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The Rise and Fall of Visual Basic
After 28 years, are we are finally seeing the beginning of the end for one of the world’s most popular languages?
I have a confession to make. Before I became a respectable developer working with modern curly-bracket languages like C# and Java (and that hot mess of a platform we call JavaScript), I was a dedicated fan of the wildly popular misfit Visual Basic.
My infatuation started honestly. As a preteen I learned to program with the BASIC language. But not just any BASIC. I started off in Microsoft’s groundbreaking QuickBASIC environment on the ancient DOS operating system. I still remember writing code in white text on its cheery blue background.
For programming in 1988, QuickBASIC was magical. You could write code without clunky line numbers, catch syntax errors as you type, and launch your program straight from the development environment, no command-line nonsense required. And when you were finished, you could share your program with your friends using one of these bad boys: