Taking visual basics

[jmd]

Hello

Well just started back at school and one of my cources is Visual Basics 6.

Now I have never programed before so I was wondering if this is a hard program to learn???

Cheers

[Ch00k]

Nope, I found Visual Basic a very easy language to learn.

You can be very lazy and program in VB with extremely bad programming habits and your stuff will still work.

Of course, if you want to be smart, and program well, then it can also be a very powerful language.

[Dru Lee Parsec]

I think you can learn to write elegant code or garbage code in any language. If you have access to VB then go ahead and learn it.

My only concern is the cost since VB is a proprietary product from M$. If you want a language that has free tools and compilers then you may want to try Java, Python, C, or any of the other languages available to you. The folks on the forums for each of those languages can point you in the right direction.

[mrbojangle]

um, my thoughts is, if you learn VB then right after that learn PHP there almost JUST alike, same theory, you would eat php up then :p just thought i would comment ;)

[jmd]

Thanks for the info.

I have a copy of VB free from the school. I just loaded it on my computer. I did a little today. I find it interesting could be fun lol I hope.

Cheers

[xilica]

u can download a free version of vb called control creation edition and also visual basic is pretty easy since it does all the interfacing for you and menu's... and visual basic is an easy language but don't poo poo it because it is very powerful once you get in depth with it. this makes it a little harder but its all worthwhile.

[tockert]

I have bought a couple of books on it. It looks pretty simple to learn once you understand some of the sintax. I have completed a couple of classes on C++ and VB seams to follow the object oriented approach to programing. Keep track of what is going on in the class, and then look for code on the web that you can use in class.
The instructor I had for C++ allowed us to reused code we had done in class, and from the book and from the web for a test. We just where not allowed to used code from the student sitting next too us.

Good luck

[Tarkus]

Visual Basic is a very powerful high-level language. it is great for writing applications quickly. It does however have the nasty problem of allowing nasty programming habits to fester.

It get's more powerful as you learn more and more about it, and trust me, there's a lot to learn surprisingly, if you're so inclined.

[Spadeon9]

Originally posted by Dru Lee Parsec
My only concern is the cost since VB is a proprietary product from M$. If you want a language that has free tools and compilers then you may want to try Java, Python, C, or any of the other languages available to you.

Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Standard w/book (http://www.quantumbk.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=QBMPB&Product_Code=5828)

[ChefNinja]

Heh... a lot of the people who responded in a positive manner to Visual Basic seem to have horrible spelling and or grammar in their posts. That's weird :wtf:

[Spadeon9]

Originally posted by ChefNinja
Heh... a lot of the people who responded in a positive manner to Visual Basic seem to have horrible spelling and or grammar in their posts. That's weird :wtf:
:wtf:

[comrade]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using Microsoft Visual Basic. A great programming tool, especially for beginners.

[phubuh]

Our dear Joel from http://www.joelonsoftware.com once said something along the lines of "When you take brilliant C++ coders, and teach them Visual Basic, you get great code in half the time."
Or something like that.

[lush^]

Cool...im learning VB through my school too...gave me the vbstudio proggy...and a nice ole book...yea! 8)

[VoodooWizard]

Visual Basic is an excellent language to learn I have found in my experiences that once you learn everytihing there is to know about VB you should be able to take your knowledge from it to learn other languages because they all have some of the same things, subs, functions, classes, OOP, programming logic, looping and decision making, I started out learning vb6.0 in college but now am learning vb.net and I think that vb.net is better its got some new features that 6.0 did not have which makes it a very good language.

[bwkaz]

The thing that annoys me about VB is that while it's not too hard to write an app in it, it's really quite difficult to do any kind of (for example) multithreading.

In theory, it's easy, because in VB 5 you got the AddressOf operator, which you could use on public module-level (but not class-member) subs or functions when passing them to a Win API function like CreateThread. However, while this worked OK in VB 5, VB 6 pretty much killed it when it did whatever it did that required OLE to be re-initialized in the new thread (something with TLS, I think). So you couldn't use any OLE functions at all until you managed to create one OLE object (and initialize the OLE system in the process). You couldn't use the VB New operator though, because that caused the Win equivalent of a segfault. You couldn't use functions declared with something like the API Text Viewer, because those relied on OLE also.

What you had to do was write (in the MS IDL language, in VC++) a .idl file that you compiled (with MIDL) to a .tlb. Then, you added a reference to that TLB to the project, and could use its functions in the new thread right away. So you added CoInitializeEx, CoCreateObject, and a few others (GetIIDFromName, or whatever it was called, was one of them too I think) to the TLB, and used them approximately in that order in the new thread. You also needed an empty class in your program that you could create the interface to. Once that interface had been created, the OLE TLS stuff was initialized, and everything else would work (well... except the Err object, but that wasn't a huge deal).

Now since .net in general is supposed to be very similar across languages, one would think that multithreading would have to finally be supported in VB.net. I'm not sure if it is or not -- this is what you had to do in VB 6.

I've found that VB 6 is great if you want to do simple, GUI programs (especially data-bound ones, as long as the data is in an Access .mdb file or on an MS SQL Server). I've never really tried using it to write simple or complicated CLI programs, but I doubt its capabilities there. There seem to be better tools for that job. Complicated GUI programs also can (note: can, not always do) give it trouble, like when they need multithreading.

*shrug* Use what works.

[VoodooWizard]

Just to let everybody know, VB.net actually was built with the idea of being able to do multithreading, I havnt tried it a whole lot my self but its pretty easy.

[bwkaz]

If there's one thing multithreading is not, it's easy (race conditions SUCK! ;)), but if VB.net lets you create threads natively, then that's about as much as you can ask of a language (at least as far as threads go).

I assume you have access to some sort of semaphores, mutexes, and monitors as well? (Win32 APIs sort of count, if it's not some huge mess to call them...)

[rohankk54]

Do not worry... I am 14 yrs. old and have mastered this language. Everything takes time when u first start it but as it goes on it WILL get eaiser, trust me.


Good Luck

[Spadeon9]

:suspect:

[BsCis99]

BsCis99: VB .NET supports multithreading through the System.Threading.Thread class. You can create, suspend, resume, stop, prioritize, synchronize, and query the state of threads.

[Blag]

Yeah....actually Visual Basic, it's pretty easy to learn, and can be very powerfull, we you learn the right moves.....almost 5 years ago, when i started learning programming....i learn VB and C++ at the same time.....an gotta say....VB is a long way more easy than C++. It has a GUI, and that cool when you need to build Windows app's.....of course, there's Visual C++......but for the begginer VB is better.

But IMHO, if you want to learn programming and you're a begginer.....i think you should go with Pascal first...then moved to Delphi.....and get all the other languages avaliable :angry:

I'm learning PHP and some FASM.....they're great!!! :D

[rohankk54]

Visual Basic is an excellent language to learn I have found in my experiences that once you learn everytihing there is to know about VB you should be able to take your knowledge from it to learn other languages because they all have some of the same things, subs, functions, classes, OOP, programming logic, looping and decision making, I started out learning vb6.0 in college but now am learning vb.net and I think that vb.net is better its got some new features that 6.0 did not have which makes it a very good language.

umm...im not sure you know what you ar talkin about, and you STARTED learinin vb6, in COLLEGE??? wow