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I have been developing for about 4 years now with my primary language being C#. My first language was Visual Basic though. The thing is through my journey I noticed more and more C# examples, posts, tutorials, etc. and made my switch to C# within the first 2 months I started programming. Ever since then the trend seems to me (my opinion) that there is more and more C# and less VB.

One other thing that kind of pushed this assumption was when Microsoft launched WP7, allowing only C# developers the opportunity to develop applications for their platform. I know now they support VB, but it seemed reluctant and more like they were forced to.

Also I noticed a lot of developers, on these sites specifically, asking advice on how to migrate their applications to C# or how to convince upper management to make the switch.

Visual Basic is rather old now (started back in 1991) with its fair share of updates, including it's main update to VisualBasic.net in 2003. The syntax in my opinion is too different to be helpful when learning other languages. C# made learning PHP and Java a breeze.

So back to my original question:

Is Visual Basic a dying language?

p.s. I couldn't stand the fact that you never ended statements with a semicolon just a new line. It's like a sentence with no punctuation mark.

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Waterfall is never going to die. It may be wearing an Agile costume, but it still is the go to approach for a lot of development shops. PMI types just can't let go and use the force. – JohnFx Apr 15 '11 at 3:38
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Waterfall... is that the model where your project plunges off the edge of a cliff onto sharp rocks because it is too rigid and inflexible to get out of the river? – John Gaughan Apr 15 '11 at 3:38
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Is VB dying? God, I hope so. – greyfade Apr 15 '11 at 3:52
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It's still alive? :( – Rein Henrichs Apr 15 '11 at 4:14
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We're trying to kill it at work - AT LAST! More and more new projects are being written in C#. But there is a lot of VB code accumulated over the past 15 years or so (VB5, 6 and VB.Net.) – MetalMikester Apr 15 '11 at 11:10
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6 Answers

up vote 14 down vote accepted

It definitely isn't dying. I see it used all over the place. However, I think it is being pushed into a niche, specifically internal corporate development.

I started out in VB4 and still support a few VB.NET apps to this day, though all my new projects are C#. I can see why you feel that way, though. It certainly is getting less and less respect. Despite the fact that it has gone through some major improvements since the early days and barely resembles the early forms, people still associate it with VBA, BasicA, and GW Basic.

Honestly, I personally wish MS had given it new life by renaming it something else when VB.NET came out to break the association people have with its more primitive ancestors.

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@JohnFx It's good to know someone else sees it this way. I'm guessing the only reason to know VB is probably to manage existing applications written in it? – loyalpenguin Apr 15 '11 at 3:41
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I think it's good to know multiple languages just because it makes you flexible. Even VB is a good language to know, especially given how snobby some programmers are about it. Work is work. I would suggest, however, that it would be a bad idea these days to ONLY know VB. – JohnFx Apr 15 '11 at 3:46
Oh yeah, and every now and then I get called on to write something in Access or another office product, and C# isn't an option there as far as I know. – JohnFx Apr 15 '11 at 3:47
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I agree with your points, but not the conclusion you draw. From my experience in the corporate world, people develop in VB these days either to support legacy systems already written in VB, or because they are 9-5 programmers who are just doing what they are comfortable with. So it's dying - a slow, lonely death where nobody comes to visit it on the weekends. – JimDaniel Apr 15 '11 at 4:01
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I guess we are seeing different things in different places. I'm seeing lots of new apps in VB.NET. As for doing what they are comfortable with, aren't we all regardless of language? – JohnFx Apr 15 '11 at 4:03
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up vote 7 down vote

VB6 yes, because the COM/ActiveX is dying as well.

VB.NET not really, since people tend to stick to what they know and there is no real disadvantage using VB.NET before C#.

JM2CW

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up vote 3 down vote

If you look at the long term trends of the TIOBE index, it appears that Visual BASIC has been declining since 2008. Their long term graph shows three languages whose base is growing: C# (indeed), Python, and Objective-C.

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up vote 1 down vote

Some people are happy about it; some people are sad; some are still in denial, and some have long since moved on; but know this: VB6 is dying.

Ask yourself this: if you were building a new application, would you choose VB6?

Fact: Genuine VB6 tools and runtime support were only available from one place -- Microsoft.

Fact: Microsoft shifted their considerable technical and marketing resources to .NET. This shift started over 12 years ago! Microsoft "officially" ended support for VB6 as a development platform in April 2008 (3 years ago).

Fact: In general, where Microsoft goes, so goes the Windows development community. The number of people willing and able to do .NET development is growing, and the number of people willing and able to work on VB6 is shrinking.

Fact: The world of technology is changing and leaving VB6 behind.

Since 2005 I have dedicate my career to helping companies rewrite large VB6/ASP/COM systems in C#/.NET (and once in a while VB.NET). I started this work by helping my employer rewrite a 1.2M LOC VB6 application portfolio to reengineered C#. I now develop, sell and support a powerful software analysis and reengineering toolset that enables a unique tool-assisted rewrite methodology that makes large-scale ambitious VB6/ASP/COM modernization efforts feasible. We get new leads every week from people asking for help, so yes VB6 is dying.

VB6 had a good run; it was popular for good reasons. There are many business critical VB6 systems out there; but those systems are now at risk and the important ones will eventually move off VB6 -- probably to .NET. A business case for getting off VB6 is here: http://www.greatmigrations.com/resources_business_case.aspx

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up vote 1 down vote

We still use it at our shop, and I don't think it will die anytime soon, especially in the enterprise. Keep in mind that COBOL is heavily used in the enterprise, and in terms of syntax style, COBOL is much closer to VB.NET than C#. So, for enterprises that had been heavily utilitizing COBOL or VB.NET's ancestors, VB.NET could have been a more natural transition than moving to C#.

Also, at our particular shop, when we adopted VB.NET back in the 1.0 days the Visual Studio experience using VB.NET was just better than C#. The background compiler and the error reporting made life a lot easier for those just coming to .NET.

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up vote 0 down vote

I don't think Visual Basic is dying and I don't think it will be dying very soon. There are multiple reasons for this:

The first is the fact, that there are quite a log of legacy applications out there being built in Visual Basic and we all know how long such things can last. Take a look at COBOL - this language is definitely dying (or maybe even zoombylike) but depending on the industry you're working in (banking, insurance companies, etc.) it's very much alive. The same goes for VB.

The second reason is it's simplicity - not necessarily in form of the language itself but in form of the way you're seeing results. In schools or other educational institutions VB is still used quite frequently to allow students to start in programming and seeing results very fast. Personally I think the outcome it horrible, since the code written is most of the time just complete garbage, but that's not the point - there is a demand for, let's call it quick-and-dirty language and VB fits in very well.

Finally, there is Visual Basic for Applications which has been around quite some time and as far as I can see will be around for quite some time in the future in the Office Suite, so there is the transition from MS Office script programmers wanting to learn a "real" language and since they're already familiar with VB it looks like the perfect language to them.

So all in all - VB still has quite a good future ahead ;-)

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