Is it worth the money? I'm a Java programmer first and anything else that comes my way afterwards. I'm used to things like the Netbeans, Jbuilder, and Dev-C++ IDEs being freely available, as well as just the compilers. So, my question is, is it worth it to buy the necessary compiler to program in Visual Basic?
Really depends on what version you are referencing. If you're referring to Visual Basic.NET, than I say thats a personal choice. The beauty of .NET is that you don't have to get into which programming language is better, because their pretty much equal. In your case, I'd just recommend J#. J# is basically Java.NET, and even supports up to 1.2 (I think) of the Java library, as well as the entire .NET library. C# is the other language that resembles Java (to a degree), and may be worth a look.
I took a whole semester of Visual Basic and I really liked it. That was several years ago, and unfortunately I've forgotten most of what I learned. I thought I might like getting into serious programming and ended up not liking it as much as I expected. It was fun and making different programs was challenging, but in the end I didn't have the software myself to continue using it once the class was over, and couldn't really keep my knowledge up to date.
