Visual Basic, "vb" in geekspeak, is a microsoft programming language. It is fairly straightforward. an it is the introductory langue of chice for "object oriented" programing-

From wikipedia:

Visual Basic (VB) is an event driven programming language and associated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model. VB has been replaced by Visual Basic .NET. The older version of VB was derived heavily from BASIC and enables the rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications, access to databases using DAO, RDO, or ADO, and creation of ActiveX controls and objects

Here is a link to a free tutorial

http://www.vbtutor.net/vbtutor.html

Hope this helps