Microsoft first released Visual Basic in 1987. It was the first visual development tool from microsoft and it was to compete with C, C++, Pascal and other well-known programming languages. With release 3.0 it had become the fastest-growing programming language on the market.
What is Visual Basic?
Visual Basic is a "visual programming" environment for developing Windows (also Web now) applications. Visual Basic makes it possible to develop complicated applications very quickly. The designs windows graphically, drags program elements from the Visual Basic Toolbox and writes basic code for each element. Visual Basic is "event-driven" which means that procedures are called automatically when the end user chooses menu items, clicks the mouse, moves objects on the screen, etc.

Why is Visual Basic popular?

Programmers have undergone a major change in many years of programming various machines. For example, what could take days to create an application in other programming languages like C, C++ could be done in hours with Visual Basic. Visual Basic provides many interesting sets of tools to aid us in building exciting applications. Visual Basic provides these tools to make our life far more easier because all the real hard code is already written for us.
Visual Basic is not only a programming language but also a true graphical development environment. This environment allows programmers with little programming experience to quickly develop powerful Windows applications. Visual Basic also has the ability to develop programs that can be used as a front-end application to a database system, serving as the user interface which collects user input and displays formatted output in a more appealing and useful form.
Visual Basic is very popular for the ease with which it allows the programmer to create nice looking graphical programs with less coding unlike many other languages that take thousands of lines of programmer keyed code. As the programmer works in the graphical environment much of the program code is automatically generated by the Visual Basic program.

Areas of Use

Using Visual Basic's tools we can quickly translate an abstract idea into a program design that we can actually see on the screen. VB encourages you to experiment, revise, correct, and network your design until the new project meets your requirements. However, most of all, it inspires your imagination and creativity. Visual Basic is ideal for developing applications that run on the Windows operating system. Developing applications with VB can be said to be a 3-step approach:

• i)Design the appearance of application
• ii)Assign property settings to the objects of the program
• iii) Write the code to direct specific tasks at runtime

Visual Basic is used to develop applications in a number of different areas. Some of them are listed below:

• Accounting
• Business
• Commerce
• Consulting
• Education
• Law
• Marketing and Sales
• Medicine
• Research
• Science

The Visual Basic language is powerful, if you can imagine a programming task, it can be accomplished using Visual Basic.

Features:

LINQ Support LINQ essentially is the composition of many standard query operators that allow you to work with data in a more intuitive way regardless. The benefits of using LINQ are significant – Compile time checking C# language queries, and the ability to debug step by step through queries.

Expression Blend Support Expression blend is XAMLgenerator tool for Silverlight applications. You can install Expression blend as an embedded plug-in to Visual Studio 2008. By this you can get extensive web designer and JavaScript tool.

Windows Presentation Foundation WPF provides you an extensive graphic functionality you never seen before. Visual Studio 2008 contains plenty of WPF templates Visual Studio 2008 provides free game development library kits for games developers

VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support In Visual studio 2008 you are able to create, run, debug the .NET 2.0 , .NET 3.0 and,.NET 3.5 applications. You can also deploy .NET 2.0 applications in the machines which contains only .NET 2.0 not .NET 3.x.

AJAX support for ASP.NET VS 2008,provides you with the facility to built-in AJAX control library. This Ajax Library contains plenty of rich AJAX controls like Menu, TreeView, webparts and also these components support JSON.

JavaScript Debugging Support Since starting of web development all the developers got frustration with solving javascript errors. Debugging the error in javascript is very difficult. Now Visual Studio 2008 makes it is simpler with javascript debugging. You can set break points and run the javaScript step by step and you can watch the local variables when you were debugging the javascript and solution explorer provides javascript document navigation support.

Nested Master Page Support Already Visual Studio 2005 supports nested master pages concept with .NET 2.0, but the problem with this Visual Studio 2005 that pages based on nested masters can't be edited using WYSIWYG web designer. But now in VS 2008 you can even edit the nested master pages.

