Can't you pretty much do anything in C# in VB as well? If so, why does MS develop both? : programming
Back around 2000, the general belief was that the programming landscape was evolving from a basement full of long-bearded geniuses chomping out COBOL on punch cards for accounting firms' mainframes, to a shiny new era where low-paid dumbass hipsters in hoodies churned out web sites for each other's brother's skate shop. What would make this possible? RAD tools. People weren't going to write programs anymore: they were going to graphically construct them and then fill in a little glue code in a "friendly" language like VB.
At the time, having worked a little bit on a VB-based project, I was pretty sure that was never going to happen, but deep in my heart I had a tiny bit of terror that it would, and I would never get paid to write real code again.
Of course, it turned out that projects written in those RAD tools floundered, and better language design won out over slicker programming environments. The Java juggernaut started rolling around, and Microsoft responded first by attempting to coopt Java, and then by creating C#.
But by this time, there was enough VB around, and Microsoft had spent enough money promoting it, that they couldn't just cut it off. And for every language, no matter how inherently shitty, there are always a few geniuses that fell in love with it for some reason and will crank out awesome code in it while finding ways to rationalize its quirks.
