Visual Basic is one of the most widely used programming languages in the world. The major reason for its popularity is that it allows programmers to create Windows applications quickly and easily.

The origins of Visual Basic are found in a programming language created in 1964 by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was originally an interpreted language that was designed to simplify the programming process and make programming more accessible to the world at large. Using that philosophy, Microsoft integrated a BASIC interpreter into its operating system MS-DOS. Despite its wide distribution and relative simplicity, BASIC was not able to compete with faster, compiled languages such as C or C++. Thus, BASIC was commonly used for trivial or educational purposes, whereas "real" applications were usually developed in other languages.

In the late 1980s, Microsoft Windows and other graphical user interfaces (GUIs...