Visual Basic .NET is the next generation of Microsoft's popular Visual Basic programming languages. Some programmers refer to the new incarnation as VB 7, but this is incorrect. Visual Basic .NET is actually not backwards-compatible with VB6, meaning that code written in the old version will not compile under VB.NET. In fact, the languages are sufficiently different that many programmers consider them independent.

As a language, Visual Basic.NET has the following traits: