VISUAL BASIC

VISUAL BASIC

September 2013. The beginning of the Fall semester begun last week.  This time I was taking a full load of classes, namely, Beginning Visual Basic, Beginning C++, Introduction to Computer Security, and American History II.

Visual Basic started life as version 1.0 in 1991.  The last stand alone Visual Basic version is Visual Basic 6.0 released in 1998.

There are several derivatives that followed the Visual Basic programming language during and after its final version release. Visual Basic itself is derived from the archaic BASIC programming language, the most popular language learned by teenage programmers of the last century.

Microsoft replaced Visual Basic 6.0 with its released in 2002 of Visual Basic.NET or VB.NET for short. With this release, Visual Basic becomes part of Visual Studio.NET Framework where developers can program in Visual C++ and Visual C# along with Visual Basic.

I used the Visual Studio 2010 IDE in the college computers when I was taking Beginning Visual Basic. I could have used Visual Studio 2012 Express IDE but I did not have a computer at the time, except for a small 7 inch Sylvania netbook with a Windows CE OS embedded.

To create a Visual Basic program, whether it be a console or form application, you need to create a project first.

In my class, we only created form applications, but here, I will be creating a console application.

Start by opening the Visual Studio 2010 IDE. Click New Project, then Console Application, type the name of the application, then click OK.  A Module template will then appear and you can code your program to this:

Module Module1

   Sub Main()
      Console.WriteLine("Hello World! Merry Christmas " & 2014 & " !")
   End Sub

End Module

Happy Week Before Christmas Day!

John Sindayen