Visual Basic 2008 9.0 .NET Examples and Ebook

Learn to program Visual Basic, study examples and make exercises.

This website is intended as a self study guide or tutorial for experienced programmers and for people new to Visual Basic.

Experienced developers can read about what's New in Visual Basic 9.0 ( 2008 ).

People new to Visual Basic better read through this page, and start with the Introduction to Visual Basic chapter.

Do you want an Introduction to Object Oriented Programming , several articles on this website cover this topics.

The most recent versions, Visual Basic 9.0 ( 2008 ) and .NET Framework 3.5 are used throughout this website.
Most examples are compatible with Visual Basic 7.0 ( 2003 ) and 8.0 ( 2005 ) and .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0.

Download and install the free Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition to execute and modify all examples and exercises.  Click here to download this version.

Following is a list with all available chapters and topics, all containing sourcecode examples and exercises.  Now with 260 sourcecode examples, 42 topics and 5 chapters.  This list is often updated.

Read the explaination ( after the list ) on how to execute and change these examples in Visual Studio.

Chapter : New in Visual Basic 2008 - 9.0

  Topic  Partial Methods   New !
  Topic  Local Type Inference   New !
  Topic  Object Initializers   New !
  Topic  Anonymous Types   New !
  Topic  Argument Passing   New !
  Topic  Extension Methods   New !
  Topic  Relaxed Delegates   New !
  Topic  Lambda Expressions   New !
  Topic  Query Methods   New !
  Topic  LINQ - Language Integrated Query   New !

Chapter : Introduction to Visual Basic

  Topic  Output and Comments in Modules
  Topic  Variables
  Topic  Some Operators
  Topic  Reading Input from the User
  Topic  Introduction to Selections
  Topic  Introduction to Iterations
  Topic  Nested Structures
  Topic  Iterations
  Topic  Selections
  Topic  Boolean Datatype and Expressions
  Topic  Operators
  Topic  Datatypes
  Topic  Constants

Chapter : Arrays

  Topic  Introduction to Arrays
  Topic  Multidimensional Arrays
  Topic  Dynamical Arrays
  Topic  Array Initializers and For Each Next
  Topic  Array Datatype and Jagged Arrays
  Topic  Searching in Arrays
  Topic  Sorting Arrays

Chapter : Procedures and Functions

  Topic  Introduction to Procedures
  Topic  Local, Module and Static Variables
  Topic  Introduction to Functions
  Topic  Methods and Arguments

Chapter : Object Oriented Programming

  Topic  Introduction to Object Oriented Programming   Updated !
  Topic  Properties
  Topic  Implementation
  Topic  Containment
  Topic  Collections - Introduction
  Topic  Inheritance   Updated !
  Topic  Method Overloading
  Topic  Constructors

To build an application we'll need a project.  A project is a technological part of the system we're developing ( also called solution ).  Different project types exists, examples of project types are console applications, window applications and web applications.

A solution is the collection of projects, together with some configuration between these projects, needed to create our system.

All examples and exercises on this website are made for console applications.

These are applications with limited possibilities for input and output, and are mainly inteded for commandline programs.  Other types of projects, for instance window applications, have a more extended GUI ( "Graphical User Interface" ), but are harder to define.

Console applications are used on this website to maintain all examples clear and simple.

A module or class is used as a codingblock were we'll define our sourcecode.

A class can also be used to define a object oriented construction.

After installing Visual Studio, you have to create a console application.

In this application you can insert the sourcecode documents you've downloaded from this website.  You can do this by clicking the "Add Existing Item ..." option, in the "Project" menu.  The appearing dialog can be used to select the document(s) to add.

All you need to do know is to let the project ( console application ) know what module ( or class ) needs to be executed.  This startup object can be set in the options of the project.  In Visual Studio these settings can be reached by option "<name-of-the-project> Properties ..." in menu "Project".  On the "Application" tab, in the "Startup object" option, choose the name of the module ( or class ) you want to execute.