Guest Whitepapers

Microsoft Basic Logical Expression Evaluation
This document was written by Dan Barclay, and is also somewhat affectionately known as The History of Truth in Microsoft Basic. It describes how logical expression evaluation has always worked in Microsoft Basic, as this is a perennial question when folks come to the language from others. The primary purpose of the article is to describe expression evaluation from a language standpoint. That is, what the programmer should have in mind when writing the logical expression.
Language Stability
A whitepaper written by a longtime (1993-2001) Visual Basic MVP, Dan Barclay, on the concept of Language Stability. The purpose here is to describe what the term means to the author and to other owners of  valuable code assets, and how disasters such as VB.NET might have been avoided. While open discussion of the subject is new, the concept is as old (and as important) as programming itself.
Unofficial Documentation for VarPtr, StrPtr, and ObjPtr
This primer on using variable pointers in Visual Basic was written by Matthew Curland, one of the lead developers on Microsoft's Visual Basic team. I thought it was very well done, and with Matt's permission I've reprinted it here for your benefit.

Microsoft Authored Material

Microsoft Responds to Visual Fred
The marketeers within Microsoft were simply aghast at the original list of incompatibilities I compiled when Visual Fred initially went into public beta. They responded with this document, which I've left in its original Word format so as not to interfere with their message at all. I think it fairly well speaks for itself regarding the destruction done. It's also available zipped, if you'd rather.
Hardcore Visual Basic, by Bruce McKinney
In April 2000, MSDN quit distributing this classic text, and subsequently they've authorized me to repost it here for posterity. I've probably never admired a technical writer as much as I do Bruce. This is a book that every Classic VB developer ought to have and read. You might also be interested in his take on the current direction of (what Microsoft insists on calling) Visual Basic.
Notes for Developing DLLs for use with VB5/6
This file was originally distributed with VB5, but apparently disappeared from the distribution CDs in VB6. Regardless, it isn't installed by default, and Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS) got tired of customer frustration in not being able to find it so they (long ago) asked me to post it here. I'd forgotten it was here myself, until the site was redesigned, as it never used to be advertised. Good background information, even for folks who don't write DLLs in Visual C++.