Visual Basic
 

I decided I want to learn how to write visual basic programs.. does anyone have any good tutorials and/or experience with VB?

I've got quite a bit of experience with it. A couple of others like MJ and WW have as well, I think.

First of all, any idea which version of VB you're going to learn? While not totally different, the syntax of the different VBs does change slightly - VB6 is not the same as VB 2005, which is not the same as VBScript, which is not the same as VB.net.

I'd recommend VB6, simply because it's the most widely used.

I installed Visual Studios 6.0 Enterprise Edition... is that VB6?

I actually have practically no experience with VB.

Cool that you're thinking about picking that up, Spector. Visual Studios 6 probably contains VB6. Good luck.

That's the one, aye.

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Really? I could've sworn you did, MJ!

Another name to add to the list of people who do is Mantra, I believe.

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Give me a while - I'm looking for tutorials based on specific things to start with.

I'll edit this post later with either links for tutorials, or a list of things to search for, in order of learning.

Negative. I can get around with Java, C/C++, and Python, but never really picked up anything more than trivial with VB. Not that VB isn't a powerful language, it just didn't attract me at the time. It's probably the next language I want to learn, however I have no time for outside stuff these days.

I have a fair bit of experience with VB for applications, which I was forced to use for the first incarnation of a database here at work, but I'm moving it to PHP now, so it's all good :p. My experience with VB was infuriating, especially when I needed to make API calls, but mostly just because it's just not designed to deal with data like PHP is.

I'm doing a database project in VB for my Computing project at the moment. VB front-end and processing with an Access Database back-end. And I have to say, Microsoft Visual Studio 6 is one of the worst programs I've ever used to design something in.

Oh, and one word that makes me cringe whenever I hear it - twips. Bleugh.

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First thing to do, Spector - learn the simple things such as Printing in the form and how to use command buttons.

This is a nice tutorial that goes through the properties of various components and objetcs before moving onto command buttons, MsgBoxes and Printing ion the form.

http://cuinl.tripod.com/tutorials/f-11.htm

If you want to carry on, then by all means go on to the second lesson, the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc.

One thing I'll say - make sure you do practice the code. The more you practice, the easier it becomes, particularly with a language as easy as Visual Basic. Give it a few weeks and you'll be able to do a lot.

Im having issues installing it atm >.> I downloaded the ISO, so I have to have daemon tools to mount the drive to install it. It will initially install, but then says that windows must restart to finish the installation... but when I restart, the installation begins before daemon tools starts so theres no drive mounted and it has an error because it can't find the mounted drive :(

I need a CD to just burn this shit to

Bugger daemon tools for a lark.

Download WinRAR, extract the files from the ISO into a folder and install from that.

Visual Studio 6 is one of the best IDEs. At least when it's in C mode. I use it for everything (most of which is not Windows development).

It might be a good IDE, but when it comes to the graphical side of design, it can't hold a candle to even Paint, let alone Fireworks and Photoshop. If everything were in pixels by default, then I wouldn't mind... but it ain't.

I know I can change the scale thing from twips to pixels, but I can't do jack with the grid that you draw on. Is there any way to set the distance between the dots in the program options?

Unfortunately, that's an ancient artifact of Windows dialog design that has long haunted programmers. The issue is that depending on the DPI setting in the display control panel, the size of the font can change. Or at least it used to; I think I've checked with XP and it doesn't anymore. So that's the deal with that. You can always programaticly set the layout if it's that much of an issue. When I do stuff like frame sliders that needs exact relationships, I just place it aproximately in the dialog template (form), then set it exactly in code.