Transformation from VB to VB .NET
Visual Basic .NET (shortly known as VB.NET) is an object oriented programming language implemented on .NET framework. .NET is basically a software framework developed by Microsoft in an attempt to update the older versions of VC++ and VB and to compete with Sun Microsystems’s JAVA. Microsoft’s .NET framework provides a common set of class libraries, which can be accessed from any .NET based programming language, in this case VB. A few changes have been implemented in this updated version of VB. For example, the size of integer data type has been increased from 16 bits to 32 bits while long data type’s length has been doubled from 32 bits to 64 bits. The class library is much larger in the updated version while some unnecessary libraries have been excluded. To observe the difference between VB and VB.NET, consider a short example to display a message box on the screen:
In old VB:
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MsgBox("Your Message Here") |
In updated VB.NET:
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MessageBox.Show("Your Message Here") |
So as seen above, VB.NET allows you to use functions from libraries, in this case Show (). Once you type MessageBox and a ‘.’ after it, a dropdown menu appears which shows all the functions that can be used. This feature was missing in the older versions.
Another common difference is that VB6 allows you to reference the default property of a control or object without specifying the name of the property. VB.NET disallows this. Consider the example:
In older versions:
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MyText = “Hello” rst!(“name”) = “There” rst!name = “Hi” |
The above statements in VB.NET would be:
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1 2 3 |
MyText.text = “Hello” rst!(“name”.value) = “There” rst!name.value = “Hi” |
So there are a few programming changes in the updated version. Besides these programming changes, a few structural changes have also been implemented. For example, VB was an interpreter based language while VB.NET is a compiled language. Besides, VB.NET has much advanced object oriented support than VB. In older version, multithreading wasn’t allowed while VB.NET allows the facility of multithreaded applications. Development in VB.NET is made easier since it does not require any registry entry, a feature that was missing in older versions since components created in older versions required the creation and updating of registry entries.
I hope it helps the beginners.
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