Difference between VB6.0, VB2010, VB.NET

Question

I have studied VB 6.0 but have hardly any knowledge of .NET. Can someone please tell me the difference between the three versions namely VB6.0, VB 2010 express and VB.NET?

Answer 1

Now this is a somewhat wide question, but in short, VB.NET is the language and VB 2010 is a VB.NET version released with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.

So the main comparison should really be between VB6 and VB.NET because that's where you'll find the big differences.

VB.NET includes a lot of functionality that has been around in other languages like C++ for ages, and is by some considered way to different from VB6 even to be called VB anymore. But let's set aside the arguing for a moment, what are those new shining thingies? Well, among other you have this:

• True object oriented inheritance
• Overloading
• Free Threading
• Strict type checking

and alot more. Then there are some changes that might be a bit harder to adjust to since they're to close to the old one, like zero-based arrays, returning values from functions using a return statement instead of using the function name, passing of parameters by value instead of by reference, new error handling (using try, catch, finally etc), usage of namespaces etc. The list goes on and on.

The shear breadth of the .NET Framework which VB.NET makes use of makes it a more versatile platform (IMO). It also runs in the CLR (Common Language Runtime) which is more or less a virtual machine with a just-in-time compilation engine.

When it comes to compiling, VB6 compiled to native code while VB.NET compiles to CIL (Common Intermediate Language) which makes it a lot easier to reverse engineer, however you can obfuscate the code in order to make it less readable.

As you can see from what I just wrote it's quite a wide subject, but if you have a more precise question, feel free to ask, otherwise I hope you have a bit clearer image of the differences now. :)