Conclusions

Moving Visual Basic from COM to .NET was a demanding, yet rewarding experience. There is no question that the move entailed a great number of changes in the language ”changes that will take time to fully assimilate in the Visual Basic programming community. It also entailed a great deal of change in the structure of the compiler itself and in ways to think about compiling the language. By adding features such as inheritance and overloading to the language, however, Visual Basic has become a much more powerful language than it has been in the past.

By far, the greatest benefit in moving to .NET is the .NET platform itself. With the .NET runtime environment, Visual Basic for the first time has easy access to a huge realm of functionality that was either off-limits in the past or very difficult to access. And with the amount of continuing investment that Microsoft and other companies are making in the .NET platform, this advantage will only continue to grow over time. The .NET platform is a broad, solid foundation for a whole range of applications. To provide a point of entry to this platform for Visual Basic programmers has been an exciting challenge over the past few years , and we think it will continue to yield rewards far into the future.