Chapter 2
Visual Basic Programming Concepts

This chapter provides a hands-on overview of the Visual Basic (VB) program development cycle. Chapter 1, “Introduction,” enumerated the steps involved in the cycle. Chapter 1 also explained that in developing a simple VB program, several of those steps could be combined. After you understand the programming goal, you can design the user interface, develop the necessary code, and then run and test your code. You will revise the code and repeat the run-test process until the program works exactly as wanted. All these activities are carried out in the Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Each time you test run your program, the IDE produces a compiled executable. Once you thoroughly test the program and are ready to put it in production to perform the real work, you can just use this executable without the IDE. This chapter will begin with introducing the IDE and conclude by showing the steps to run an executable.

After completing this chapter, you should be able to:

• Navigate the IDE.
• Articulate the use of a form.
• Create controls on a form and adjust their sizes.
• Explain the three interfaces of VB controls: events, properties, and methods.
• Explain how the code and events work in a VB program.
• Open and save a VB project.
• Describe the coding mechanics and the naming convention.
• Obtain help from the MSDN help system.
• Enumerate the types of statements in a program.
• Run an executable without the IDE.