Content and Organization
As mentioned above, the goals of this etext are two-fold: 1) learning to write computer programs to solve problems of various sorts and 2) using Visual Basic as the language to do so. The degree of difficulty of either of these goals will most likely depend upon your experience with computer programming and problem solving.This etext will begin by focusing upon the first task mentioned above. However, just because this is the starting point does not necessarily mean this is the simpler material (perhaps just the opposite). This etext will address problem solving and programming techniques in a generic manner, thus these techniques can be implemented in any programming lanugage. Only when exploring a specific solution implemented in VB will this text be VB specific. If you are an experienced programmer wishing to learn VB, you may want to spend less time on the introductory programming sections and move directly into the using VS.Net and Visual Basic language sections.
This etext will also introduce and refer to objects and Object Oriented Programming (OOP) techniques from the very beginning. However, since this is an introductory programming text, intermediate to more advanced use of objects will not be addressed until later in the text.
This text will focus upon command line based applications as well as Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications. While some will say that command line applications are outdated and "old-school", this is a limited understanding of technology (think of this the next time you use your bank ATM machine).
The Visual Basic topics and commands presented in this hypertext are meant to cover the broadest range of VB usage, but due to all of the differing versions and editions, this is somewhat limited. So for example, if you have VB.Net 2003, some VB commands or syntax may not work exactly as documented here. When VB commands and command syntax are introduced, they will first be introduced with the syntax in general, followed by a short, concise example. It is important that readers gain experience understanding generic syntax for commands, as that is what most help examples will use. In addition, each section which presents VB commands will contain a link to each command's MSDN help page, as appropriate.
Finally, it is the author's recommendation that readers of this etext begin at the beginning and only proceed to later sections when the material in the current section is well understood (based, of course on your experience).
Conventions Used
In an attempt to make the material in this hypertext as clear as possible for the reader, the following conventions were followed:
- spaces are typically represented by whitespace between commands and/or parts of commands
- a pair of red brackets [ ] will indicate the text (or commands or parameters) contained
within is (are) optional
- Visual Basic keywords will appear as blue, mixed case text (see example).
This will be consistent with the Visual Basic.Net IDE.
- a blue arrow
indicates the following of menu selections, e.g. Start
Programs indicates left clicking on the Windows Start button followed by
selecting the Programs selection. - the single quote character, (i.e. ' ) indicates the following text should
be viewed as explanatory comments, not something to type. Note the color of this text will usually be green
(see example).
- text enclosed in a rectangular box indicates the contents of a VB program or a program snippet. The name of the
specific program will also be present within the box (see example).
- helpful tips will appear throughout the text and will be identified using the
icon. - formal references will be hyperlinks to the references page and appear as follows:
([WP 1])
- numbered footnotes will typically be links to the footnote text. The footnote text will be located at
the end of the section where the footnote reference occurs. The reader can return to the reference
of the footnote by using the browser back button.
- the operating system used to create and verify all examples was the Microsoft Windows XP operating system
- in the initial release of this text, all examples, screen captures, and VB program code were created and tested using the Microsoft .Net 2005 framework and Microsoft Visual Basic 2005. This text has since been updated to reflect the .Net 2008 framework and Visual Basic 2008, and again to reflect the .Net 2010 framework and Visual Basic 2010.