Microsoft Visual Basic

Visual Basic (VB) is an event-driven programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft for its COM programming model that was first released in 1991. Visual Basic is fairly easy to learn and use. Visual Basic was derived from Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code (BASIC) and enables rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications, and it can be used to create databases with Data Access Objects, Remote Data Objects, or ActiveX Data Objects. It can also generate ActiveX controls and objects. The language not only permits programmers to make simple GUI applications, but also to develop applications with more complex functionalities. Programming in VB is a combination of visually arranging components or controls on a form, specifying attributes and actions of those components, and writing additional lines of code for more functionality. Scripting languages like VBA and VBScript are similar, in terms of syntax, to Visual Basic, but perform differently. VB can generate executables (EXE files), ActiveX controls, or DLL files, but is mainly used to build up Windows applications and to interface database systems.

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Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) produced by Microsoft. It has a code editor that supports syntax highlighting and code completion using IntelliSense for not only variables, functions and methods but also language constructs like loops and queries; includes a debugger that works both as a source-level debugger and as a machine-level debugger; includes a host of visual designers to aid in the development of applications and other tools. Visual Studio permits developers to write extensions for Visual Studio to expand its capabilities. These extensions are linked to Visual Studio and extend its functionality. Extensions come in the form of macros, add-ins, and packages. Macros represent repeatable tasks and actions that developers can write programmatically for saving, replaying, and distributing; add-ins gives access to the Visual Studio object model and can interact with the IDE tools; and packages can create designers and other tools, as well as integrate other programming languages.

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