Anyone using Visual Basic?

[cbsalliance]

Hi Friends

Many years ago I used to program in Visual Basic. Now there's community, professional and enterprise editions. Not sure which one to use.

I would like to create some desktop apps that access things like Google and Amazon.

It's been so long that I don't even know if VB is sill used.

Any guidence would be appreciated.

[Akshay_M]

If you need VBA for a specific project/task, then yes. If you don’t need it, then no.

It’s like anything else, whether it be a programming language, a development tool, communication protocols, etc. If you actually need it, then learn it and use it properly. But if you’re not going to use it, learn something you’re actually going to use.

Personally, I didn’t learn VBA until I had a client who needed an Access database application, and based on the requirements of the project, using VBA within Access was the simplest and most appropriate way to deliver it on schedule. So, I quickly came up to speed on VBA, completed the project on time and on budget, and the client was thrilled. When the client wanted a couple of additional features, I added them. I haven’t had occasion to use VBA since then, but could if I needed to. I already knew countless dialects of BASIC, so picking up VBA wasn’t a huge task.

Professional software developers are fully expected to learn and properly use programming languages as needed. But don’t bother to learn a language you’re not actually going to use for one or more non-trivial projects, because it won’t become a part of you.