<story><title>Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?</title><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been a software developer for almost 30 years. 
 I remember using VB back in the 90&amp;#x27;s and I was thinking about it the other day and it dawned on me; despite all the advances in technology since then, nothing I have found compares to that development experience today.  I would go so far as to say we&amp;#x27;ve gone backwards in a big way.&lt;p&gt;Now, I&amp;#x27;m no fan of Microsoft products but, I have yet to find a tool that can allow me to be as productive in so short a time as Visual Basic.  Yet I can&amp;#x27;t help wondering what problems it had that caused them to abandon it?  Moreover, why hasn&amp;#x27;t someone come out with a solid replacement?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>dwheeler</author><text>Visual Basic (both of them) still exist, but their use has dropped dramatically through some big changes:&lt;p&gt;* &amp;quot;Visual .NET&amp;quot; (aka &amp;quot;Visual Fred&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;catb.org&amp;#x2F;jargon&amp;#x2F;html&amp;#x2F;V&amp;#x2F;Visual-Fred.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;catb.org&amp;#x2F;jargon&amp;#x2F;html&amp;#x2F;V&amp;#x2F;Visual-Fred.html&lt;/a&gt; ) was released by Microsoft. This was an incompatible language confusingly &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; called Visual Basic. I don&amp;#x27;t think Microsoft realized how angry this made developers and businesses, who were being asked to spend hundreds of billions of dollars (USD) to rewrite code just to keep the same functionality. Before that time, many thought that Visual Basic&amp;#x27;s wide use gave it a kind of &amp;quot;herd immunity&amp;quot;. I don&amp;#x27;t have numbers with me, but I remember that years later that a study found that some were sticking to the original Visual Basic (even though it was no longer supported), a few had moved to Visual .NET, and many other had abandoned Visual Basic entirely (some to C#, others beyond). In short, the Visual Basic community was split into multiple communities, and anyone using Visual Basic would have to worry about either lack of support or yet another harmful change.&lt;p&gt;* The rise of the web and of platforms other than Windows (including Android, iOS, MacOS, Linux). Visual Basic is fine when you send files via sneakernet to another Windows user. Now people want to access through their web browser, smartphone, etc. If you have a website, anything can access it (as long as they have the permissions), and you don&amp;#x27;t have to worry about synchronizing data changes the way you do if people make changes on their local device. Most of the simple &amp;quot;fill in a form&amp;quot; kinds of applications that Visual Basic was used for are more sensibly web applications (server side or client side).&lt;p&gt;Visual Basic is still used. And yes, I think there could be better tools for developing software. But as best as I recall, that&amp;#x27;s how we ended up here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>madrox</author><text>As someone who was writing Visual Basic.NET back when it came out, there was no upside to it over writing in C#. VB&amp;#x27;s original sweet spot was for writing small scripts and apps in Windows, and it was the only language available. When the .NET line came out, you could do the same things in whichever language you wanted. When new tasks came in, I started defaulting to C# for that reason. I don&amp;#x27;t think anyone actually prefers VB syntax. C# has a pretty robust community around it now.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?</title><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been a software developer for almost 30 years. 
 I remember using VB back in the 90&amp;#x27;s and I was thinking about it the other day and it dawned on me; despite all the advances in technology since then, nothing I have found compares to that development experience today.  I would go so far as to say we&amp;#x27;ve gone backwards in a big way.&lt;p&gt;Now, I&amp;#x27;m no fan of Microsoft products but, I have yet to find a tool that can allow me to be as productive in so short a time as Visual Basic.  Yet I can&amp;#x27;t help wondering what problems it had that caused them to abandon it?  Moreover, why hasn&amp;#x27;t someone come out with a solid replacement?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>dwheeler</author><text>Visual Basic (both of them) still exist, but their use has dropped dramatically through some big changes:&lt;p&gt;* &amp;quot;Visual .NET&amp;quot; (aka &amp;quot;Visual Fred&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;catb.org&amp;#x2F;jargon&amp;#x2F;html&amp;#x2F;V&amp;#x2F;Visual-Fred.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;catb.org&amp;#x2F;jargon&amp;#x2F;html&amp;#x2F;V&amp;#x2F;Visual-Fred.html&lt;/a&gt; ) was released by Microsoft. This was an incompatible language confusingly &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; called Visual Basic. I don&amp;#x27;t think Microsoft realized how angry this made developers and businesses, who were being asked to spend hundreds of billions of dollars (USD) to rewrite code just to keep the same functionality. Before that time, many thought that Visual Basic&amp;#x27;s wide use gave it a kind of &amp;quot;herd immunity&amp;quot;. I don&amp;#x27;t have numbers with me, but I remember that years later that a study found that some were sticking to the original Visual Basic (even though it was no longer supported), a few had moved to Visual .NET, and many other had abandoned Visual Basic entirely (some to C#, others beyond). In short, the Visual Basic community was split into multiple communities, and anyone using Visual Basic would have to worry about either lack of support or yet another harmful change.&lt;p&gt;* The rise of the web and of platforms other than Windows (including Android, iOS, MacOS, Linux). Visual Basic is fine when you send files via sneakernet to another Windows user. Now people want to access through their web browser, smartphone, etc. If you have a website, anything can access it (as long as they have the permissions), and you don&amp;#x27;t have to worry about synchronizing data changes the way you do if people make changes on their local device. Most of the simple &amp;quot;fill in a form&amp;quot; kinds of applications that Visual Basic was used for are more sensibly web applications (server side or client side).&lt;p&gt;Visual Basic is still used. And yes, I think there could be better tools for developing software. But as best as I recall, that&amp;#x27;s how we ended up here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jzb</author><text>Visual Basic is one of the best arguments for open source and community ownership in the history of computing, IMO. Microsoft&amp;#x27;s decision to tank it was hugely painful for companies that had made major investments in it -- no company should make that kind of investment in a proprietary platform that can be killed off by a single company and not forked and maintained by others.</text></comment>