Knowledge Is Power

There have been nine versions of Visual Basic up to the current version. The first six versions were all called Visual Basic. But in 2002, Microsoft introduced Visual Basic .NET 1.0, a completely redesigned and rewritten version that was a key part of a whole computer software revolution at Microsoft. The first six versions were all "backward compatible" which means that later versions of VB could handle programs written with an earlier version. Because the .NET architecture was such a radical change, any programs written in Visual Basic 6 or earlier had to be rewritten before they could be used with .NET. It was a controversial move at the time, but VB.NET has now proven to be a great programming advance.
One of the biggest changes in VB.NET was the use of a object oriented software architecture (OOP). (Tutorials on the site explain OOP in much more detail.) VB6 was 'mostly' OOP, but VB.NET is totally OOP. The rules of object orientation are recognized as a superior design. Visual Basic had to change or it would have become obsolete.

In the beginning, there was BASIC and it was good. Really! I mean, really the beginning. And yes, really good. BASIC ("Beginner's All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code") was designed as a language to teach people how to program by Professors Kemeny and Kurtz at Dartmouth College w-a-a-a-y back in 1963. It was so successful that soon a lot of companies were using BASIC as their programming language of choice. In fact, BASIC was the very first PC language because Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote a BASIC interpreter for the MITS Altair 8800, the computer most people accept as the first PC, in machine language.
Visual Basic, however, was created by Microsoft in 1991. The main reason for the first version of Visual Basic was to make it a lot faster and easier to write programs for the new, graphical Windows operating system. Before VB, Windows programs had to be written in C++. They were expensive and difficult to write and usually had a lot of bugs in them. VB changed all that.