What has Changed from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic .NET?

The single most important change in Visual Basic .NET is that it now targets the Common Language Runtime, meaning that you cannot create anything but managed code using this programming language. That is certainly not the only difference between Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 6.0 though. There are several key areas of change:

• Enhanced OO programming capabilities

• Data types and type safety changes

• Other language changes (changes to the For/For Each loops, new conditionals, new operators)

• COM is no longer the underlying object technology in Visual Basic

• New types of applications (Windows Services and Console Applications)

• New error-handling model

• New data access model

• New Windows development model

• New event-handling model

• Built-in Web development