Paul Vick, one of VB.NET's lead architects, is author of the language's specification. He joined the Visual Basic team in 1997, first working on VB 6.0's OLE automation component, and then moving to the core compiler as the team began work on what would become Visual Studio .NET. In late 1999, he became leader of the VB.NET compiler team, helping to drive the decisions that led to VB.NET's full support for .NET and the CLR. He continues to work on the Visual Basic language definition and compiler.