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Modern Programming Tools & Techniques-III

Notes 1.7.4 Literals

1.7.5 Types
1.8 Summary
1.9 Keywords

1.10 Review Questions
1.11 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:

Discuss visual basic elements
Explain object-oriented programming in VB.NET
Understand visual basic.net framework
Discuss common type system

Elaborate VB.NET features
Explain .NET framework
Understand VB.NET as a language in .NET framework

Introduction

Computer programming, often shortened to programming, scripting, or coding is the process
of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs.
This source code is written in one or more programming languages such as C++, C#, Java,
Python, Smalltalk, etc. The purpose of programming is to create a set of instructions that
computers use to perform specific operations or to exhibit desired behaviors. The process of
writing source code often requires expertise in many different subjects, including knowledge of
the application domain, specialized algorithms and formal logic. Within software engineering,
programming is regarded as one phase in a software development process.
Visual basic is a high level programming language developed from the earlier DOS version
called BASIC. Visual Basic .NET is the latest technology introduced by Microsoft with tons of
new features including the .NET framework. Educational institutes, Universities and Software
Development companies have migrated to VB.NET now but Visual Basic 6 is still widely learned
and taught. Learning Visual Basic 6 is quite easier than other programming languages such as
C++, C#, Java etc. This is because Visual Basic enables you to work in a graphical user interface
where you can just drag and drop controls that you want to work with where you have to write
bunches of code to create in C++ or C# or even in Java. If you are new to programming and want
to start it in the smoothest and easiest way, then you should start it with Visual Basic.
Sometime in the July 2000, Microsoft announced a whole new software development framework
for Windows called .NET in the Professional Developer Conference (PDC). Microsoft also released
PDC version of the software for the developers to test. After initial testing and feedback Beta 1
of .NET was announced. Beta 1 of the .NET itself got lot of attention from the developer
community. When Microsoft announced Beta 2, it incorporated many changes suggested by the
community and internals into the software. The overall ‘Beta’ phase lasted for more than 1 ½
years. Finally, in March 2002 Microsoft released final version of the .NET framework. One thing
to be noted here is the change in approach of Microsoft while releasing this new platform.

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