The History of Visual Basic in short:
VB is predominantly derived from BASIC. Its first Version-1 came out in 1991, and subsequently the followup versions came upto 1998 with Version-6 as the last installment of its kind. The full support to VB6 ended in 2005, and the extended support to it ended in 2008.
After this, Visual Basic .NET (which came out in 2002) replaced the earlier versions so that it was not backward compatible and introduced the .NET framework as its working platform, this version is also known as VB7. The current stable version continuing this (.NET) chain of VB is Visual Basic 2008 (a.k.a (also known as) VB9.)
Portable Version:
Visual Basic 6 is small and convenient to get a hands-on experience for the beginners and newbies. Although not supported by Microsoft anymore, it can still be experimented with, and small semester projects can easily be deployed using this language.
The portable version of VB6 available here is only capable of making executable files, nonetheless which is definitely enough for small tasks / projects.
Note: Unzip or Unrar and open Vb6, and start your work right away.
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