My original Visual Basic for Windows with its 2 little books (each no thicker than an inch!) and its three 720k installation disks.

Before the Internet, before MSN, before JAVA, Before VisualC++, before Windows, before DOS, before the x86 ... Microsoft was in the BASIC business.

VB1W/2 brought on-time Windows programming to the people who needed their programs on-time.

VB3 with DAO and the Jet Engine welded-in made database-connected programs as simple as thinking about them.

VB4 is often disregarded in the history of the tool because it was shakey as the first 32bit version, but it made using bigger database engines easier through ODBC via RDO and it started VB's transition from an Object-based tool into a nearly Object-Oriented one (face it friends, C++ still ain't no SmallTalk or Eiffel.)

VB5 added native compilation and the ability to make custom GUI controls without waiting for C++ developers

VB6 ... well, was VB5 with a bunch of newbie Wizards that every magazine told you how to use (and because we like to code, most devs never used them and probably got better end results)

And the .Net Framework extended the concept behind the VBRT/VM to cover just about the whole OS - and gave non-VB developers who prefer a different syntax the RAD power of simplicity-through-abstraction that made VisualBasic the most used development product in the world. (Shhh, "real programmers" moving to .Net from C++ and Java don't like to admit that they're actually using an evolved VB through marketing interface <g>)

Between us? I've been doing VB for a while and like any human my love/un-love runs in cycles.  But whenever the times come that I think "vb can't do that" and I'm banging my head against the wall, the real truth is that I was just not looking at the problem from all sides.  The more I use this tool the more I see that I didn't know existed.

Every time I start thinking "I know a lot" I find that I am just beginning.  It's really a deep toolset that's just been engineered to make it not look deep. If you ever get stumped and think the issue is in the language stop thinking and try a different angle. That's my advice for me and you can take it too if you wish.

Robert Smith
Kirkland WA

Click here for a nice little history of BASIC to Visual Basic by Daniel Hudson (it's short and interesting)

Would VB coders be taken more seriously if the language name had matched the correct acronym B.A.P.S.I.C.?  Click here to see that the original creators of BASIC are still alive and very well ... but they still haven't learned how to make product as well as they make languages <g>.  If you can find their book "Back To Basic" do so.  It just might help you, though you may not see the connections at first.

And, Yes Virginnia, there was a VB for DOS. Here's mine: