When comparing AutoIt vs Visual Basic, the Slant community recommends AutoIt for most people. In the question“What are the best BASIC-like programming languages?” AutoIt is ranked 7th while Visual Basic is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose AutoIt is:
Standard library includes solutions for all occasions allowing, in addition to capturing windows, keyboard and mouse events, to create a GUI, access Obj / COM, system processes and threads, the registry, MS Office applications, work with the network and databases.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Rich library included
Standard library includes solutions for all occasions allowing, in addition to capturing windows, keyboard and mouse events, to create a GUI, access Obj / COM, system processes and threads, the registry, MS Office applications, work with the network and databases.
Pro Compiles into portable executable
Interpretable code can be flexibly compiled into compact executable file.
Pro Easy to learn and start to use
Simple BASIC-like syntax and close documentation with clear examples.
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).
Cons
Con Closed-source
Being a closed-source scripting language creates security concerns such as hidden back doors.
Con Unfriendly forum
Has well known reputation of the forum being unfriendly to newbies and casuals.
Con Basic-like syntax
Basic-like syntax is much less used these days than C-like syntax.
Con Inappropriate standard code editor
The default code editor SciTE is simple but extremely difficult to tune, not recommended for beginners. Alternative editors are weak for AutoIt.
Con Lack of flexibility and power
Many necessary things, for example, capturing and analyzing screen pixels or capturing keystrokes by their scan codes, are implemented only through direct access to the Win API through a rather cumbersome code.
Con Ceased to develop
Bugs are slowly fixed and the last major update was many years ago.
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.