In this appendix, you will learn about the languages of Visual Studio .NET. In addition, you will learn in detail about Visual Basic .NET as an object-oriented programming language. The appendix will also cover the different features of an object-oriented programming language. In addition, you will learn about the

components of Visual Basic. NET.

Based on your knowledge of Visual Basic .NET, you will learn to create a simple Visual Basic .NET Windows application and compare a Visual Basic .NET application with a Visual C# .NET application.

Introduction to the Languages of Visual Studio .NET

The latest version of Visual Studio is Visual Studio .NET, which is based on the

.NET Framework. The tools and languages provided by Visual Studio .NET enable you to build applications such as Web-based applications, desktop applications, and mobile applications. In addition, you can create Web services in Visual Studio .NET.

The following programming languages are included in Visual Studio .NET:

Visual C# .NET

Visual Basic .NET

Visual C++ .NET

Visual Studio .NET also supports technologies such as ASP.NET. These technologies enable you to develop and deploy various applications. Visual Studio

.NET also includes the MSDN Library, which contains complete documentation on various applications and development tools.

The IDE (Integrated Development Environment) of Visual Studio .NET helps you to create applications in various .NET languages. Visual Studio .NET allows the IDE to share tools and create applications in multiple languages.

Visual Studio .NET includes various advanced features compared to the earlier versions of Visual Studio. The following sections discuss the languages included in Visual Studio .NET.

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Visual C# .NET

Visual C# .NET is a new language provided by Visual Studio .NET. Visual C#

.NET is an object-oriented language based on languages such as C and C++. You can create applications for the .NET Framework by using Visual C# .NET. Visual C# .NET supports CLR (common language runtime). Code written in Visual C#

.NET is managed code. Various templates,designers, and wizards,which help you create applications in Visual C# .NET, are provided by IDE. You have learned about Visual C# .NET throughout this book. The next sections will look at the other languages provided by Visual Studio .NET.

Visual Basic .NET

The latest version of Visual Basic, which is Visual Basic .NET, includes se veral new features. Unlike the earlier versions of Visual Basic, Visual Basic .NET supports inheritance. Version 4 and Version 6 of Visual Basic supported interfaces but not implementation inheritance. Visual Basic .NET supports both implementation inheritance and interfaces. Overloading is another new feature of Visual Basic .NET, which I will discuss later in this appendix.

Visual Basic .NET also supports multithreading, which allows you to create multithreaded and scalable applications. Visual Basic .NET can also be used with CLS (common language specification) and

supports structured exception handling.

Visual C++ .NET

The enhanced version of Visual C++ is Visual C++ .NET. Features such as support for managed extensions and attributes are included in Visual C++ .NET.

You can create applications for the .NET Framework by using a set of language extensions of C++ that are included in managed extensions. You can also convert the components that are already present in C++ into components that support the

.NET Framework by using managed