Visual Basic worth it?

[Spinlock]

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?

 

[Thermal]

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.

 

[Mirage]

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.

 

[Albey]

Personaly i'd get into .net its whats gonna stay sadly.