Visual Basic

Visual Basic

Please read all of this page for it contains important information about the two different and rather incompatible families of Visual Basic.

Learning to program is worthwhile because:

	computer programming is a highly creative process!
	programming languages are highly structured and demand disciplined thinking
	there are large numbers of good careers waiting for talented programmers
	even students who do not intend to become programmers are almost certain to use Microsoft programs such as Word or Excel on a regular basis, and Visual Basic can be used to take control over such programs (a form of Visual Basic called Visual Basic for Applications or VBA is built in to such programs).
	a subset of Visual Basic known as Visual Basic Script can be used to add interactivity to web pages.
	later versions of Visual Basic can be used to produce advanced web pages directly
	programming is fun!

Microsoft Visual Basic is one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and with good reason:

	It is easy to learn how to make simple programs (complex programs are never easy to program in any language)
	It is extremely powerful - it can be used to create almost any type of program you can imagine
	It's fast, due to the fact that it is a compiled language and also to the improvements that have been made to the program in recent years
	There are a vast amounts of support materials on the Internet for VB programmers (see the links page above)
	It's free! There are many versions of Visual Basic and certain version are available free from Microsoft.

IMPORTANT:

Microsoft has released at least 9 different versions of Visual Basic. Versions 1 to 6 were introduced from 1991 to 1998 and none of these versions are on sale any more, nor are they supported by Microsoft.

In 2002 Microsoft introduced a very different version of Visual Basic called Visual Basic.NET (the extension .NET has been dropped from the latest versions) which is not compatible with previous versions. Since 2002 Microsoft has released several versions of VB.NET.

I offer two courses here, one on Visual Basic version 5/6 and one on Visual Basic.NET. Follow the links above to learn about the family of your choice. I strongly recommend of course that you learn the current version, VB.NET, rather than VB 5/6.

A version of Visual Basic 5 is available free from this website (follow the VB 5/6 link at the top of this page). The full version of VB6 was never free and in any case is no longer for sale, though many companies continue to use it for the time being. Microsoft stopped supporting VB6 in March 2008.

In 2002 Microsoft launched a quite different form of Visual Basic called Visual Basic.NET - it is rather different from previous versions and programs written in previous versions (such as VB6) are not compatible with VB.NET unless they are converted. Simple projects like ours can be converted rather easily though with the version of Visual Basic.NET known as Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition. The 'Express' versions of Visual Basic are designed for beginners are are available FREE from Microsoft. Microsoft claims they are easier to use than previous versions but that is not necessarily so - they may have been simplified for beginners but they are still much more sophisticated than VB5, for example, and sophistication always comes at a price of being harder to master. Visual Basic.NET is 'fully Object Oriented' which means it is in line with other popular languages such as Java and C++ and has all the features that professionals look for. This makes the code more complicated and less user-friendly.

In November 2007 Microsoft made available Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition - this is also free to download and does not timeout (you may need to register) - this edition is now in use in our school alongside VB6 and I will be concentrating on this version in future, and using VB6 much less. If you are doing my course in VB.NET I strongly encourage you to download and install Visual Basic Express Edition 2008 on your PC (not Mac-OS compatible.)

You can download Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition free of charge from the Visual Basic Express website at www.microsoft.com/express/vb/. Attention: it will take up several hundred MB of space on your computer so don't attempt to download and install it unless you have a broadband (ADSL) connection and enough space.

You can either download it alone or as part of a larger package called Visual Studio 2008 Express but I suggest you do NOT download the Studio version - let's 'Keep It Simple, Stupid' (KISS).

You can read more about Visual Basic.NET in this Wikpedia article.

Follow the links at the top of this page for more...

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