Introduction

Hi, Friends,

Welcome to Visual Basic tutorial! You have come to the right place to learn Visual Basic Programming. I like to share the knowledge with you because I have intense passion on Visual Basic. I wish you could spend some time reading the tutorial so that you can really acquire the basic skills in Visual Basic programming. Happy Learning!

1.1 What is computer programming?

Before we begin, let us understand some basic concepts of programming. According to Webopedia, a computer program is an organized list of instructions that, when executed, causes the computer to behave in a predetermined manner. Without programs, computers are useless. Therefore, programming means designing or creating a set of instructions to ask the computer to carry out certain jobs which normally are very much faster than human beings can do. In order to do programming, we need to use certain computer language to communicate with the computer. There are many computer languages out there, some of the examples are Visual Basic, Fortran, Cobol, Java, C++, Turbo Pascal, Assembly language and etc. Among them, I pick Visual Basic because it is the easiest to learn as it uses a language very similar to human language. It involves using words such as If, Then, Else, Goto, Select and so on, so it is very fast for any beginner to pick the language. Let me just give one example:

If Mark >50 Then

Grade="Pass "

Else

Grade="Fail"

End if

1.1 What is Visual Basic ?

VISUAL BASIC is a high level programming language evolved from the earlier DOS version called BASIC. BASIC means Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. It is a very easy programming language to learn. The codes look a lot like English Language. Different software companies produced different version of BASIC, such as Microsoft QBASIC, QUICKBASIC, GWBASIC ,IBM BASICA and so on. However, it seems people only use Microsoft Visual Basic today, as it is a well developed programming language and supporting resources are available everywhere.

With Visual Basic, you can program practically everything depending on your objective. For example, you can program educational software to teach science , mathematics, language, history , geography and so on. You can also program financial and accounting software to make you a more efficient accountant or financial controller. For those of you who like games, you can program that as well. Indeed, there is no limit to what you can program! There are many such program in this tutorial, so you must spend more time on the tutorial in order to benefit the most.

VISUAL BASIC is a VISUAL and events driven Programming Language. These are the main divergence from the old BASIC. In BASIC, programming is done in a text-only environment and the program is executed sequentially. In VISUAL BASIC, programming is done in a graphical environment. Because users may click on a certain object randomly, so each object has to be programmed independently to be able to response to those actions (events). Therefore, a VISUAL BASIC Program is made up of many subprograms, each has its own program codes, and each can be executed independently and at the same time each can be linked together in one way or another.

1.2 The Visual Basic Environment

Before you can program in Visual Basic, you need to install VB6 in your computer. If you do not own VB6 yet , you can purchase it from Amazon.com by clicking the link below:

Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional

Basically any present computer systems should be able to run the program, be it a Intel Pentium II, Intel Pentium III, Intel Pentium IV or even AMD machines, VB6 can run without any problem. It may not be true for VB2005, older machines might not be able to run VB2005 as it take up much more resources, therefore I still prefer using VB6 as it is light and easy to program. It is still very useful and powerful, and I am happy to know that Microsoft Windows Vista can support VB6.

On start up, Visual Basic 6.0 will display the following dialog box as shown in figure 1.1. You can choose to either start a new project, open an existing project or select a list of recently opened programs. A project is a collection of files that make up your application. There are various types of applications we could create, however, we shall concentrate on creating Standard EXE programs (EXE means executable program). Now, click on the Standard EXE icon to go into the actual VB programming environment.

In figure 1.2, the Visual Basic Environment consists of the:

• A Blank Form for you to design your application's interface.

• The Project window which displays the files that are created in your application.

• The Properties window which displays the properties of various controls and objects that are created in your applications.

It also includes a Toolbox that consists of all the controls essential for developing a VB Application. Controls are tools such as text box, command button, label, combo box, picture box, image box, timer and other objects that can be dragged and drawn on a form to perform certain tasks according to the events associated with them. Additional objects can be added by clicking on the project item on the menu and click on components on the drop-down list, then select those controls you need to use in your program

Figure 1.2: The Visual Basic Environment