Visual Basic is a programming language and integrated development environment created by Microsoft that allows developers to drag and drop objects and manually write code. It is designed to make software development easy through its graphical user interface and event-driven programming model. Key features of Visual Basic include its GUI interface, support for modularization, object-oriented programming, debugging tools, and data access capabilities. Variables in Visual Basic can be declared as local, semi-global, or global depending on their intended scope. The code window displays event procedures that execute code in response to user interactions with controls.