Visual Basic is a bit schizophrenic about handling data. It doesn’t support the Basic Way of declaring and using data as defined by the developers of early Basics. Instead, it implements its own Visual Basic Way. But the Visual Basic Way proved inadequate, so starting with version 4, Visual Basic began supporting the Windows Way. Unfortunately, it supports the Windows Way only sometimes, sort of, and from the outside rather than as an integrated part of the language.
Confused? OK, let’s look at the three ways one by one.