LINQ Intellisense and Javascript Intellisense support for silverlight applications

Intellisense Support: When we are writing the LINQ Query VS provides LINQ query syntax as tool tips.

Organize Imports or Usings: VS contains Organize Imports feature which removes unnecessary namespaces which you have imported. You can select all the namespaces and right click on it, and then you can get context menu with Organize imports options like "Remove Unused Usings", "Sort Usings", "Remove and Sort".

Visual Studio 2008 Split View

VS 2005 has a feature to show both design and source code in single window. but both the windows tiles horizontally. In VS 2008 we can configure this split view feature to vertically, this allows developers to use maximum screen on laptops and wide-screen monitors.
Here one of the good feature is if you select any HTML or ASP markup text in source window automatically corresponding item will be selected in design window.

HTML JavaScript warnings, not as errors: VS 2005 mixes HTML errors and C# and VB.NET errors and shows in one window. Now VS 2008 separates this and shows javascript and HTML errors as warnings. But this is configurable feature.

Debugging .NET Framework Library Source Code: Now in VS 2008 you can debug the source code of .NET Framework Library methods. Lets say If you want to debug the DataBind() method of DataGrid control you can place a debugging point over there and continue with debug the source code of DataBind() method.

In built Silverlight Library Earlier we used to install silverlight SDK separately, Now in VS 2008 it is inbuilt, with this you can create, debug and deploy the silverlight applications.

Visual Studio LINQ Designer

Already you know in VS 2005 we have inbuilt SQL Server IDE feature. by this you no need to use any other tools like SQL Server Query Analyzer and SQL Server Enterprise Manger. You have directly database explorer by this you can create connections to your database and you can view the tables and stored procedures in VS IDE itself. But now in VS 2008 it has View Designer window capability with LINQ-to-SQL.

Inbuilt C++ SDK Earlier It was so difficult to download and configure the C++ SDK Libraries and tools for developing windows based applications. Now it is inbuilt with VS 2008 and configurable

Multilingual User Interface Architecture - MUI MUI is an architecture contains packages from Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office libraries. This supports the user to change the text language display as he wish.

Visual Studio is now in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese, and Korean. Over the next couple of months. Microsoft is reengineering the MUI which supports nine local languages then you can even view Visual studio in other 9 local languages.

Microsoft Popfly Support Microsoft Popfly explorer is an add-on to VS 2008, by this directly you can deploy or hosting the Silverlight applications and Marshup objects

Free Tools and Resources We get plenty of free resources and free tools with Visual Studio 2008.
Visual Studio 2008 Trial
101 LINQ Samples
Free .NET 3.5 control libraries with free sample programs,
You can get plenty of free video training tutorials from Microsoft BDLC - Beginner Developer Learning Center,
C++ games development library,
Microsoft has provided lot of e-Books,
P2P library and
Microsoft is providing Coding4Fun sample program kit.
Visual Studio Registration Discounts: If you register the Visual Studio you get Free Control Libraries, Books, Images, and Discounts.

Download Visual Studio 2008 free trial

We can use for Commercial Earlier you were spending lot of money to host your .NET applications for commercial use. Now you no need to worry Now Microsoft is providing you to host your application free on Popfly for web pages and also visual studio express projects.

Visual Basic .NET

Visual Basic .NET provides the easiest, most productive language and tool for rapidly building Windows and Web applications. Visual Basic .NET comes with enhanced visual designers, increased application performance, and a powerful integrated development environment (IDE). It also supports creation of applications for wireless, Internet-enabled hand-held devices. The following are the features of Visual Basic .NET with .NET Framework 1.0 and Visual Basic .NET 2003 with .NET Framework 1.1. This also answers why should I use Visual Basic .NET, what can I do with it?

Powerful Windows-based Applications

Visual Basic .NET comes with features such as a powerful new forms designer, an in-place menu editor, and automatic control anchoring and docking. Visual Basic .NET delivers new productivity features for building more robust applications easily and quickly. With an improved integrated development environment (IDE) and a significantly reduced startup time, Visual Basic .NET offers fast, automatic formatting of code as you type, improved IntelliSense, an enhanced object browser and XML designer, and much more.

