When comparing Visual Basic vs PicoLisp, the Slant community recommends PicoLisp for most people. In the question“What are the best (productivity-enhancing, well-designed, and concise, rather than just popular or time-tested) programming languages?” PicoLisp is ranked 66th while Visual Basic is ranked 74th.
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Pros
Pro Very simple and efficient language (in terms of number of lines of code)
Pro Easy to learn
Pro Capable language
Compiling to the same intermediate language as C# and compiling against the same .NET libraries, the differences between C# and VB are largely syntactic. Most VB features even have a 1:1 correspondence with C#.
Pro Huge community
Being Microsoft's introductory language, visual basic has a strong and large community.
Pro English-like syntax
Pro Flexible, won't get in the way of a beginner
A beginner developer can worry about the code logic first, and then learn the language. Visual Basic lets you do basically anything if you really want, while still having the power to be a fully statically-typed and object oriented.
Pro Sibling to C#
If you don't want to start with C# because of its high learning floor, you can start with VB. It is dead easy to switch between the two.
Pro Easy to deal with Win32API
Using platform invoke, it's very easy to use the win32 api in vb.net. Neat and clean syntax. Not a mess like c# (meaning those "{}"s).
Pro Integrated database and Prolog engine
Pro Fast code execution speed
One of the fastest code execution speeds compared to other Lisp dialects.
Pro Simplicity
Compared to other Lisp dialects, it's simple and doesn't have unnecessary features.
Pro Tacit
Code written in is short and easier to understand most of the time.
Pro Foreign function interface
The language has built-in FFI for C and also interfaces with java(via ersatz)
Cons
Con Almost as bad as Python, but less used
Con Bad reputation
Being a visual basic programmer, you're unlikely to be taken seriously by other programmers. According to the 2015 Stack Overflow survey, it was voted the second most dreaded language among developers.
Con Tends to get clunky due to prebuilt assets
Con Lack of Floating point data type
The language does not have floating point numbers only scaled fix-point numbers. Scaling of numbers is more work than directly working with floats.