This was true in 1990 with Visual Basic 1.0. And it’s still true today, as Visual Basic lives on in Visual Studio 2019, where it can be used to create Universal Windows Platform (UWP), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and Windows Forms (WinForms) apps. From a code perspective, the version of Visual Basic one uses now is a far cry from the friendlier, earlier (pre-.NET) versions of the language. But since no code is really required, let’s first examine what a Hello, Visual Basic app looks like using the oldest of these still-supported technologies, WinForms.

After configuring the .NET desktop development workload in Visual Studio 2019, I created a new Windows Form App (.NET Framework) project. The resulting workspace is somewhat reminiscent of the early versions of Visual Basic, the primary difference being that the sub-windows are all grouped in the main Visual Studio main whereas classic Visual Basic versions—as you’ll soon see—used floating sub-windows.