BASIC
Пишуть що „Microsoft’s solution to DLL Hell is the .NET Framework“.

Before the introduction of .NET, Microsoft created and encouraged the use of the COM (Component Object Model). Using COM, Windows programmers were able to gain access tonumerous system resources. COM also represented Microsoft’s first attempt at creating an OOP standard. COM provided programmers with the ability to create component libraries made up of code that could be reused by different languages, such as Visual Basic and C++.

Before the arrival of .NET, early versions of Visual Basic depended on Windows DLL (dynamic
link library) files for much of their core functionality. Visual Basic automatically loaded DLL files onto your computer when you installed Visual Basic. Things would get complicated when programmers finished developing their applications and were ready to deploy them. In order for their applications to work, the programmers had to make sure that all the DLLs that their applications needed to run were also installed on each user’s computer. To help make this task easier to manage, Microsoft gave Visual Basic the ability to create a deployment package that automatically collected all the DLLs required by a given application. Although this made things easier on the programmer, it also made for some very large deployment packages. In most cases, even the smallest Visual Basic deployment package would easily grow to be 30 to 40 MB in size.

Unfortunately, package deployment size was not the only DLL problem that programmers
had to contend with. Problems sometimes occurred because deployment packages would
replace DLL files already installed on a user’s computer with older versions of DLL files. This often caused other applications on users’ computers to break. This situation was so common and difficult to deal with that programmers referred to it as DLL Hell.

Microsoft’s solution to DLL Hell is the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework is now responsible for providing Visual Studio programming languages with the functionality that they used to get from DLL files. Because DLL files are not needed to develop Windows applications, deployment packages are now a lot smaller. Now, instead of worrying about what version of DLL files users have installed on their computers, programmers need only to make sure that users have the appropriate version of the .NET Framework installed.

„Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Programming for the Absolute Beginner“. Jerry Lee Ford, Jr.