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Definition: Visual Basic


A version of BASIC from Microsoft specialized for Windows. A subset of Visual Basic provides a macro language for Microsoft applications (see VBA).

When released in 1991, Visual Basic (VB) was similar to Microsoft's QuickBASIC. Because of its graphical interface, VB became very popular, and after migrating to Visual Studio .NET in 1999, VB 6.0 was the last stand-alone product.

Starting with VB 5, native executable programs could be generated, whereas before, the compiler converted source code into an intermediate "bytecode" that had to be interpreted.

Runtime Modules
In order to run a VB program, the runtime module must reside in the computer. The .DLL file, named VBRUN or MSVBVM, contains necessary runtime libraries and also converts programs compiled to bytecode into machine language. The runtime DLLs are widely available and typically accompany a Visual Basic application (see DLL). See VBRUN#.DLL, VB.NET and VBScript.




Visual Basic Uses Bytecode
Similar to Java, Visual Basic is compiled into an intermediate language called "bytecode." The bytecode is translated into x86 machine language by the Visual Basic runtime module.





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