Microsoft starts deprecating Visual Basic

Many developers cut their teeth on Visual Basic, but there are signs that the days of the programming language are numbered, as Microsoft said they will no longer add any new features to the language.

“Starting with .NET 5, Visual Basic will support Class Library, Console, Windows Forms, WPF, Worker Service, [and] ASP.NET Core Web API … to provide a good path forward for the existing VB customer who want [sic] to migrate their applications to .NET Core. Going forward, we do not plan to evolve Visual Basic as a language … The future of Visual Basic … will focus on stability, the application types listed above, and compatibility between the .NET Core and .NET Framework versions of Visual Basic.”

The language lost out in competition to C#, with earlier Visual Basic developers defecting to that language, and most code samples are now only for C#.

While no new features will be added, developers may benefit from improvements to Visual Studio itself, with Microsoft saying:

“Visual Studio regularly adds new features to improve the experience for developers, including those using Visual Basic and either .NET Core or .NET Framework. An example is the recent addition of IntelliCode for Visual Basic.”

Do any of our readers mourn Visual Basic? Let us know below.

Via Thurrott.com

yandex