The Microsoft VB team still maintains compatibility for VB6 applications through its "It Just Works" program on supported Windows operating systems.

[6] Visual Basic 6.0 was selected as the most dreaded programming language by respondents of Stack Overflow's annual developer survey in 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Programs built with earlier versions suffered performance problems, but faster computers and native code compilation made this less of an issue.

Many attribute values can be modified during run time based on user actions or changes in the environment, providing a dynamic application.

Controls provide the graphical functionality of a GUI application, and programmers attach code to event handlers to perform actions.

Visual Basic has notable features and characteristics that are in some cases different than other BASIC variants or from other common languages: BYTE reported in 1989 that, based on its experience with Macintosh software development, Microsoft "wants to provide a development environment that mimics the delivery environment".

BASIC's string handling was preferable to C, the company's Greg Lobdell said, when developing the mostly transaction-processing applications Microsoft expected object-oriented programming tools to create.

The drag and drop design for creating the user interface is derived from a prototype form generator developed by Alan Cooper and his company called Tripod.

Ruby also provided the ability to load dynamic link libraries containing additional controls (then called "gizmos"), which later became the VBX interface.

[24] Microsoft developed many derivatives of VB (classic), including: Versions before 5 compiled the code to P-Code – which is interpreted at runtime.

VB 5 and 6 can compile code to either native or P-Code but the runtime is still required for built-in functions and forms management.

Criticisms of VB (prior to VB.NET) include:[32] All versions of the Visual Basic IDE, from 1.0 to 6.0, are no longer supported by Microsoft.

Some legacy Visual Basic components may still work on newer platforms, despite being unsupported by Microsoft and other vendors.

Later releases of MSDN focused on .NET development and had significant parts of the Visual Basic 6.0 programming documentation removed as the language evolved, and support for older code ended.