What is the difference between vbscript and vb.net?

VB Script:

Quoting from this answer:

VBScript is a sub-set of VB and is a scripting language that can be used to run a set of commands, similar to an old-school DOS batch file. Generally, a scripting language can not be used to create a full-fledged binary application and it can not be compiled down to a executable binary file.

vb script has been used a lot in writing plugins and extensions for browsers in the past. Browsers were capable to interpret the vb script.

Visual Basic .NET (aka VB .NET)

On the other hand, Visual Basic .Net was a progression of the Visual Basic language to target the common language run-time (CLR) which is the virtual execution environment (like JVM in java) of .NET framework based applications.

Historically when .NET framework came up, Microsoft introduced a completely new language C# (to compete with Java) but since most of the programmers following MS technologies were from Visual Basic background MS decided to have VB .NET option as well in parallel with C# .NET. This way for VB programmers it didn't become a binding to learn a completely new language (C#) syntax from scratch to start writing new applications targeting .NET framework.

Compilation logistics of VB series of languages :

Visual Basic => Compiled to native code packaged inside *.dll or *.exe files.

VB script => An interpreted language. It is not compiled. You can get more details here

Visual Basic .NET => VB .NET is compiled to MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) code (similar to byte code in Java world) packaged inside *.dll or *.exe files.

Except for sharing some syntax and keywords, they're quite different languages. VBscript is a very light weight language usually used for short scripts while VB.Net is usually used to create full desktop or web applications.

You could try searching for java vs javascript and many of those pages will describe differences between a scripting language and a normal programming language, javascript is similar to vbscript and java is similar to vb.net.

VBScript is a scripting language that is used mainly for doing small automated jobs.

The most powerful Windows technology is the .NET Framework. Visual Basic has been modified to be a true object-oriented language when working with the .NET Framework and that syntax is called VB.NET.