Visual Basic

Visual Basic (VB) is a family of technologies from Microsoft that involve their variant of the BASIC programming language.

The core technology has a long and storied history with products and technological advances spanning decades. Major product lines include:


 * Visual Basic (.NET) the current line, launched in 2002, named Visual Basic .NET at first, but now just Visual Basic, based on .NET, supported in various integrated development environments including Visual Studio
 * Visual Basic (classic) the first line, supported from 1991 to 2008, version 6 (VB6) based on Component Object Model (COM), tightly bound with the integrated development environment by the same name, Visual Basic

Derivative technologies include:


 * Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) a variant of VB6 built into computer programs such as Microsoft Office for automation macros
 * VBScript a deprecated scripting language based on VB6
 * Embedded Visual Basic the classic version geared toward embedded applications