Visual Basic support planned for .NET 5.0
.NET Team
We’ve heard your feedback that you want Visual Basic on .NET Core. Earlier versions of .NET Core supported Class Library and Console applications types. Starting with .NET 5 Visual Basic will support:
- Class Library
- Console
- Windows Forms
- WPF
- Worker Service
- ASP.NET Core Web API
We are supporting these application types to provide a good path forward for the existing VB customer who want to migrate their applications to .NET Core. This allows Visual Basic customers to take advantage of new platform features like side-by-side deployment, cross platform support, performance and new API improvements.
One of the major benefits of using Visual Basic is that the language has been stable for a very long time. The significant number of programmers using Visual Basic demonstrates that its stability and descriptive style is valued. Going forward, we do not plan to evolve Visual Basic as a language. This supports language stability and maintains compatibility between the .NET Core and .NET Framework versions of Visual Basic. Future features of .NET Core that require language changes may not be supported in Visual Basic. Due to differences in the platform, there will be some differences between Visual Basic on .NET Framework and .NET Core.
If you are happy with .NET Framework, you can be confident that it will remain supported as long as Windows is supported because it is shipped with the OS. Both Visual Basic and C# customers can continue to use .NET Framework and need to port to .NET Core only if you want features like those listed above. If your application uses technologies that aren’t supported on .NET Core, like WebForms, Workflow or WCF, you might want to stay on .NET Framework because porting will require work to move to newer technologies.
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.
Visual Basic is a great language and a productive development environment. The future of Visual Basic will include both .NET Framework and .NET Core and will focus on stability, the application types listed above, and compatibility between the .NET Core and .NET Framework versions of Visual Basic.
181 comments
I am extremely disappointed that you “do not plan to evolve Visual Basic as a Language.”
This is not customer-centric. VB has a long history and many developers have built countless solutions on the promise made by Microsoft that VB and C# would always be side-by-side.
For Microsoft to go back on that, after so much investment has been made by the world in Visual Basic, is an insult.
I want to see Visual Basic evolve right along with C#. Please don’t abandon us. The support for VB in .NET Core 5 is a good start, but let’s keep VB a first-class citizen right up there with C#, please.
Well written. Thank you!
I totally agree.
To me this is how Microsoft force feeds us their spoiled brat C#.
I don’t care about this almost racist dialect war going on out there – when you introduce yourself as a VB’er people just laughs at you. But the fact that Microsoft is almost about to queue up and prepare to laugh at VB makes me sad.
What a downfall this is.
The fate of a computing environment lies mainly in the community’s effort to keep it updated and included within important projects. “James Gosling”
https://computerworld.com.br/negocios/james-gosling-criador-do-java-fala-sobre-carreira-low-code-e-futuro-da-linguagem/
I hope add asp.net core webapi to vb language.
I write program with jquery & easyui & html5 ,so I hope add asp.net core webapi
Really really weird!
VB.net has a very readable syntax which is exactly what is leading Python to be the dialect number 1
Microsoft, be rational, because I would prefer a dialect that:
{
When opening a refrigerator do I have to clap two hands? ( ; )
Do I have to clap two hands when I get a bottle of water? ( ; )
When putting the water in the glass do I have to clap two hands? ( ; )
and when drinking the water do I also have to clap two hands? ( ; )
and in the end, if I no longer need the fridge, the water bottle, the glass, do I have to take a turn on the body axis? ({})
}
Microsoft has a dialect that could compete with Python, but prefers to abandon it, which ROI and / or malice is capable of doing with an excellent product like VB.net.
The VB family (VB6; VBA; VBscript and VB.net) never died, the VB family was always murdered!
I hope that the VB family disconnects from Microsoft and gains a home in a good community that really loves them, so soon we will have a large, rich, strong, easy and productive IDE ready and prepared to face any scenario.
Long live the VB family that I think could be called VB ++
Well, Microsoft, does that make you happy?
was your goal?
after so long we started to have signs of falling from VB.net in the TIOBE index.
The VB family I should call VB ++ never died, it was always murdered!
https://prnt.sc/ve00fc
“Microsoft with this attitude that you have every day of turning everything into a legacy, soon no one else will believe you, so the legacy will be Microsoft itself.”