Overview

Visual Basic

Stacks557

Followers514

Votes8

Visual Studio

Stacks48.9K

Followers37.9K

Votes1.1K

Visual Basic vs Visual Studio: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Visual Basic and Visual Studio

Visual Basic and Visual Studio are both widely used in software development, but they serve different purposes and have distinct features that set them apart. Here are the key differences between Visual Basic and Visual Studio:

Language vs. Integrated Development Environment (IDE): Visual Basic is a programming language, while Visual Studio is an integrated development environment. Visual Basic provides a language for developers to create software solutions, while Visual Studio provides a comprehensive set of tools, including Visual Basic, to write, debug, and deploy applications.
Target Platforms: Visual Basic can be used to build applications that run on the Microsoft .NET Framework, while Visual Studio enables development for a variety of platforms. With Visual Studio, developers can create applications for Windows, Android, iOS, web, and cloud-based environments, among others.
Application Type: Visual Basic is primarily used for creating desktop applications, including Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications. On the other hand, Visual Studio supports a broader range of application types, including web applications, mobile apps, games, and cloud-based services.
Extensibility: Visual Basic has limited extensibility options compared to Visual Studio. While Visual Basic allows developers to create custom controls and add-ins, Visual Studio offers a more extensive ecosystem with a wide range of extensions, plugins, and third-party tools that enhance productivity and add functionality to the development environment.
Multi-Language Support: Visual Basic supports only the Visual Basic programming language, whereas Visual Studio supports multiple programming languages including C#, C++, F#, and many others. Visual Studio provides a multi-language environment, allowing developers to work with different languages within the same IDE and seamlessly integrate code written in different languages.
Integrated Tools and Services: Visual Studio offers a rich set of built-in tools and services that enhance the development process. These include code analysis, version control integration, testing frameworks, debugging tools, performance profiling, and cloud integration. Visual Basic, being a language, does not provide these built-in tools and services that are available in Visual Studio.

In Summary, Visual Basic is a programming language used for desktop application development on the .NET Framework, while Visual Studio is a comprehensive development environment that supports multiple programming languages and various application types across different platforms. Visual Studio offers a broader range of features, extensibility options, and integrated tools compared to Visual Basic.

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Advice on Visual Basic, Visual Studio

William

Sep 10, 2019

Needs advice

The problem I have is whether to choose Android Studio or Visual Studio? I have to develop a simple app for a school project that can work on both iPhone and Android.

The most important factors for me are Android and iOS compatibility. Although note that i would like to become a Software Engineer when i finish my course. (I'd like to work for Apple, just saying!)

After that id like easy integration for Google Ads and such if i do develop another app that people actually use to support development. (I'd also like to stick with one easy programming language that's compatible with a wide variety of platforms since i'm a beginner and have only ever used Pascal)

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Detailed Comparison

Visual Basic	Visual Studio
Visual Basic is derived from BASIC and enables the rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications, access to databases using Data Access Objects, Remote Data Objects, or ActiveX Data Objects, and creation of ActiveX controls and objects.	Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.
Statistics
Stacks 557	Stacks 48.9K
Followers 514	Followers 37.9K
Votes 8	Votes 1.1K
Pros & Cons
Pros 5 ALGOL-like syntax makes code more readable 3 XML Literals Cons 4 Specific to the microsoft platform	Pros 305 Intellisense, ui 244 Complete ide and debugger 165 Plug-ins 104 Integrated 93 Documentation Cons 16 Bulky 14 Made by Microsoft 6 Sometimes you need to restart to finish an update 3 Too much size for disk 3 Only avalible on Windows
Integrations
.NET	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Visual Basic, Visual Studio?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

PhpStorm

PhpStorm is a PHP IDE which keeps up with latest PHP & web languages trends, integrates a variety of modern tools, and brings even more extensibility with support for major PHP frameworks.

IntelliJ IDEA

Out of the box, IntelliJ IDEA provides a comprehensive feature set including tools and integrations with the most important modern technologies and frameworks for enterprise and web development with Java, Scala, Groovy and other languages.