The Evolution of Visual Basic

Visual Basic 1 – Visual Basic 3:

• Made Windows programming accessible
• Helped make Windows the premier platform in the world

Visual Basic 4 – Visual Basic 6:

• Made targeting COM and OLE approachable for most developers

Visual Basic 7 – Visual Basic 9:

• Bringing the "ease of use" to the .NET platform
• Helped establish the CLR as the premier managed runtime in the world

Visual Basic 10:

• Continuing this trend to make it easy to use and leverage the platform

The Evolution of C#

C# 1.0:

With the launch of the C# language, it was a major shift we took to a full managed environment. This was a big step for programming languages at Microsoft.

C# 2.0:

With the second release of C# we introduced fully reified Generics into the language. This was a very powerful addition to the type system.

C# 3.0:

C# 3.0 introduced LINQ which we talked about previously

C# 4.0:

Not just “dynamic” as in late-binding, but those features that allow the compiler to “get out of the developer’s way”.