College IT student

[tomparker95]

Hey, im doing a IT course at college and loving it so far, but am struggling in the Unit 6- Programming unit. Is there any good websites to really learn the basics of Visual basic or any guides etc that could be brought cheaply to get the hang of it? Thanks

 

[Smit]

Which version of Visual Basic?

VB.NET? or Visual Basic 6? (I assume it would be VB.NET)

 

[tomparker95]

I'm not sure, I can't check as im not in college at the minute

 

[tomparker95]

I think it is Visual Basic 2010 Express....

 

[zyfar]

Ask them why they are teaching you VB for a start

 

[Smit]

There are a few tutorials on youtube which you may wish to have a look at. Just search for VB.NET tutorials and there is a series which contains 58 episodes.

Other than that I am sure others here will have some websites or books to check out.

 

[Gambisk]

Ask them why they are teaching you VB for a start

Cause its free and easy more than likely. But I get your point its a pretty terrible language but the skills and practices should be transferable to other languages if the OP decides to go into programming. At school we where taught in Pascal which is even more irrelevant but at this level its normally just a taster to programming rather than anything too in depth.

OP check out the msdn for some good tutorial that will cover the basics and lead onto the more advanced stuff if you want to go there. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd492171.aspx

 

[tomparker95]

Okay awesome thanks for the info, will have a look at those later. Yeah im not sure why they do to be honest, should imagine because it's just free and basic...My college mystifies me as well

 

[xCore]

They mainly teach VB as its probably the most basic form of programming, I did this once and had to program an ordering system VB + Database. I'd say college library is good and youtube tutorials are the best by far at least for me.

 

[dfarrall]

I too always wondered why we used VB, but glad we did now. It's a good base programming language to build upon & i actually now use it over other languages, it does have it's uses albeit specialised ones.

 

[Gambisk]

I too always wondered why we used VB, but glad we did now. It's a good base programming language to build upon & i actually now use it over other languages, it does have it's uses albeit specialised ones.

Interesting to hear that you would chose VB over other languages, is that cause you are more comfortable working with it or is it because of features only found in VB? I ask because in the companies that I have worked for there has been a push to migrate everything over to C# from VB recently.

Totally agree about VB being a good base language for teaching.

 

[Lwills]

Ah the perpetual VB debate...

It's simple, VB.Net uses the most descriptive plain English syntax so it's a good choice as a starter language and an introduction to programming concepts. It's not perfect but it's one of the most widely accessible and documented languages in use industry as well as education.

There's plenty of coders/programmers/developers on here with differing opinions as to which language would be the best to start with but I'd question how many have actually taught or tutored anyone from scratch?

As for the original question, if your completely new to programming check out the 'In Easy Steps' range, they're concise but useful and explains why, not just how you do things. Oh, If you've got time with all the rest of your college work, give yourself a project to make e.g. a simple calculator.

Best of luck

 

[PaulB]

Some good stuff over on Channel 9...

http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Visual-Basic-Development-for-Absolute-Beginners

 

[dfarrall]

Interesting to hear that you would chose VB over other languages, is that cause you are more comfortable working with it or is it because of features only found in VB? I ask because in the companies that I have worked for there has been a push to migrate everything over to C# from VB recently.

Totally agree about VB being a good base language for teaching.

Sorry woulnd't say i would use it over other languages, but currently i know it's the best language for what i need to do. What i need to do is very specific and most people would never need to do it, but i do.

C# is a great language, it all boils down to what you need to do at the end of the day.

My opinion is that VB is a great first language for an easy intro to programming, but once you have the fundamentals down you should move onto something like bash scripting then potentially C derivative.

 

[celliott]

Could be worse, was only a few years ago but I was taught PASCAL in college, a completely obsolete language which is virtually useless nowadays.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you have an assignment coming up, as you look at more examples things will start to make more sense.

 

[Number_25]

Could be worse, was only a few years ago but I was taught PASCAL in college, a completely obsolete language which is virtually useless nowadays.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you have an assignment coming up, as you look at more examples things will start to make more sense.

I did a college course from 2010-2012 and we learnt PASCAL, still good for learning all of the basics.

If you're having issues you can hit me up a Trust message on here, I'm not a brilliant programmer but I know how difficult it is when you begin.

 

[UK-AL05]

Could be worse, was only a few years ago but I was taught PASCAL in college, a completely obsolete language which is virtually useless nowadays.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you have an assignment coming up, as you look at more examples things will start to make more sense.

Still used now a days. Quite a lot actually, under the name of Delphi.