Mar 25, 2004 05:39 PM
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(Updated Mar 25, 2004 05:41 PM)
I got my first-hand experience on Visual Basic almost 5-6 years ago when I was in Grade IX. Then it was only a Control Creation Edition v5.0, which came with a popular PC magazine CD-ROM. When I first used it, I knew that ''this is it''. Then I knew only GWBASIC and QBASIC. So using VB wasn't that much difficult, as almost all the syntaxes were similar. Then a few years later I got hold of Professional Edition v5.0 and some time later Enterprise Edition v6.0. I will talk about v6.0 over here...
The Basics of Visual Basic
VB6 comes with a good installer and installing it on a Windows machine is a piece of cake. The Integrated Development Environment or what we lovingly call as IDE is simple great to work on. A default ''form'' already has the Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons from the Windows API. It is very simple to design an application using VB... you just have to drag-and-drop the objects into the form... that's it!
Codes, codes and codes
Coding in VB is very very easy and the coding environment is quite user-friendly. You don't even have to know the proper syntax. VB will prompt you the syntax as you start typing it. This ''prompting'' is sometimes in the form of a tooltip and sometimes VB displays a dropdown menu from where you can choose the property/method associated with an item. VB rearranges the code after you've typed in and changes the case accordingly. Comments are displayed in green color, keywords are displayed in blue, while normal text is displayed in black.
Accessories.....
VB has too many built-in functions and extra features. The Menu Editor lets you create and edit menus with ease. The Visual Data Manager lets you create/edit database files without running the database program. VB has built in Data functions that use both Microsoft JET engine and ODBC driver to connect the program to databases.
VB supports Components. A component is a reusable piece of code that can be used again and again in different programs, much like Java Beans. VB already comes with a huge list of components such as Microsoft Common Dialog Control, WinSock Control, etc. And the list of components increases when new programs are installed on the computer.
VB also allows objects created by other programs to be inserted into forms during the design mode. VB has ActiveX designers too. VB also comes with predesigned forms such as Splash screens, About Box, Login Screen, etc.
Debugging, Compiling, Running and EXEing
VB, like other forms of BASIC, is Interpreter-based. So it compiles the lines of code only during run time. If an error is encountered during run time, it reports the error and shows the line where the error occurred. The application stops running during that time and after the error has been rectified, starts executing from that point.
Though VB doesn't compile programs before running, it has a compiler for converting the project into an EXE file i.e. a Windows-recognizable application. The complete package Visual Studio 6.0 also has a host of other tools such as a Setup utility, which helps to create a Setup utility from a VB project.
Help!
Help is not included with the Visual Studio 6.0. Help has to be installed in the form of MSDN (Microsoft Developer's Network) separately, but once installed they (VB and MSDN) work in unison. MSDN has a huge resource and can be of great help to the user, espescially if he/she is unaware of the syntax, methods and properties. MSDN also has examples, which shows the user how to do things in VB.
To Sum Up...
To sum up, VB is a pure form of RAD (Rapid Application Development). Its very easy to work with VB. But VB lacks in depth which is offered by C++. Also multi-environment program... a program which runs in multiple OSes cannot be created with VB.
