Question

Is there any situation where Or is better to use than OrElse?

If not, why don’t they just “upgrade” the internal code?

Answer 1

The only reason to use Or is when you want bitwise arithmetic, i.e. you want to manipulate the bits in a number:

Sub SetBit(value As Integer, Bit As Integer)
    value = value Or (1 << Bit)
End Sub

This kind is the only case appropriate for Or. In all other cases (i.e. when using Boolean logic), use OrElse.

Despite their similar names, Or and OrElse are semantically quite distinct operations which should not be confused with each other. It just so happens to be that the internal representation of Booleans makes it possible to use bitwise Or to achieve a similar (but not the same) effect to OrElse. (Old versions of BASIC and VB – before .NET – exploited this relationship by only providing an Or operation, no OrElse.)