A brief history of Visual Basic

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Microsoft Visual Basic is the most popular language and development environment for developers coding to the Windows operating system platform. From humble beginnings it has grown to be part of the story of personal computing itself, and with the latest incarnation, Visual Basic .NET in Beta it looks as if it may be here for another decade.

March 1988 Microsoft Buys Tripod

Alan Cooper1 shows a drag-and-drop shell prototype he had developed, called Tripod to Bill Gates. Microsoft negotiates to buy the concept, and it is renamed Ruby. The Tool includes a widget control box, the ability to add widgets dynamically, and a small language engine.

March 20, 1991 VB1 Debuts at Windows World

Microsoft marries QuickBasic to Ruby shell app and gives it a new code name: Thunder.2 The result is the first tool that lets you create Windows applications quickly, easily, and visually. Features include a control toolbox, the ability to lay out controls on forms without having to write any additional code, and a rudimentary event-oriented programming model which was heavily based on Microsoft's QuickBasic language.

The use of Basic as the underlying language meant that there was already a pool of programmers with some degree of programming ability in the language when it was released so the dreaded learning curve was reduced.

May 1991 Third Party Market Born

One of the key features of the design of Visual Basic fromthe start was that it could be extended by adding additional controls and tools.3 to enhance the user interface and as a mechanism to allow code reuse.

Several standard-setting add-ons become available at or slightly after VB1's introduction, including MicroHelp's VBTools.

May 1991 Sheridan Software's VBAssist Debuts

VBAssist was the first add-on to integrate directly into the Visual Basic Integrated Development Environment (IDE)4

November 1992 Visual Basic version 2 launched

Adds ODBC Level 1 support, MDI forms, and object variables. First version to feature the Professional Edition.

November 1992---Microsoft Access Ships

It brings VB's combination of extensibility, ease-of-use, and visual point-and-click emphasis to a Relational Database. It also includes a macro language called Access BASIC that contains a subset of VB 2.0's core syntax.

June 1993---VB3 Debuts

Integrates the Access Engine (Jet), OLE Automation and reporting.

May 1995---Borland's Delphi Debuts

The perennial preview for the features you'll find in the next VB release.

Autumn 1996---Internet Explorer 3.0 Ships

Features include VBScript, which contains a subset of VB. It lets developers leverage their existing VB skills in Web programming.

October 1996---VB4 Debuts

Permits you to create your own add-ins. Also introduces classes and OCX's.

Winter 1996 NT Option Pack 4 Released

Includes Internet Information Server 3.0, which includes ASP. Enabled VB programmers to leverage their existing skills on Web servers.

January 1997 Microsoft Office 97 Debuts

Developer Edition integrates VBA into all Office apps (except Outlook which uses VBScript)

April 1997---VB5 Debuts

Incorporates compiler, WithEvents, and the ability to create ActiveX controls.

October 1998 VB6 Debuts

Introduces WebClasses, windowless controls, data designers, new reporting designers, and the ability to create data sources.

Spring 2001 Visual Basic .NET released

Ground up redesign which forms the Visual Basic component of Microsofts Common Language Runtime (CLR) vision, by which a number of different languages can compile to the same runtime environment. Introduces WinForms and WebForms, vastly improved object orientation, better exception handling.

1 Considered the 'father' of Visual Basic2This codename is remembered to this day as all Windows classes registered by Visual Basic contain the word Thunder in their class name.3At this stage they were known as Visual Basic Extensions (.VBX)4This is the tool that is used to create and code visual basic applications.

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