Programming VB .NET : A Guide For Experienced Programmers

This is the book that you want to read if you have knocked around VB 6 for a couple of years and you've decided to move up to .NET. ... For the target audience, technical books don't get much better than this. — Dan Mabbutt, Visual Basic Guide on About.com In Programming VB .NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers , authors Gary Cornell and Jonathan Morrison carefully explain the exciting new features of Visual Basic .NET. Since VB .NET is, for all practical purposes, a whole new language even for the most experienced Visual Basic programmers, developers need to think differently about many familiar topics. Cornell and Morrison are there to help you with careful discussions of each topic. All experienced programmers wishing to take advantage of the amazing new powers of VB .NET will benefit from this book's careful treatment of fundamental topics, including inheritance, interfaces, and exception handling, as well as all the powerful new features, such as stream-based I/O and true multithreading. Cornell and Morrison write from the point of view of the experienced programmer, with constant references to the changes from earlier versions of VB. Developers learn how to use VB .NET for database programming through ADO.NET and web programming through ASP.NET. After reading Programming VB .NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers , developers will have a firm grasp of the exciting new VB .NET language and its uses in creating powerful .NET applications. This Text Explains All The New Features Of Vb.net Including: Inheritance; Interfaces; Object Construction And Deconstruction; Streams; Multi-threading Programming; And More. Visual Basic Then And Now 1 -- The Versions Of Visual Basic 2 -- The .net Mentality Shift 3 -- Structured Exception Handling 6 -- True Multithreading 6 -- Why You Will Need To Learn A Whole Lot Of New Concepts To Use Vb .net 7 -- Should You Use C♯ And Not Bother With Vb .net? 9 -- Chapter 2 The Vb .net Ide: Visual Studio .net 11 -- A Tour Of The Main Windows In The Ide 17 -- Working With A Solution 28 -- Compiling 34 -- Debugging In Vb .net 40 -- Chapter 3 Expressions, Operators, And Control Flow 47 -- Console Applications 48 -- Statements In Vb .net 51 -- Variables And Variable Assignments 52 -- Literals And Their Associated Data Types 54 -- Declaring Variables 59 -- Strings 64 -- Arithmetic Operators 69 -- Constants 75 -- Repeating Operations-loops 75 -- Conditionals-making Decisions 79 -- Select Case 81 -- The Goto 82 -- The Logical Operators On The Bit Level 83 -- Arrays 84 -- Procedures: User-defined Functions And Subs 87 -- Recursion 94 -- Chapter 4 Classes And Objects (with A Short Introduction To Object-oriented Programming) 97 -- Introduction To Oop 98 -- The Vocabulary Of Oop 101 -- How To Objectify Your Programs 107 -- What About Individual Objects? 109 -- Advantages To Oop 110 -- Creating Object Instances In Vb .net 111 -- Namespaces 120 -- Help And The (vast) .net Framework 124 -- More On Object Variables 134 -- Building Your Own Classes 140 -- Shared Data And Shared Members Inside Classes 155 -- The Object Life Cycle 158 -- Value Types 161 -- Namespaces For Classes You Create 168 -- The Class View Window 169 -- Debugging Object-based Programs 170 -- Chapter 5 Inheritance And Interfaces 177 -- Inheritance Basics 178 -- Object: The Ultimate Base Class 201 -- The Fragile Base Class Problem: Versioning 209 -- Overview Of Interfaces 215 -- When To Use Interfaces, When To Use Inheritance? 222 -- Important Interfaces In The .net Framework 222 -- Collections 225 -- Chapter 6 Event Handling And Delegates 237 -- Event Handling From An Oop Point Of View 237 -- Basic Event Raising 241 -- Delegates 254 -- Chapter 7 Error Handling The Vb .net Way: Living With Exceptions 265 -- Error Checking Vs. Exception Handling 266 -- Throwing Exceptions 272 -- And Finally ... Finally Blocks 277 -- Some Tips For Using Exceptions 278 -- Chapter 8 Windows Forms, Drawing, And Printing 279 -- First, Some History 280 -- Form Designer Basics 281 -- Returning To A Simple Program 287 -- Menu Controls And The New Visual Studio Menu Editor 294 -- Form Inheritance: Aka Visual Inheritance 305 -- Building Custom Controls Through Control Inheritance 306 -- The Inheritance Chains In The -- Graphics: Using Gdi+ 318 -- Printing 325 -- Chapter 9 Input/output 333 -- Directories And Files 334 -- The Directoryinfo And Fileinfo Classes 340 -- Streams 347 -- Writing A File System Monitor 375 -- Chapter 10 Multithreading 379 -- Getting Started With Multithreading 380 -- The Big Danger: Shared Data 397 -- Multithreading A Gui Program 415 -- Chapter 11 A Brief Introduction To Database Access With Vb .net 423 -- Why Ado .net Is Not Ado++ 423 -- Disconnected Data Sets: The New Way To Use Databases 424 -- The Classes In System. Data. Dll 425 -- Calling A Stored Procedure 430 -- A More Complete Vb .net Database Application 431 -- Chapter 12 A Brief Overview Of Asp .net 443 -- Some History 443 -- A Simple Asp .net Web Application 444 -- A Simple Web Service 455 -- Chapter 13 .net Assemblies, Deployment, And Com Interop 463 -- How Com Works 464 -- .net Assemblies 465 -- Shared Assemblies And The Gac 471 -- Com Interoperability And Native Dll Function Calls 476. Gary Cornell And Jonathan Morrison. Includes Index. In their book, "Programming VB.NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers", Gary Cornell and Jonathan Morrison carefully explain the features of what is, for all practical purposes, a new language. This careful treatment of language features, patterned on Cornell's best-selling "Core Java Volume 1" is necessary because although VB.NET looks like BASIC, it is really a language in the Java/C# family from a "semantic" point of view. This means all features of the language will need explaining to the programming coming from a previous version of VB. This book carefully explains all the new features of VB.NET, including Inheritance, Interfaces, Object Construction and Destruction, Streams, Multi-Threading Programming, and much more. When readers finish this book, they will have a firm grasp on the exciting VB.NET language and will be ready to move on to application-building strategies and concepts. Author Information: Gary Cornell is one of today's best-selling computer authors and winner of a "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal" Award for best introductory Visual Basic book. He is also the editor of Pinnacle Publishing Company's ".NET Newsletter" that has more than 15,000 subscribers. He is also the co-founder of Apress. Jonathan Morrison is the author of Apress' extremely well-received "C For Visual Basic Programmers" and currently works for Microsoft Corporation. He previously worked as a consultant for numerous high technology companies on VB development for the Enterprise.