Visual Basic

Intro

I'm Peter and this is the RoguePlanetoid Podcast where you will find insights about Microsoft or related platforms and technology, along with so much more whether you are beginner or an experienced professional or just interested in technology. Keep Current, Keep Coding!

Welcome

Welcome to episode thirty-seven of the RoguePlanetoid Podcast about Visual Basic. Visual Basic made Windows development approachable and accessible to learn for me as a beginner to then build with in business. Visual Basic was originally created in 1991 by Microsoft, which inherited much of the core philosophy, language pattens and beginner friendly design of BASIC, to bring graphical application development to everyone, featuring a drag-and-drop designer to place buttons, text boxes and more on a form and write code to bring them to life, with an intuitive event-driven approach designed for rapid application development, which was far more sophisticated than BASIC. You can learn more about BASIC in Episode Thirty Six of the RoguePlanetoid Podcast or check out the link in the show notes.

Visual Basic

It would be in high school when programming was finally something that was an option, albeit just in a small way but at least made me aware of Visual Basic, so decided to get it for myself when in 1997 I got the very first release of Visual Studio, Visual Studio 97 which came with Visual Basic 5, which I got via student licencing as there was no free option available at the time. The world-wide web was also something I was able to take advantage of, thanks to an arrangement with a local university which would help me learn from examples online but also a chance to share what I was learning with others, after having to learn on my own with BASIC by setting up and launching my Visual Basic website in early 1998.

Visual Basic was popular with plenty of examples online, but not many for absolute beginners which is where sharing my Visual Basic tutorials not only helped me learn but would also hopefully help inspire others, along with Visual Basic 6 coming out at same time so was able to have all my tutorials be right up to date. Thanks to that I was able to learn Visual Basic 6 which became the most widely used version of Visual Basic, not just for beginners but for businesses, which meant you could learn to code using the same tools used by professional developers. You can check out my Visual Basic website archived at cespage.com/vb or check out the link in the show notes.

Visual Basic .NET

One of my first jobs in 2006 was for a Classic ASP-based website that used a COM or component object model library in Visual Basic 6, but a few years before that when still at university a new flavour of Visual Basic, Visual Basic.NET was announced which was a complete redesign of the language for the upcoming .NET Framework which was released in 2002. Although many stuck with Classic Visual Basic with VB6, I looked to the future and started my learning journey with new tutorials to help me and others switch to VB.NET, using Windows Forms or WinForms. Those wanting to learn Visual Basic.NET were helped later by the launch of Visual Basic 2005 and Visual Basic 2008 Express Editions, which were free developer tools that made VB.NET more accessible, not only making my own resources more popular but also allowing many more developers to share their knowledge more easily, which accelerated my own knowledge of VB.NET. So, I updated that Classic ASP and Visual Basic 6 based website using webforms and Visual Basic.NET.

Visual Basic .NET allowed Visual Basic developers to take advantage of the evolving .NET Framework ecosystem, which grew by replacing the increasingly unwieldy WebForms which tried to mirror WinForms, with a more flexible Model-View-Controller approach to the web or using Windows Presentation Foundation on the desktop with an implementation that could use Visual Basic .NET, alongside a XAML-based markup for designing or designers. Later VB.NET was used in Silverlight which was a web-based component that enabled browser-based applications long before much of this was brought to the web natively. However, when Windows Phone which initially only used Silverlight with C#, the other .NET Framework language was launched, became my interest and marked my switch away from Visual Basic.NET to C# which I still use to this day with modern .NET.

Conclusion

Visual Basic was a great way to learn programming, delivering ease of use and flexibility equally for beginners and businesses, from creating simple programmes to powerful line of business applications. Visual Basic also enabled my development skills to evolve to the next level, beyond the console-style experiences of its predecessor BASIC, where I created simple examples to creating my own Windows desktop applications or building and maintaining the core of a Classic ASP-based application for the web using Visual Basic.

Visual Basic .NET became the gateway to the .NET ecosystem with VB.NET evolving the language and style of Visual Basic 6, into a more modern era to create desktop and web applications with features and approaches that evolved with Visual Basic .NET, but with evolution of platforms and direction meant Visual Basic.NET was no longer the primary choice, and due to Windows Phone meant a switch to C# for me, but is good to think back to when I was learning and using the same tools used in business which back then was Visual Basic.

Outro

Thanks for listening to the RoguePlanetoid Podcast where each episode you will find insights about Microsoft or related platforms and technology, along with so much more wherever you listen to your podcasts or at rogueplanetoid.com/podcasts for the RoguePlanetoid Podcast whether you are a beginner or an experienced professional or just interested in technology. Keep Current, Keep Coding!