What Happened to Microsoft Visual Basic?

Microsoft Visual Basic began its journey in 1991 with the release of Visual Basic 1.0, quickly becoming a dominant force in rapid application development (RAD) for Windows due to its intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) builder and event-driven programming model. Its final classic iteration, Visual Basic 6.0 (VB6), released in 1998, achieved widespread adoption, with an estimated two-thirds of all business application programming on Windows PCs being done in VB at its peak.

The key turning point arrived in 2002 with the introduction of Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) as part of Microsoft's new .NET Framework. This was a significant shift, as VB.NET was a fundamentally different and largely incompatible language, designed to replace the Component Object Model (COM) and address the limitations of VB6, such as its lack of full object-orientation and suitability for modern internet and mobile applications. This decision caused considerable frustration and a sense of betrayal among many VB6 developers, who faced substantial migration costs for their existing applications.

Microsoft officially ended mainstream support for VB6 in March 2005 and extended support for the VB6 IDE on April 8, 2008, relegating it to legacy status. However, recognizing the vast number of critical business applications built with VB6, Microsoft committed to maintaining compatibility for the VB6 runtime environment on supported Windows operating systems, including Windows 11, through its "It Just Works" program. As of March 2026, thousands of businesses worldwide continue to rely on these legacy VB6 applications, despite the lack of security or technical updates for the IDE, which poses significant security vulnerabilities and compliance risks.

For VB.NET, its trajectory diverged from C#, which became the primary language for new development within the .NET ecosystem. In 2020, Microsoft officially announced that VB.NET would no longer receive new language features, effectively placing it in a maintenance-only mode. This strategy was reaffirmed in February 2023, stating that VB is a stable language that Microsoft will continue to maintain but will not add support for new workloads. As of April 2026, VB.NET code still compiles and runs on .NET 8, .NET 9, and beyond, and existing WinForms and WPF applications are supported. However, new frameworks and APIs like Blazor and .NET MAUI are C#-only, limiting VB.NET's relevance for new projects. Despite this, a significant number of companies, over 82,000 globally, were still using VB.NET as a programming language tool in 2026, primarily for maintaining and extending existing applications.

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a language closely related to VB6, remains highly relevant and widely used in 2026, particularly within Microsoft Office applications like Excel, Word, and Access. It is crucial for automating tasks, generating reports, and creating custom solutions, especially in sectors like finance and government, where it provides a cost-effective and reliable automation tool. While some predict its decline due to the rise of modern tools like Power Automate and Python, VBA continues to be an "unsung hero" for many businesses.