Introduction to Visual Basic

About This Course

Visual Basic is the most widely used programming language for creating Windows applications. Why? Because it's easy to learn, and doesn't require you to memorize difficult commands like other programming languages. In this course, you'll learn how to write Windows applications and programs using the Visual Basic programming language and the Visual Basic development environment.

Creating a Windows application ordinarily requires you to write lengthy and complex code. But, as you'll see, the Visual Basic development environment relieves you of this task. Instead, it enables you to create the application program and its components literally with the click of a button or menu item. It even writes all of the necessary code to get the application started for you, which you can then view and fine-tune.

Over the course of 12 lessons, you'll learn the building blocks of programming, including using variables to store data, control structures, and loops. You'll find out how to use the large function library built into Visual Basic, including the .NET Framework, as well as how to write and use your own functions. You'll also see how to use Windows' large and varied library of controls and how to access files and handle errors. And since Windows applications are event-driven and everything in Visual Basic is treated as a programmable object, you'll learn about event-driven and object-oriented programming—concepts that are important not just in Visual Basic, but in other programming languages as well.

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Jeffrey Kent.

Jeffrey A. Kent is a Professor of Computer Science, teaching both traditional and online classes. He has taught a number of computer programming languages, including C, C++, Java, and Assembly. He has authored several computer programming books on different programming languages including Visual Basic, C++ and C#. He's also an attorney, and has combined both careers by writing applications for law firms.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

What's the best way to learn Visual Basic programming? Well, you have to write programs, of course! And your first step toward writing your first program is to install Visual Basic. So in our opening lesson, you'll learn how to install Visual Basic Express on your computer. After that, we'll walk through creating your first Windows application program while we discuss how a Windows application works.

Friday - Lesson 02

In the first lesson, you were able to create a working Windows application with just a few mouse clicks. In today's lesson, you'll find out what Visual Basic did behind the scenes to help you create that application. You'll also learn about properties, which are characteristics of an object—such as its size and color—and how to change those properties.

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Windows applications are all about events, such as the event a user causes just by clicking a button in the application. Today you'll first learn about event procedures. Then you'll get your feet wet in Visual Basic by writing your first code.

Friday - Lesson 04

So far, we've been focusing on the form, which is perhaps the most important part of a Windows application's graphical user interface (or GUI). However, a form's primary role is to host other controls that enrich the GUI of Windows applications—menus, toolbars, buttons, text boxes, and list boxes. In this lesson, you'll find out how to add controls to your form and how to write code for these controls.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Most computer programs store information, or data. Today you'll learn all about data types, which represent different varieties of data (such as numeric data or text data). Then we'll go over how to store that information in a variable.

Friday - Lesson 06

As a former professional chess player, I've marveled at the ability of some computers to play world champion chess players on even terms. But once you understand that computers can calculate far more quickly and accurately than people can, it's easy to see how they're able to outplay the best players. In this lesson, you'll discover how to harness the computer's calculating ability using arithmetic operators.

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

As your programs become more sophisticated, they'll often branch in two or more directions based on whether a condition is true or false. For example, a calculator first needs to determine whether the user chose addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division before performing the indicated arithmetic. Today you'll see how to use comparison and logical operators to determine a user's choice.

Friday - Lesson 08

Picking up where Lesson 7 left off, once you know the user's choice, you'll want to execute different code based on that choice. In this lesson, you'll learn how to use If and Select Case statements to execute alternative code statements.

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

When you were a child, your parents may have told you not to repeat yourself. But sometimes your code needs to repeat itself. For example, if your application's users enter invalid data, your code may continue to ask whether they want to retry or quit until they either enter valid data or quit. Today we'll explore how to use loops, which repeat code execution until a condition is no longer true. Then we'll delve into arrays, which may hold multiple values at one time and work very well with loops.

Friday - Lesson 10

Many textbooks are several hundred pages long. Imagine how much harder a textbook would be to understand if it consisted of only one very long chapter, rather than being divided into manageable sections. Thankfully, chapters organize books into manageable chunks of information. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to similarly divide up your code into separate procedures. We'll explore two types of procedures—subroutines and functions—that help you organize your code.

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

When I finish writing something for the evening, I close my word-processing program, and I might even shut down my computer. Of course, the next evening I don't have to start over. What I wrote the previous evening is preserved. However, up until now, our programs haven't saved data so that it's available even after the application exits. Today we'll discuss how to write code that reads from and writes to a text file in order to preserve the data. You'll also learn how to add Open and Save dialog boxes, such as those used in sophisticated programs like Microsoft Word, so you can open a text file to read from it and save to a text file to write to it.

Friday - Lesson 12

Nobody's perfect, right? Well, your applications won't always run perfectly either. Sometimes they'll stop due to a runtime error, also called an exception. In our final lesson, you'll find out how to prevent and handle exceptions.

Requirements

Visual Basic, free Express edition (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins) 2010 or 2012 versions; Computer with Windows XP (2010 version only), Vista (2010 version only), Windows 7 (2010 and 2012 versions), Windows 8 (2010 and 2012 versions), Server 2003 (2010 version only), Server 2008 (2010 and 2012 versions) or 2012 Server (2010 and 2012 versions); Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).

Note: This course is not suitable for Macintosh users (unless through software such as Boot Camp, Parallels or the like you can run the Windows OS on your Mac OS X machine). Prior programming education or experience is not a prerequisite.

Students with Visual Basic 2008 will be supported in the Discussion Areas.