I’m reading this morning that OpenSilver has support for VB.NET on their roadmap. OpenSilver is an open-source reimplementation of Silverlight using WebAssembly to help developers who have Silverlight code-bases. This quote from Userware (the CEO of the company behind OpenSilver) is spot on:
It will throw a lifeline to the huge number of Visual Basic developers that are out there, and that are sad to see their favorite programming language being progressively abandoned.
I’m so glad to see companies like Userware and RemObjects stepping up to provide alternatives for web development to VB.NET programmers. I’ve spent close to 20 years building web applications using VB.NET, and I’m furious that Microsoft has abandoned us. But it certainly provides opportunities for clever third parties to step in to the breach with solutions for developers like me.