Visual Basic is perhaps Microsoft's most popular language and is responsible for a whole sector of people who otherwise might not have become developers to actually learn to code. As a seminal Microsoft developer technology, Visual Basic enables the rapid application development of GUI applications.

That Vick is leaving his perch atop the VB development team to join the Oslo effort could be significant. The Oslo team already has some of Microsoft's sharpshooter developers on it, and the group only gets richer with Vick. Oslo insiders have said Microsoft's move to Oslo could be as big as the company's move to .NET several years ago.

Vick, who has worked on VB for more than 10 years and is named on several Microsoft patents relating to Visual Basic technology, said in a blog post: "I started asking myself whether it was time for a change. And, after thinking about it quite a bit and talking to quite a few people, I decided that it was. As much fun as it has been to work on Visual Basic, I felt the need to be doing something different than what I've been doing."

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