About Visual Basic asked experts at the VSLive Conference in Chicago about VB, .NET, and everything. Here are the answers!

The experts generally thought that VB 6 would be around for a while, but it certainly wouldn't be making waves anymore. John Henning pointed to the vast body of VB 6 software in the real world. He said that his company was certainly counting on supporting VB 6 in parallel with VB .NET in the future.

Ken Getz had some kind words for VB 6. "I don't want to see a single feature removed from VB, but I'd sure like to see some of the 'ease of use' features that we miss from VB 6 put back in. It's awfully hard to print in VB .NET, compared to VB 6. I have a feeling the VB .NET team is aware of discrepancies like this, and they're working on making VB. NET far easier for the business developer to simply get work done. Sure, generics and templates are wonderful features, and they make for a more robust language, but if you can't get the job done, they don't help. I'm all for major language refinements like those, but I also want to see it easier to work around the features we lost in the conversion from VB 6 to VB .NET."

Billy Hollis said he would argue that .NET saved VB from obsolescence. "The inability to write any kind of inheritance-based framework in VB, for example, was driving a lot of people to Java. .NET placed fabulous Internet integration into VB, and gave access to lower-level capabilities like writing controls and Windows Services. So .NET has been great for VB."

But as forward looking people, most of our experts wanted to talk about the future of VB .NET and the comparison with C#, not the future of VB 6. Most felt that the differences between C# and VB .NET were so minor that they didn't think working in either language would be a problem for most people and both would be around for quite a while. Dan Appleman maintained that the differences are more academic purity (C#) versus programming productivity (VB .NET). He said that he had discovered very few things that you could do in one language and not in the other. Dan pointed out that he had written an ebook about this too!

But some of our experts felt VB .NET was a much better choice than C#! Keith Franklin, for example, ticked off just a few example points in favor of VB .NET:

• VB is does "RAD" (Rapid Application Development) better than C#.
• Building maintainable applications is easier in VB.
• Visual Studio works better with VB. This is because VB isn't case sensitive and C# is. Keith said this makes a difference when implementing the Visual Studio GUI.

Billy Hollis added that beyond the "cool" factor, there is no solid reason to choose C# over VB .NET and it's usually somewhat easier for VB 6 developers to transition to VB .NET. Billy agreed with Keith that VB .NET is better for RAD. Billy said that in his experience, C# is for people who like to write code but VB .NET is for people who just want to get the app out fast.

As far as VB 6 is concerned, Billy said that he would argue that .NET saved Visual Basic from obsolescence. "The inability to write any kind of inheritance-based framework in VB, for example, was driving a lot of people to Java. And .NET placed fabulous Internet integration into VB, and gave access to lower-level capabilities like writing controls and Windows Services. So .NET has been great for VB."