Visual Basic

Discussion of Microsoft Visual Basic on this site is often split between...

Vb Classic = versions 3 through 6 of the product; COM based

Visual Basic Dot Net = versions 7 and on; as part of the .NET initiative; integrated with the Common Language Runtime.

For information common to Vb Classic and Visual Basic Dot Net, please refer to the new Microsoft Basic page.

Regarding other forms of BASIC...

Basic Stamp

Liberty Basic Is Written In Smalltalk

Dartmouth Basic

If there is "visual" Basic, that would imply there might also be Auditory Basic and Braille Basic.

Absolutely. Sadly, amateur historians like me might guess that that the "visual" name comes from the 1980s trend towards "visual" Integrated Development Environment s (spearheaded by Smalltalk Browsers such as the System Browser, and Interface Builder) and Class Based Languages. VB was preceded by Visual Smalltalk, Visual Age, and perhaps many others, such that by 1991, it seems that "visual" was strongly bound to expensive windowing development environments for professional programmers. Prior to VB, most (if not all) BASICs did not have windowing IDEs, nor classes, and were manipulated with a Read Eval Print Loop at a text terminal. This text interaction has probably been controlled many times with a Braille terminal , and with a speech synthesizer and speech recognition. Therefore, I guess that Auditory BASIC and Braille BASIC are as prosaic as REPL BASIC development environments with accessible human interfaces.

It appears from this article, apcmag.com , that the visual programming revolution has left some people so far behind that you can win an award in 2007 for giving them access to 1980s technology. I just started Accessible Development Environments to discuss this.