Each Visual Basic family member will have different technical requirements. We will provide installation options and steps in each subsection for the different family members. Some of these products are old and should be installed in a virtual machine (VM) or development machine that does not need to maintain security. All example code for this book is available at the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Learn-Visual-Basics-Quick-Start-Guide-.

Visual Basic.NET Windows Forms is a user interface (UI) framework to create desktop applications on the Windows operating system. It allows developers to create visually appealing and interactive applications using a drag-and-drop interface, without needing to write all the code from scratch.

Windows Forms provides a set of pre-built controls such as buttons, textboxes, labels, and menus that can be easily placed on a form to create a UI. These controls can be customized by changing properties such as color, size, and font, and they can be programmed to respond to user input and events.

Visual Basic.NET is a programming language that can be used to write code for Windows Forms applications. It is a high-level language that is easy to learn and use, and it provides a wide range of features to develop complex applications.

Some of the features of Visual Basic.NET Windows Forms include the following:

• Rapid application development...

Visual Basic Classic (also known as VB6) is a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) that was developed by Microsoft. It was released in 1998 and was widely used to develop desktop applications for the Windows operating system.

VB6 was the last version of the Visual Basic programming language before the introduction of .NET Framework, and it uses a syntax similar to earlier versions of Visual Basic. The language was designed to be easy to learn and use, and it was popular among beginners and experienced developers alike.

VB6 applications can be developed using the Visual Basic IDE, which includes a visual form designer, code editor, and debugger. The language supports OOP concepts, such as encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism.

Although Microsoft has stopped supporting VB6, many legacy applications continue to use the language, and it remains a popular choice for small-scale Windows desktop application...

VBA is a programming language that automates tasks in Microsoft Office applications, such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Access. VBA is primarily used to automate repetitive tasks and interact with external applications.

VBA is a powerful language that can import and translate data, automate sequences of calculations, and create custom forms and specialized reports. These powers lead VBA to be used by finance professionals and data analysts who work with large amounts of data and perform complex analyses. VBA is a powerful language that allows users to create functions, perform error handling, and use advanced programming techniques such as loops and conditional statements. VBA is also licensed from Microsoft or reproduced by third-party companies. A small sample of applications that host VBA includes WordPerfect, LibreOffice, and CorelDRAW.

Hello, World! in VBA

VBA code is stored in text files with an extension of .bas when exported from the host. Often...

VBScript is a scripting language that is based on the Visual Basic programming language. It is primarily used to create simple scripts that automate tasks in Windows environments.

VBScript is a lightweight language that is easy to learn and use. It is commonly used to automate repetitive tasks, such as file manipulation, data processing, and system administration. It can be used to interact with Windows components, such as the registry, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), and Active Directory.

VBScript is an interpreted language, which means that it is executed directly by the OS without the need for a compiler. It can be run from the command line or embedded within other applications, such as Microsoft Excel or Internet Explorer.

VBScript is supported by all modern versions of Windows and is often used in combination with other scripting languages, such as PowerShell and Batch files.

Hello, World! in VBScript

VBScript code is stored in...

Classic Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server-side scripting technology used to create dynamic web pages and applications. Microsoft’s first version of ASP was in the late 1990s as part of the Microsoft ActiveX technology.

Classic ASP uses VBScript as its default scripting language, but it can also be used with other scripting languages. Some examples of other languages include JScript and PerlScript. VBScript allows developers to program scripts that run on the server side into HTML pages. This scripting allows for the creation of dynamic content that changes based on environmental variables, works with data in databases, and performs other server-side tasks.

Classic ASP historically was used to develop web applications that ran on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) servers. Classic ASP has often been used with data stored in Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, or Oracle databases.

Despite being replaced by ASP.NET, Classic ASP is still...

ASP.NET is a web application framework developed by Microsoft that allows developers to create dynamic web applications using a variety of programming languages, such as C# and Visual Basic.NET. It provides several features and tools that make it easier to build, test, and deploy web applications.

ASP.NET allows developers to build web applications using different programming patterns, including Model-View-Controller (MVC) and Web Forms architecture. The MVC pattern provides a definite separation of concerns between the three main components in the architecture – model, view, and controller. The model represents the data and business logic, the view is used to display the data to the user, and the controller handles user input and interacts with the model and the view. In contrast, Web Forms provides more of a desktop development approach, allowing developers to create web pages containing server-side controls and events.

ASP.NET provides several...

In this chapter, you were introduced to six different environments where Visual Basic programming is relevant. Over the past three decades, programmers have used all these methods to solve business needs with Visual Basic. In future chapters, we will build up your understanding of Visual Basic syntax and semantics and apply that knowledge to these six different environments. In Chapter 2, we will specifically look at how we can get data from users as input and send information back to them as output.