Visual Basic Essential Training

Start programming with Visual Basic using Visual Studio. Learn language fundamentals such as data types, strings, operators, looping constructs, and more.

Introduction

• Write applications with Visual Basic
• What you should know
• Install Visual Studio
• Setup packages
• How to access the sample code on GitHub

1. Build Your First Simple Applications

• Create application with common tools
• Code containers: Modules and classes
• Run the example code from the EXE
• Work with the Console class
• Run the modified code from the EXE
• The forgiving nature of VB code

2. Create Projects in Visual Studio

• Optimize the Visual Studio settings
• Create Console project in Visual Studio
• Examine the template structure and code
• Edit the code
• Compile the project code
• Run the example code from Visual Studio
• Run the example code with a debugger

3. Work with Multiple Projects

• What applications can you create?
• Add additional projects to the solution
• Review the Visual Studio Project template code
• Choose a startup project
• Work with a Windows UI project
• Add click event handler code
• Add TextChanged event handler code

4. Setting Up Your Environment

• Clone the repository to your computer
• Open the solution in Visual Studio
• Work with Git branches

5. Program Flow

• Understand default code flow
• Create a program loop
• Listen for KeyChar to terminate loop

6. The Visual Basic Ecosystem

• Visual Basic and programming concepts
• .NET and .NET core
• Use .NET classes in your application

7. Variables and Constants

• Work with variables and constants
• Use the Code Explorer project
• Declare a variable
• Tips to make literals pop in the editor
• Work with custom and built-in constants
• Understand variable scope
• Understand numeric to numeric conversions
• Convert numeric values
• Convert and format numbers to string
• Convert and parse string to numbers
• Work with strings
• Work with dates and times
• Challenge: Strings, dates, and parsing
• Solution: Strings, dates, and parsing

8. Refactor Your Code into Functions and Subs

• Understand procedures and methods
• Add procedures to module
• Call procedures from the application
• Add procedures to class
• Add code to functions
• Use parameters with procedures
• Challenge: Refactor with parameters
• Solution: Refactor with parameters

9. Debugging Your Code

• Add breakpoints to code
• Step through code
• Use the Watch windows

10. Control Flow: Branch Statements

• Explore the arithmetic operators
• Explore the comparison and logical operators
• If and Else
• Use the And, Or logical operators
• Use AndAlso, OrElse for better performance
• Select Case
• Challenge: Logic statements and string compare
• Solution: Logic statements and string compare

11. Control Flow: Loop Statements

• Use For loop to run code a specific number of times
• Use Do loops to run code until condition is fulfilled
• Challenge: Pentagonal numbers
• Solution: Pentagonal numbers

12. Work with Lists

• Explore the collection classes
• Create new collections
• Add, remove, and interact with items from list
• Iterate over list
• Interesting list properties
• Work with extension methods
• Use LINQ with lists
• Quick look at other collection classes
• Challenge: Marble draw with lists
• Solution: Marble draw with lists

13. Error Handling

• What happens when the unexpected happens?
• The default response to unhandled exceptions
• Use try-catch for exception handling
• Logging exceptions

Continuing Your Journey

• Next steps