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Visual Basic (VB) is a family of technologies from Microsoft that involve their variant of the BASIC programming language.

The core technology has a long and storied history with products and technological advances spanning decades. Major product lines include:

• Visual Basic (.NET) – the current line, launched in 2002, named Visual Basic .NET at first, but now just Visual Basic, based on .NET, supported in various integrated development environments including Visual Studio
• Visual Basic (classic) – the first line, supported from 1991 to 2008, version 6 (VB6) based on Component Object Model (COM), tightly bound with the integrated development environment by the same name, Visual Basic

Derivative technologies include:

• Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) – a variant of VB6 built into computer programs such as Microsoft Office for automation macros
• VBScript – a scripting language based on VB6
• Embedded Visual Basic – the classic version geared toward embedded applications