Microsoft Programming Languages? Visual Basic, Visual Studio .NET, etc. Please help!?

I use to program in Visual Basic 6, however three to four years ago I stopped. I haven't kept up w/the latest technologies and over the course of the past few weeks (I'm returning to programming) I've noticed several new options. Visual Studio use to be a compilation of all the Microsoft programming languages bundled in one package. Is that still the case w/.NET ? I haven't seen Microsoft Studio other than as individual packages that are language specific. I've always wanted to design software for the web and I came across this product labeled Visual WebGui that uses WinForms w/Visual Studio, but again I haven't found a Visual Studio. Am I wrong? Please help me understand the differences between Visual Studio from 2000-ish to the new Visual Studio w/.NET, and if you're familiar w/web development, please help me understand ASP.NET and Visual WebGui. If I use Visual WebGui is it (client, not development) Windows specific whereas ASP.NET isn't? Thanks, thanks, thanks!

Microsoft Programming Languages? Visual Basic, Visual Studio .NET, etc. Please help!?
Visual Studios .NET is Microsoft's environment that ties all of their languages together. If you are interested in checking out the latest version, you can download the beta for Visual Studios .NET 2008 which comes with all the languages. Otherwise you have to either buy it, or download the express versions for each individual language.





ASP is kind of Microsoft's version of PHP. It works very well and ties in very nicely with VB.Net, I use the combo at work. If you have any questions feel free to message me.
Reply:Visual Studio hasn't changed, but the languages inside the studio package have. The .NET languages all require a set of files called the .NET CLR (Common Language Runtime) Libraries - like the DLLs that each of the languages (C++, J++, VB) used to install on your system. The two main differences are that the .NET languages can be used to write web (internet or intranet) based applications, and that you can start writing a program in one language, such as C# (the successor to Visual C++), and continue it in J# (the successor to Microsoft's J++ - their 'java' version). Planet Source Code (http://www.pscode.com ) has great source code samples.