The demise of Microsoft's venerable Visual Basic programming language has been predicted for years—arguably, as far back as 2002 when Redmond introduced the .NET framework—yet it has continued to survive and maintain a sizable developer base to this day.
However, it's always positive when a vendor provides clear-cut road maps for its technologies, and Microsoft has just done so for VB in a pair of official blog posts. The short version? Visual Basic will be supported and evolved indefinitely, but will have a different role than .NET and C# moving forward. Here's the scoop from the Visual Basic team's blog post:
[W]ith regard to the cloud and mobile, development beyond Visual Studio on Windows and for non-Windows platforms, and bleeding edge technologies we are leading with C#. This is because the audience in those spaces is demanding it.
[T]he focus for VB will be where VB is already or likely to be successful, i.e. primarily on Microsoft technologies and for Windows with an emphasis on bringing modern capabilities to existing solutions, developers, enterprises, and scenarios (e.g. SQL Azure). We’ll look for opportunities to bring new first-time developers into the Microsoft ecosystem through reinforcing Visual Basic’s brand as an approachable, productive tool for learning programming and rapidly building the kinds of applications it’s traditionally been great at.
VB developers are largely using the language to build Windows Forms-based business applications. Microsoft estimates there are still hundreds of thousands of active VB developers, and that estimate doesn't even consider the vast amount of VB applications built in the past that still need to be supported.
Microsoft had set out a "co-evolution" strategy for VB and C# in 2010. The plan going forward is a bit different, program manager Mads Torgersen said in a separate post:
We will keep Visual Basic straightforward and approachable. We will do everything necessary to keep it a first class citizen of the .NET ecosystem: When API shapes evolve as a result of new C# features, for instance, consuming those APIs should feel natural in VB. We will keep a focus on the cross-language tooling experience, recognizing that many VB developers also use C#. We will focus innovation on the core scenarios and domains where VB is popular.
For VB to follow C# in its aggressive evolution would not only miss the mark, but would actively undermine the straightforward approachability that is one of VB’s key strengths.
Analysis: Microsoft's VB strategy cracks the code
It makes sense for Microsoft to focus bleeding-edge innovation on C# if that's where the most developer interest is. The company estimates that millions of coders work with C#, and the most recent Stack Overflow language survey placed C# just below the leading languages, Java and JavaScript.
At the same time, there's nothing wrong with maintaining Visual Basic and adding new innovations where suitable, as it serves a less-sexy but still important function for Windows-centric corporate IT shops—rapid application development that doesn't demand the highest-skilled developers. That translates into cost savings and convenience.
That's not to say enterprises shouldn't take a long-view look at their Visual Basic assets and practices. Microsoft noted in its blog posts that some data indicates many VB developers would rather be programming in C#. The more well-known it becomes that C# is the strategic choice for modern development scenarios, interest in VB could wane quickly.
That leaves CIOs with some important things to start thinking about, namely as the potential migration or deprecation strategies for their VB application portfolios. In many cases this will be no small task. The good news is that Microsoft has given ample advance indications of VB's future.
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