Key Changes

When Visual Basic .NET was released, there were some people who considered it so different from Visual Basic 6.0 that they dubbed it “Visual Basic .NOT,” but don't let that give you an exaggerated view of the actual language changes. As a long-time Visual Basic programmer (starting with VB 3.0), I find the Visual Basic .NET language to be extremely close to Visual Basic 6.0, with a few exceptions.

The first big difference is in the use of variable types; Visual Basic .NET likes everything to be strongly typed, and although you can work around this restriction, you are better off facing the situation and going for a fully strongly typed world. Second, Visual Basic .NET is now sitting on top of the Windows .NET Framework and the Framework ...

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