VB6 and .NET VB

Hi, I have some questions regarding VB and .NET.

I am used to programming in Visual Basic 6.0, and have done several applications in it.

My new company I am working for want to buy VB in some form or the other, I would like Visual Studio 6, as I am not familiar with all this .NET.

Is VB .NET backwards compatible with VB6? i.e. if I have saved a project in VB6 will it opne in VB .NET?

Is programming in .NET the same as VB6? i.e. the same controls etc?


Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks
Steven

This will be a big NO to all your questions.

It is not backward compatible, programming is different (full OOP, some different controls, and many changes to VB6 controls), and VB6 applications can be opened with VB.NET but this will start the upgrade tool.
After upgrading the code to VB.NET, a lot of issues have to be dealt with manually.
I think many bigger projects can better be rewritten then migrated.

There are some articles around about upgrading VB6 applications to VB.NET.
eg.
Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications to Visual Basic .NET
I'm sure you find more treads in this forum about upgrading to .NET if you search for it.

VB6 - VB.NET

In my opinion, if you have anything more than a 'Hello World' application in VB6, keep maintaining it in VB6. If you have new applications to develop, then consider doing them in VB.NET to learn, as this is where MS is going. I consider the differences to be so great that although it's important for developers to learn .NET, for existing applications, its not worth the trouble.
:)