I am about to learn Visual BASIC.
BUt when I looked up books, etc. to get, I ran across Visual BASIC.NET, and some older versions. I saw in a few places that Visual BASIC.NET is different that Visual BASIC somehow. It's confusing (at least to me).
SHould I be learning Visual BASIC.NET as the most recent version of the language or am I wasting my time or restricting myself and I should be learning Visual BASIC 6 or something?

It depends. If you are willing to learn a programming language as a hobby, you are wasting your time anyway learning Visual Basic... It's slow, it's unportable, it's buggy. It's only easy to use and great for small projects. It also works easily together with MS Access. Again, if you want learn a programming language for fun and still easy to learn (yet powerful) go with python:

http://www.python.org/

Java is also a good one to start with, but might sound a bit confusing at the beginning since it's very OO driven.

Unless you got a job which requires the use of Visual Basic, you are way off better without it... seriously.... And since you are using Linux, chances are that both Java and python are already installed on your machine

If you are pretty sure you want to learn Visual Basic (note--it's pretty much Microsoft only without utilizing the Mono Project), then I would recommend learning Visual Basic .NET. Visual Basic .NET makes use of the .NET Framework, which, as the name implies, is basically a huge framework of classes and what not, whose purpose are to try and make your life easier. If you're looking for tutorial type material on Visual Basic .NET, you might want to look into some of Karl Moore's work. When I was working with the language I found I enjoyed his writing style the best. I know at least one of his books is entitled "Karl Moore's Visual Basic .NET: The Tutorials," although I believe he may now have more published works.

However, if you're just trying to get into programming, I would recommend not learning Visual Basic or Visual Basic .NET. The reason being is that I don't think it is necessarily wise to wed oneself to any one vendor if it can be avoided. Also, I don't think it's necessarily wise to wed oneself to a specific platform if it can be avoided. You want your software to run on as many different platforms and configurations as possible in order to reach the largest number of users. I would recommend you consider learning a different language, such as Python, and then eventually C++ or others. Python and C++ (other languages as well) have the advantage of being cross platform compatible.

VB.Net is basically the latest version of VB, but with the number of changes to it, it can really be considered a separate language from VB 6. (As a couple of examples, VB .Net allows for more standard OOP concepts and supports more multithreading models.)

Even though VB .Net is better than VB 6 was, I think I would still recommend learning some other language, as has already been stated in previous posts.

Thanks all. I got pretty much the same response on another forum - ie. "don't bother".
So, I think I'll just go straight for C++.
Has anyone here actually used VB?

Yes, I have. We used VB at my work. When .Net came out, we thankfully moved to using C# for all our new code... I occasionally get a project where I can use C++, but overall, people at my work are a bunch of C++ haters. Damn them all!

VB 6 could be a nightmare to work with at times. Especially when I had a project where I really wanted to use a free threaded model instead of VB's apartment threaded model... *shiver*

in my programming I class, I am forced to work with VB .NET. Now when you say it isn't portable, does that imply that I could not get the framwork up and running on my linux box?

After a little research, I found DotGnu and Mono. How stable are these programs and will they give me any problems when attempting to migrate my applications from home to school and back? Has anybody had any such experience? I appreciate your help?

I learned VB 6 for a school requirement. VB is great for unpowerful user interfaces you need to throw together for a client really quick.... But that's about it in my opinion. Java is powerful, and portable, and it's great for starting out, because you learn OO right off the bat. The faster you get comfortable with OO the better IMHO. But java can be slow and clunky with large projects. C, C++ is a good start to learn basics. But you should learn the basics with it, put it down pick up other languages, and then come back to C, C++ when you are an awesome programmer.

Yeah... I'm not happy about it or anything. I had to switch back to a dual boot system. I am just looking for ways to get windows off of my computer again.

Funny.... I used to be inherently afraid of windows on any of my computers, afraid that I would switch back. It's crazy. I could get DVD up quicker in Linux than Windows. ...never thought that would happen.

In my experience,VB is very disastrous when you encounter a bug,the error prompt says nothing.It is hard to debug and hideous to remember the functions provided by VB.At last,I quit VB and go to C/C++,even assembly.
I think assembly and C are true programming language,so light,so free;others are ugly.

I used VB about 6 years ago to throw together some QC apps for a company. In general I'm a systems type of guy, so it was a real change for me. I have to say I didn't think it was as bad as some say it is... but I guess like everything, it has it's good uses and it's bad uses.

If you want to get small Windows gui apps out the door in no time then it is something to consider. If portability and performance is your bag then I'd probably suggest using a toolkit like gtk+ or QT and coding in whatever your favorite language that interfaces with them is (C, C++, Python.. I'm sure others have bindings too).

this is absolutely hopeless.

THIS IS NOW THE BITCH ABOUT VB FORUM

..goodbye..