(VB.NET) is an object-oriented computer language that can be viewed as an evolution of Microsoft's Visual Basic (VB) implemented on the Microsoft .NET framework. Its introduction has been controversial, as significant changes were made that broke backward compatibility with VB and caused a rift within the developer community that may or may not be resolved with the introduction of Visual Studio 2005.
The vast majority of VB.NET developers use Visual Studio .NET, although SharpDevelop provides an open-source alternative. The creation of open-source tools for VB.NET development have been slow compared to C#, although the Mono development platform provides an implementation of VB.NET-specific libraries and is working on a compiler, as well as the Windows Forms GUI library.
Similar to the virtual machine requirement of other programming languages, applications written in VB.NET require the .NET framework to execute.