Building Web-based Applications

With Visual Basic .NET we can create Web applications using the shared Web Forms Designer and the familiar "drag and drop" feature. You can double-click and write code to respond to events. Visual Basic .NET 2003 comes with an enhanced HTML Editor for working with complex Web pages. We can also use IntelliSense technology and tag completion, or choose the WYSIWYG editor for visual authoring of interactive Web applications.

Simplified Deployment

With Visual Basic .NET we can build applications more rapidly and deploy and maintain them with efficiency. Visual Basic .NET 2003 and .NET Framework 1.1 makes "DLL Hell" a thing of the past. Side-by-side versioning enables multiple versions of the same component to live safely on the same machine so that applications can use a specific version of a component. XCOPY-deployment and Web auto-download of Windows-based applications combine the simplicity of Web page deployment and maintenance with the power of rich, responsive Windows-based applications.

Powerful, Flexible, Simplified Data Access

You can tackle any data access scenario easily with ADO.NET and ADO data access. The flexibility of ADO.NET enables data binding to any database, as well as classes, collections, and arrays, and provides true XML representation of data. Seamless access to ADO enables simple data access for connected data binding scenarios. Using ADO.NET, Visual Basic .NET can gain high-speed access to MS SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Microsoft Access, and more.

Improved Coding

You can code faster and more effectively. A multitude of enhancements to the code editor, including enhanced IntelliSense, smart listing of code for greater readability and a background compiler for real-time notification of syntax errors transforms into a rapid application development (RAD) coding machine.

Direct Access to the Platform

Visual Basic developers can have full access to the capabilities available in .NET Framework 1.1. Developers can easily program system services including the event log, performance counters and file system. The new Windows Service project template enables to build real Microsoft Windows NT Services. Programming against Windows Services and creating new Windows Services is not available in Visual Basic .NET Standard, it requires Visual Studio 2003 Professional, or higher.

Full Object-Oriented Constructs

You can create reusable, enterprise-class code using full object-oriented constructs. Language features include full implementation inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism. Structured exception handling provides a global error handler and eliminates spaghetti code.

XML Web Services

XML Web services enable you to call components running on any platform using open Internet protocols. Working with XML Web services is easier where enhancements simplify the discovery and consumption of XML Web services that are located within any firewall. XML Web services can be built as easily as you would build any class in Visual Basic 6.0. The XML Web service project template builds all underlying Web service infrastructure.

Mobile Applications

Visual Basic .NET 2003 and the .NET Framework 1.1 offer integrated support for developing mobile Web applications for more than 200 Internet-enabled mobile devices. These new features give developers a single, mobile Web interface and programming model to support a broad range of Web devices, including WML 1.1 for WAP—enabled cellular phones, compact HTML (cHTML) for i-Mode phones, and HTML for Pocket PC, handheld devices, and pagers. Please note, Pocket PC programming is not available in Visual Basic .NET Standard, it requires Visual Studio 2003 Professional, or higher.

COM Interoperability

You can maintain your existing code without the need to recode. COM interoperability enables you to leverage your existing code assets and offers seamless bi-directional communication between Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual Basic .NET applications.

Reuse Existing Investments

You can reuse all your existing ActiveX Controls. Windows Forms in Visual Basic .NET 2003 provide a robust container for existing ActiveX controls. In addition, full support for existing ADO code and data binding enable a smooth transition to Visual Basic .NET 2003.

Upgrade Wizard

You upgrade your code to receive all of the benefits of Visual Basic .NET 2003. The Visual Basic .NET Upgrade Wizard, available in Visual Basic .NET 2003 Standard Edition, and higher, upgrades up to 95 percent of existing Visual Basic code and forms to Visual Basic .NET with new support for Web classes and UserControls.