Language History
C# and VB.NET are syntactically very different languages with very different history. As the name suggests, the C# syntax is based on the core C language originally developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs (AT&T) in the 1970s and eventually evolved into the fully object oriented C++ language still in use today. Much of the Java syntax is also based on this same C++ language, which is one of the reasons the two share a common look and feel. See Comparison of Java and C Sharp for more on this topic.
VB.NET has its roots in the BASIC language of the '60s with its name being an acronym for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code". In its beginning, BASIC was used in the college community as a "basic" language for first exposure to computer programming and the acronym represented the language accurately. In the '70s, the language was picked up by microcomputer manufacturers of the era to be used as both a simple ROM embedded programming language as well as a quasi operating system for input/output control. In the early '80s, the language was picked up by Microsoft and expanded significantly beyond its original intent into their "Visual Basic" language/platform that was sold throughout the 1990s as a "rapid application development" (RAD) tool for Windows programming. It competed directly against other RAD tools of the 1990s such as PowerBuilder. Even though Visual Basic was a successful development platform, it was discontinued after its 6th version (VB6) when Microsoft introduced the .NET Framework and its related Visual Studio development platform in the early 2000s.
Read more about this topic: Comparison Of C Sharp And Visual Basic .NET
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