Microsoft adds full Visual Basic support to .NET 5, but it won’t evolve

Microsoft starts deprecating Visual Basic, a programming language that was extremely popular several years ago. Using it, one could quickly create an app without learning internals of the operating system or databases. Microsoft adds full support for Visual Basic to .NET 5, but stops developing the Visual Basic language.Earlier versions of .NET Core supported Class Library and Console applications types. Starting with .NET 5 Visual Basic will support:

• Class Library
• Console
• Windows Forms
• WPF
• Worker Service
• ASP.NET Core Web API

Microsoft states the following:

Going forward, we do not plan to evolve Visual Basic as a language. This supports language stability and maintains compatibility between the .NET Core and .NET Framework versions of Visual Basic. Future features of .NET Core that require language changes may not be supported in Visual Basic.

So, sooner or later, VB won't support newer features of the modern .NET Core platform. If you are a VB programmer, you have to stay with the classic .NET Framework, which remains bundled with Windows. Microsoft promises to maintain the existing functionality without breaking it for the classic .NET Framework and VB. Visual Studio will also support developing with Visual Basic.

Visual Basic is a great language and a productive development environment. The future of Visual Basic will include both .NET Framework and .NET Core and will focus on stability, the application types listed above, and compatibility between the .NET Core and .NET Framework versions of Visual Basic.

, Microsoft said.