Visual Basic 2012 has been made available by Microsoft since last year. However, it is no more a stand alone program, instead, it has been integrated into Visual Studio 2012 together with Visual C++ and Visual C#. Therefore, you can now create windows applications using either Visual Basic, Visual C# or Visual C++. Since we are dealing with Visual Basic, we shall focus only on Visual Basic 2012.
You can download free version of Visual Studio 2012 from Microsoft website:
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2012-express
There are five editions of Visual Studio Express 2012 available for download:
- Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web
- Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8
- Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop
- Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone
- Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2012
Since most of you are still using the old version of windows, we shall download Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop.
We are in the process of writing the tutorial lessons for Visual Basic 2012 which is expected to take one month to complete. Please check back often for the tutorial updates.