VISUAL BASIC.NET BIT101

Learn to make Windows Programs using .NET (Visual Basic)

Learn Microsoft development Language. This Language helps with ASP.NET projects as they can now use Visual Basic.Net code in the background for website functionality.

History of BASIC

By the mid-1970s, as personal computers became cheaper and more widely available, people started owning their own, but most people found they were still hard to program. In response to this need, Bill Gates and Paul Allen produced a version of BASIC and started selling it from their newly formed company, Microsoft. Software built on the .NET Framework can be easier to deploy and maintain than conventional software. Applications can be designed to automatically upgrade themselves to the latest version. The .NET Framework can also minimise conflicts between applications by helping incompatible software components coexist.

Learn to Develop windows applications using Microsoft VB.NET

12 lessons filled with easy to understand instructions

Screenshots of working examples

100 hours total study with up to 12 months to complete

No classes, submission dates or schedules!

COURSE STRUCTURE AND CONTENTS

This course focuses on application programming in VB.NET (Visual Basic) Programming Language.

There are 12 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction
- History of BASIC
- What is Microsoft .NET
- Programs
- Keywords
- Sequence
- Selection
- Repetition
- Methods
- Object libraries
- Writing programs
- Integrated Development Environment
- Your first program: Hello World
- A console program
- Hello World explained
- A windows based program
2. Variables
- What are variables
- Arrays
- Hungarian notation
- Kinds of variables (Data types)
- Assigning variable values
- Operator precedence
- Strings
- Hard coding variables
- Programming exercise
- Using variables
- Comments
3. Understanding conditional statements
- Program flow and branching
- Sequence
- Selection
- if statements
- if...else statements
- Nested ifs vs elself
- The select statement
- Repetition (looping)
- For loop
- While loops
- Do loops
- Evaluating conditions with boolean expressions
- Comparison operators
- And, or and not
- Formatting code (indenting)
- Programming exercise: countdownTimer1_Tick() explained
- Button1_Click() explained
4. I/O handling
- What is a file
- Data files
- Program files
- Saving files
- I/O
- Accessing files
- Sequential files
- Random files
- Binary files
- Opening files
- Namespaces
- Streamreader and streamwriter classes
- Streams
- Programming exercises: Writing a file (output), Reading a file (input)
- Exercises explained
- Reading files by line
5. Controls and Objects: An Introduction
- Controls
- Objects
- Programming exercises
- Simple poker machine
- Stepwise development
6. Structured Programming using Modules
- Modular program techniques
- Top down vs bottom up
- Modules and methods
- Methods
- Method header
- Parameters
- Arguments
- Cohesion and coupling
- Variable scope
- Local vs global variables
- Passing values
- Procedures vs functions
- Programming exercise: Simple calculator
7. Properties, Methods, Events and Classes
- Objects and classes
- OOP concepts
- Fields, properties, methods and events
- Encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism
- Overloading, overriding and shadowing
- Access levels
- Constructors and destructors
- Programming exercise: Cat class
8. Inheritance
- What is inheritance
- When to use inheritance
- Inheritance rules
- Inheritance modifiers
- Overriding properties and methods
- MyBase
- MyClass
- Programming exercise: club members
9. Polymorphism
- What is polymorphism
- Using polymorphism
- Programming Exercise: Club members
10. Using Controls
- Types of controls
- Button
- Label
- Text box
- List box
- Combo box
- Check box
- Radio button
- HScroll bar
- VScroll bar
- Picture box
- FolderBrowserDialog
- Group box
- Timer
- Using controls
11. Debugging
- Programming errors
- Types of bugs
- Syntax errors
- Logic errors
- Runtime errors
- Finding bugs
- Breakpoints
- Trapping Errors with Try ... Catch
12. Developing a Complete VB.NET Application
- System development life cycle

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Example Lesson ….

Variables

Lesson Aim

Understanding how computer programs store values, and how they are accessed and used in computer programs.

WHAT ARE VARIABLES?

When you input data (i.e. information) into a computer the data is stored in the computer’s memory. To visualise this, you might think of the computer’s memory as millions of little boxes, each holding a single value. Normally, each box is numbered starting at zero. As a computer uses binary numbers (made up of 0s and 1s), the boxes may be numbered something like this: 10100010, which is 162 in decimal.

The actual number of boxes depends on the amount of memory in the specific computer. When data is put into the computer, the computer stores the data in the boxes that are part of the computer’s Random Access Memory (RAM), and the number of those boxes is referred to as the memory address.

Obviously, for humans to refer to memory addresses by their binary index would be very difficult, so programming languages use a device called a variable. A variable is a word label that the programmer assigns to a piece of data, so they don’t need to worry about where it is stored in memory or how to tell the computer where to find it.

Variables are simple memory boxes with names. You, the programmer, supply these names.

For example, the following lines first declare a variable called myAge of data type Integer (it will store whole numbers), and then assigns the integer value 25 to myAge:

Dim myAge As Integer

myAge = 25

When you declare a variable, you must give it a name (and then compiler will claim some memory space and associate the name with the binary address), and specify the type of data that will be stored in that variable. The keyword Dim (short for dimension) instructs the compiler to claim some memory space, set its name, and define the data type that will be stored in it.

At this point, the variable will be empty, or more accurately, will contain a Null value (Null means the absence of a value). Null value exceptions can cause a lot of problems in programs and will be discussed in detail later. In the example above, the second line stores the value 25 in the variable named myAge. This is called initialising a variable. It is important to initialise variables as soon as you have declared them, to prevent the possibility of Null exceptions, even if you don’t know what value it will eventually hold (e.g. you will be getting data from the user later in your program).

Variables can represent almost any value, and can be used in mathematical operations.

When naming your variables, there are a few rules you must follow to comply with the formal syntax for Visual Basic.NET. Variable names:

• Must start with a letter (a to z, A to Z)

• Can contain any number of letters or digits (a digit is 0 to 9)

• Can contain the underscore (e.g. _)

• Can be up to 255 characters long

Visual Basic .NET is not case sensitive. This means that once a variable named, say ‘width’ is declared, you cannot then declare another variable named, say ‘Width’, as to VB, they are considered identical. There are several different naming conventions used in programming; a popular style, Hungarian Notation, is described below. Make your variable names suggestive of what the variable represents, to increase readability of your code. Also, try to keep your names short and concise. It doesn’t matter which naming style you decide to use, but be consistent, as changing styles throughout a program may make it hard to understand and maintain.

Because text display is so important in computing, Visual Basic.NET has a number of functions and commands that manipulate text. For example, you can join two or more strings into one, find the length of a string, or convert numbers to strings or strings to numbers (more about string operations later).

Computer programming is for everybody...

Computer programming is something that will become as common as learning maths, English or science, it is already making its way into curriculum's at primary and high schools. It is something that will give you a complete understanding of how to take control of computers and be able to make them do what you want. ASP.Net is a computer language that is set to be around for many years and will give you a broad scope to be able to take on other computer programming languages.

Study online at your own pace

Using our modern online portal for study is a simple and effective way of learning.Once enrolled, you will receive your online account to our login.training system that will give you all the lessons assignments and self-assessment tests so you can start studying straight away.