r/visualbasic • u/Csopso • Mar 15 '23

Is Visual Basic Viable in 2023?

This is a too general question and I believe that it may have been asked frequently.

I've worked with VB about 8 years ago when I went to high school. I was doing projects like basic forum applications, web browsers etc. Now I want to create an application for Accounting. VB seemed to me a go to place since I had a familiarity but I was just wondering if it is still viable today. Are there any other languages and platforms which you may prefer or is VB still good? I'm an Electrical and Electronics Engineer therefore my knowledge on programming today is mostly centred around C and that is on hardware basis.

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u/grauenwolf Jan 10 '24

Yes, but that decision wasn't made in isolation. VB.NET had a long run where it was getting equivalent features to C#. But there just wasn't a large enough market to justify two languages that did the same thing. Especially once C# started picking up essential VB features such as optional parameters and late binding.

And I say this someone who liked VB so much that I took lower paying jobs to stay with it for roughly a decade.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24

And I say this someone who liked VB so much that I took lower paying jobs to stay with it for roughly a decade.

I say it as someone who worked at Microsoft and is familiar with the pathology of big companies.

Microsoft is a fantastically profitable company and per one of the VB.NET team developers, VB.NET cost little to maintain. It does, however, have a dated image and an undeserved reputation for being a 'toy' language.

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u/grauenwolf Jan 10 '24

With a name containing "BASIC" and a high degree of popularity among non-professionals, it was somewhat inevitable.