05-06-2013, 03:40 PM
VisualBasic FAQ ( Frequently Asked Questions ) Revision 1b
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General Questions
A. What is Visual Basic?
What is Visual Basic? Only the worlds most widely used development language. What does this mean?
Well quite basically a person or a team of people wrote all applications you run on your computer. Visual
Basic is one of many programming languages that people use to make those applications.
Microsoft announced Visual Basic 1.0 in May of 1991, since then windows application development has
never been the same. Visual Basic was the first language to introduce Rapid Application Development
(RAD) for the Windows platform. It integrated a very powerful engine with an environment that made the
programmers life a lot easier. Allowing them to develop their windows applications 20-80% faster then any
other method available.
During it’s short life Visual Basic has continued to break records and set forth many new standards to
which all other languages would conform. As a matter of fact, Visual Basic during it’s almost 6 years in the
market place has outsold ALL other programming languages, many of which had been around for 10+ years
longer. Even today as new programming languages, and new versions of older ones, are introduced most of
them are based upon the original concepts Microsoft developed and Visual Basic introduced to the world. A
couple good examples being Delphi and VC++, both are visual development environments that owe very
much of their existence to Microsoft when it set the standards and broke all rules with VB 1.0.
B. Where can I get Visual Basic?
To order Microsoft Visual Basic or other Microsoft Visual Tools, or to receive a reseller referral, in the
United States or Canada, call 1-800-621-7930, Dept. A334WB. Outside the United States and Canada,
please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary.
C. What is the latest version, and is it worth upgrading?
The latest version of Visual Basic is currently 5.0. Visual Basic 5.0 offers many new functions and options
too numerous to mention all of them here. When you look at all of the changes, two of them stand out as
being the biggest improvements.
Visual Basic 5.0 now has a native compile mode. What this means is VB will create fully compiled exes
rather then p-coded ones. Visual Basic does this by exporting your project to an intermediate language that
is then compiled using a c++ compiler. So in the end what we find ourselves with is a very fast performing
exe. Don’t let this fool you though, the p-code compile mode is also much faster then it was in VB4 and the
previous versions. From a standpoint of which mode to compile your programs in though, the native
compile mode yields program performance results about 20% faster then the p-code compile in vb5 but
both are extremely fast.
D. Why VB? How does it compare to other languages?
First off this section is NOT intended to start any programming language wars. It is intended to provide the
users with statistical facts and present them with information from some of the leading professionals in the
business, allowing the reader to make their own choices.
What do you think is the most important factor that effects a program’s performance? Just a hint, if you
think it’s the language its made in you are wrong. While the language does play an integral role in a
programs performance it is more the programmer’s experience that a program if effected by. A programmer
of many years has the experience needed to optimize and create his programs better then a programmer of a
few years. I have seen expert VB 4.0 programmers create programs that rival and surpass many Delphi 2.0
and even some VC++4.0 programs. VB 4.0 in many benchmarks shows itself to be slower then these other
languages, so how is it possible a program made in it can be faster? Plain and simple, the programmers who
made those VB programs had many years under their belts and knew exactly how to optimize their
programs and use little tricks/trade secrets to speed up their applications tremendously.