Why Microsoft Replaced Visual Basic 6.0 with .NET

Visual Basic 6.0 was released in 1998, it gained huge popularity and became one of the best products of the time. However within the next few years, rather than an updated version, Microsoft announced a new product, .NET which was a totally new environment where there is no backward compatibility with previous VB applications. .NET hit the market in 2002 with VB.NET replacing VB 6.0

 Introducing a new language is a significant risk, both from technical and marketting points of view. But Microsoft risked a new system without continuing their proven success at the time. Why?

What VB Actually Was

Classic VB had a few issues(read here) and it seems like Visual Basic 6.0 was at the highest position where Microsoft could deal these issues the easy way.

Unlike most other languages, VB applications depended on an essential hybrid environment, Win API + COM objects. This was the core reason for most of the issues. But from the times beginning, VB was intended to behave in this way. After version 6.0, MS decided to do away with this experiment and introduce a more formally designed platform- the .NET framework and thereby providing a new, more featured API interface for programs to deal with.

Different Approach

Microsoft could have used a different approach. Instead of establishing a totally new API, they could have tuned the VB6.0 compilers to produce better executables with decreased dependency. If they had done so, VB would have become a more powerful, optimal programming language while allowing super easy application development.

The main competitor, Borland came up with their own version called 'Delphi'. In contrast, though Delphi apps could make use of COM objects, most of the time they directly utilized the Windows API. Therefore, Delphi was technically ahead of MS VB.

New API

However, it seems as if Microsoft wanted to create a new platform. The .NET framework obviously ease up tasks while getting more control over the apps. On a side note, it must be noted that competitors of Microsoft such as Borland will face some tough time adopting the brand new market where MS will be playing by its own rules.

By design, VB was destined to be a given up language. In an overview, VB was more of an experiment for increasing simplicity at the cost of dependency. .NET emerged the successor. It adopted the dependecies in a more optimized way in a man-in-the-middle design. It targets easing and simplifying coding while performance is not a significant concern.

Read Why Microsoft Abandoned VB6 in favour of .NET for more details.