You could probably type each one and the word 'Wiki' into google and get articles for each. As a super general overview Basic used to be a popular programming language (still used) and Visual Basic I believe introduced the Visual components to that language (the drag and drop development you see today). Visual Basic shortened is VB (so 2 and 3 on your list are the same). .NET is the new version of Microsofts development framework so VB .NET is just a newer version of Visual Basic (which includes new features).

2 and 3 are the same, but beyond that, 1, 2 and 4 are all separate (though similar) languages.

Quote:Original post by plywood
I am having a *very* difficult time finding clear, easy-to-understand definitions/explanations of the differences between each of the following:

(1) BASIC
(2) Visual Basic
(3) VB
(4) VB.NET

Are they all the same, all different, and if so, how??

"Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" was originally a language created in 1964. It was designed for education purposes. (In 1964, computers were still vast, room-hogging beasts that required armies of technicians just to keep them working.)

The appearance, in the 1970s, of computers that ordinary people could buy led to the development of numerous BASIC implementations for these machines. There, however, is no "standard" version of BASIC. Instead, there are umpteen dialects, based -- often very loosely -- on the original design and its key concepts. Very few of these dialects are compatible with each other, although Microsoft's own versions of BASIC were quite common during the late '70s and most the 1980s. (The Commodore 64 had a Microsoft BASIC implementation built-in, for example. Most releases of MS-DOS also included a Microsoft BASIC of some sort.)

"Visual Basic" and "VB" are the same. "Visual Basic" was Microsoft's first stab at a RAD development environment where programmers could bolt user interfaces together using drag-and-drop, using the VB language itself to 'glue' all the bits together and provide the logic behind the scenes. It first appeared during the Windows 3.x period in the early '90s.

VB.NET is essentially a completely new language, borrowing heavily from the original Visual Basic syntax. It has a completely different architecture behind the scenes and is not directly backwards-compatible. However, it is still recognisable as a member of the BASIC family.

If you are looking at .NET development and are unfamiliar with BASIC, I advise looking at C# as it seems more popular in game development circles.