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Visual Basic.NET is a Microsoft-created object-oriented programming language which incorporates features of Microsoft's .NET Framework and Web Services, such as SOAP, which were originally developed using XML.
Visual Basic.NET, which thought would be a "sequel" to Visual Basic 6.0, has a totally different language core. There is no backward nor forward compatibility between Visual Basic 6.0 projects and code and Visual Basic.NET projects and code. Visual Basic.NET is a language designed to create .NET applications, Windows or Web applications, and Web Services. (Except for short Windows applications, these are topics beyond a first semester programming class.)

The developers of the language incorporated object-oriented programming (OOP) features such as inheritance, method overloading, organized exception handling, and free threading to make Visual Basic a powerful object-oriented programming language. (Prior versions were extensible from the very beginning.) The newer object-oriented programming (OOP) features of Visual Basic.NET are not usually covered in a first semester programming class.

With Visual Basic.NET a student can drag objects from the Toolbox into the Work area, specify the Properties and behavior of each object and thereby create business applications while learning the programming principles taught during most short Introduction to Visual Basic.NET programming courses.
The student will not have to deal with trying to program the user interface using code.

There is abstraction of the hardware, meaning that a programmer of Visual Basic.NET does not have to know about the inner workings of the hardware because Windows handles the functionality of the hardware, provides generic routines (Windows API, or Application Programming Interface) to communicate with hardware drivers provided by hardware manufacturers.

• Before Visual Basic: C and C++ were used to create Windows applications and this was a complicated process.
• 1991 - Microsoft released Visual Basic 1.0; Programmers could "draw" upon their own User Interface. Business problems could be solved with the quickly created application. Code was written by the programmer to react to user events (how a user responded to objects on the User Interface).
• Nov 1992 - Visual Basic 2: Included a Professional Edition, MDI Forms, ODBC, and object variables.
• June 1993 - Visual Basic 3: Enabled the building of database applications with Data Access Objects (DAO); OLE Automation and the Jet (Access Engine).
• Oct 1996 - Visual Basic 4: Introduced classes, OXC's, and allowed programmers to create their own add-ins.
• April 1997 - Visual Basic 5: Programmers could target features of Windows 95. Added a compiler and the ability for a programmer to create ActiveX Controls.
• Oct 1998 - Visual Basic 6: Introduced ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to manipulate data, create data sources. This was to help programmers use Active Server Pages to access database objects. ( VB6 was included with Visual Studio 6.0)
• Feb 2002 - Visual Basic.NET
  What is Visual Basic.NET?
• - Visual Basic.NET 2003 (and Visual Studio 2003)
• - Visual Basic.NET 2005 (and Visual Studio 2005)

Professor Smiley's History of Visual Basic page
What is the History of VB?