Visual Basic (VB) Hello World Program

By using Visual Studio, we can easily create a Hello World Program or Console Application in Visual Basic based on our requirements.

In the previous chapter, we learned how to Download and Install Visual Studio on Windows Machine. In case, if you are not installed a visual studio, then follow the instructions to install visual studio otherwise open your visual studio.

Create Visual Basic Console Application

To create a new application in visual studio, go to Menu bar, select File à New à select a Project like as shown below.

Once you click on Project, a new popup will open in that select Visual Basic from the left pane and choose Console App. In the Name section give any name for your project and select appropriate Location path to save your project files and click OK like as shown below.

Once we click on OK button, a new console application will be created like as shown below. In case Module1.vb file not opened in your code editor, open the Solution Explorer menu in right side and double click on your Module1.vb file.

If you observe the above image, by default the application contains a Main() method because the console applications in visual basic will always start from the Main() method of program class.

Visual Basic Hello World Program Example

Now, replace your Module1.vb file code like as shown following to display the “Hello World” message.

If you observe the above code, we used a lot of parameters to implement “Hello World” program in visual basic. In next section, we will learn all the parameters in detailed manner.

Visual Basic Hello World Program Structure

Now we will go through each step of our visual basic program and learn each parameter in detailed manner. 

Imports System;

Here, Imports System is the .NET Framework library namespaces and we used Imports keyword to import system namespace to use existing class methods such WriteLine(), ReadLine(), etc. By default the .NET Framework provides a lot of namespaces to make the application implementation easily.

The namespace is a collection of classes and classes are the collection of objects and methods.

Module Module1

Here, Module Module1 is used to define a module (Module1). The module (Module1) will contain all the variables, methods, etc. based on our requirements.

Sub Main()

Here, Sub Main() is used to define a method in our module (Module1). 

• The keyword Sub is a procedure and it is useful to write a series of Visual Basic statements within Sub and End Sub statements.
• The name Main will refer the name of our method in module (Module1). The Main() method is the entry point of our console application.

Console.WriteLine() / ReadLine()

Here, Console.WriteLine() and Console.ReadLine() methods are used to write a text to console and read the input from console. 

The Console is a class of .NET Framework namespace System and WriteLine() and ReadLine() are the methods of Console class.

Compile & Run VB Hello World Program

To see the output of our Visual Basic Hello World Program, we need to compile and run the application by pressing either Ctrl + F5 or click on Start option in the menu bar like as shown below.

Once we click on Start option or Ctrl + F5, our program will get compiled and show the result like as shown below.

This is how we can create and execute the applications in visual basic (vb) programming language using visual studio based on our requirements.