VB6 and VB.NET Comparative Detailed Study - Advantages and Disadvantages

VB.NET is a modern technology while VB6 is very old. But still there are some benefits of using VB6 over VB.NET. Though this is very controversial, but still you can choose one from the two depending upon your development requirements. You have to decide which one better fits in your task.

Comparing VB6 and VB.NET
Visual Basic has come from the language called BASIC. Visual Basic 1.0 is the first version. Then the later versions came. Visual Basic 6 was introduced in 1998. The versions of Visual Basic after this edition (Visual Basic 6.0) are termed as Visual Basic .NET. That means Visual Basic 2002, Visual Basic 2003, Visual Basic 2005, Visual Basic 2008, Visual Basic 2010, Visual Basic 2012 and Visual Basic 2013 are termed as Visual Basic.NET. There will be future versions as well.

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VB6 is a very old technology which is less used in the real world projects, whereas, Visual Basic .NET is very modern, advanced and smart. Visual Basic .NET is globally accepted. But that does not mean that VB6 is dead. There are still some performance issues in Visual Basic .NET, while apps written in VB6 can run faster because of the reasons discussed later in this post.

Advantages and disadvantages of VB6 

Advantages:-

1. Simplicity: VB6 is relatively simple. The development environment is easy due to less features available.
2. High Performance: Software applications written in VB6 can run faster than the applications written in VB.NET. The major reason is that applications written in VB6 do not run on .NET framework. So there is no intermediate code interpretation happening in this case. Thus the application communicates directly with the OS. There are no layers like .NET framework in between. This is a major advantage. And this is a major reason why you may consider using Visual Basic 6.0.
3. Less Requirements: Applications written in Visual Basic runs without extra requirements. You do not need to install additional stuff.

Disadvantages:-

1. Less feature: Visual Basic 6 has less features.
2. Does not support modern technologies: In Visual Basic 6, you cannot work with many modern technologies, especially the web technologies. You cannot make a dynamic web site. Dynamic website is an online application for which VB6 does not have the development facilities. Though Internet programming is supported in Visual Basic 6. But you don't have enough power and flexibilities for making web applications using Visual Basic 6.

Advantages and disadvantages of VB.NET

Advantages:-

1. Rich in feature: There is really a huge number of features.
2. Modern web technology support: It supports many modern web technologies. Making web applications along with ASP.NET is very popular.
3. Quick application development: There are many ready-made stuff for which you do not need to write code. So the software can be developed quickly.

Disadvantages:-

1. Performance issue: The VB.NET applications run on .NET framework, which is an extra layer between the operating system and the application. So there is a performance issue.
2. Additional installation requirements: The end-user has to additionally install the .NET framework in order to use your application written in VB.NET. If the end-user does not have the .NET framework installed, he/she cannot install your software. So even for a tiny software written in .NET, the end user has to install the big-size .NET framework, which is surely an overhead.

In spite of all the disadvantages, VB.NET is rocking in the industry as it highly increases the developers' productivity. That is, the developers can develop much in very less time.

Rapid Application Development is fully powered with the strength of a variety of development tools available in VB.NET. That is why VB.NET is very popular despite the fact that it has some major drawbacks such as performance issues.