by Microsoft and other vendors. Documentation for Visual Basic 6.0, its application programming interface and tools is best covered in the lastMSDN 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 as the language evolved, and support for older code ended. Although vendor support for Visual Basic 6 has ended, and the product has never been supported on the latest versions of Windows, key parts of the environment still work on newer platforms. It is possible to get a subset of the development environment working on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 and Windows 11.[39] Owing to its persistent remaining popularity,[40] third-party attempts to further support it, such as Rubberduck, exist.[41]
The following code snippet displays a message box saying "Hello, World!" as the window loads:
PrivateSubForm_Load()' Execute a simple message box that says "Hello, World!"MsgBox"Hello, World!"EndSub
This snippet makes a counter that moves up 1 every second (a label and a timer control need to be added to the form for this to work) until the form is closed or aninteger overflow occurs:
OptionExplicitDimCountAsIntegerPrivateSubForm_Load()Count=0Timer1.Interval=1000' units of millisecondsEndSubPrivateSubTimer1_Timer()Count=Count+1Label1.Caption=CountEndSub
^Root, Randal; Romero Sweeney, Mary (2006).A tester's guide to .NET programming.Apress. p. 3.ISBN978-1-59059-600-5.You can choose a language based on how easy it is to learn. For beginners, Visual Basic is a good choice. [~snip] A big advantage of Visual Basic is that it is a popular language since it is easy to learn.
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