Help: Visual Basic Setup Problems

[Larry Serflaten]

Assembly was once my favourite as well. Times have changed now of course

once you had learned the basic machine code instruction set you
needed knowledge only of the operating system I/O functions and of the
addresses and functions of the various video and audio and other hardware
registers

In fact one of the very first really useful things I wrote in BASIC was a
simple 6502 Assembler

I take it you owned a Commodore then?

It was all much easier to comprehend and understand when the OS, DOS,
your program and any language interpreter all had to reside within a 64K
memory limit!

An assembler and comprehensive memory map were the tools of the trade....

(eg: http://www.atariarchives.org/mapping/memorymap.php)

<g>
LFS

 

[Cor Ligthert[MVP]]

Hello,

Be aware that there is a new version of Visual Basic arriving VB10, you have
now replies from people who were not able to do the step to VB7 for whatever
reason. Of course not their fault.

However, my first approach with Visual Basic were the given samples from
Microsoft.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vbsamples

You will see how with very few code compared to by instance VB6 make things,
you did not believe you could make without C++.

You can use as well the samples from older versions, but it is not
advisable to go further back then VB8 (VB2005).

The versions before 8 including 7 and 7.1 misses to much for modern
programming.

Be aware that C# and VB for Net are in major points equal beside the style
of writing programs.

Although with every version you will see that there is sometimes a little
bit more done for the one than for the other.

Success

Cor

Your [Mike D's] last paragraph should have been left off.
My reading of the title this NG is that it is a VB NET
newsgroup.

The OP cross posted to two groups, one of which (the dotnet.languages.vb
one) is the correct group for the product he is using and the other of
which
is not. The OP needs to know that he should not have posted to the
Classic
VB group regardless of whether or not his post was also cross posted to
the
correct group.

To the OP: The comp.lang.basic.visual.misc group is the real Visual Basic
newsgroup and the last and final version of Visual Basic is VB6. The
product
you are using, which is misleadingly called Visual Basic 2008 Express, is
NOT real Visual Basic. It is a variant of what is commonly called VB.Net
and
your questions regarding it should NOT be either posted or cross posted
to
the real Visual Basic group.

Generally, apart from a few very simple exceptions, VB6 code does not
work
in VB.Net and VB.Net code does not work in VB6, and neither of them will
compile or run in the IDE of the other. They are as different as chalk
and
cheese.

Unfortunately, in order to deliberately confuse the punters and to
dishonestly maximize profits, Micro$oft sprinkled their new and otherwise
completely different product with some Basic sounding constructs and gave
it
a Basic sounding name and they pretended that it is the next version of
Visual Basic when in fact it is not. The name they have given to their
new
product, the one you are using, is a deliberate lie. Micro$oft are lying
about it in much the same way that a food manufacturer would be lying if
he
stuck "Cup a Soup" labels on packets of long grain rice, nothwithstanding
the fact that he might be the registered owner of the name "Cup a Soup".
A
food manufacturer of course would be prosecuted in the courts of law for
such a deliberately dishonest act, but consumer law in most countries is
still decades behind the times and has not yet got its act together in
respect of software, although the EU is rapidly working towards it (which
is
why Micro$oft hates us over here).

Your erroneous posting is not your fault of course because you have been
misled by Micro$oft and in the circumstances it is not surprising that
you
have been taken in by Micro$oft's subterfuge and have cross posted to the
wrong group. Micro$oft would never openly acknowledge their dishonesty of
course, but they have tacitly admitted to it by creating a new and
completely different newsgroup on their own public servers for their new
and
completely different product. To summarise, one of the groups you have
posted to, as mentioned above, is for the real Visual Basic and you
should
not post or cross post any of your VB.Net questions to that group. If you
have questions about the imposter then you should post them to the
imposter's own newsgroup at:

microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb

Mike

Ok. I didn't know any of this.(Not that there was any way to know
going by just the newsgroup titles).

I had run into a roadblock while studying assembly.(It was the book's
fault, not mine). I decided to look for an easier language to learn,
and one of the books I picked up and started reading is "Absolute
Beginner's Guide to Programming" (Third edition). By QUE(Greg Perry).

It is not specific about the "Visual Basic it discusses, so I assume
it is for nothing later than VB6.

So I'm now back to trying to figure out what to study first. Are there
any good *free* VB languages(downloads) that I should start with?

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

 

[C. Kevin Provance]

|
| > Hmm I never looked at it from that perspective but..... i guess you
might
| > be right so you might also include
| > the vb classic group then
|
| Please elucidate.

You can't use big words with the .Nxtheads. They've been dumbed down to the
point where you'll have to start using little words. Don't forget to
including the dots so intellisense can guide them. <g>

 

[Mike Williams]

I take it you owned a Commodore then?

Actually it was an Oric-I Larry, although I did later own a Commodore C64,
which had essentially the same 6502 processor, except it was a version with
half a dozen I/O ports built into the processor (a 6510 as I recall). Such
luxury! I later moved on to another Commodore, the Amiga 500, which used a
68000 processor. That was by far my favourite. It was a beauty! Just a
little bit of machine code and you could make it fly, especially when you
started messing with the copper and the blitter (graphics co-processors).
Those things were extremely tightly tied in to the system, in fact they ran
on the opposite phase of the same clock used by the main processor, and you
could do great things with them. There were a lot of limitations regarding
colour depth of course, but you could do some things with the Amiga display
that are not easy to achieve even on today's modern pcs. In its day it was a
superb machine. Slow as a turtle by today's standards of course, but still
an amazing machine nonetheless.

It was all much easier to comprehend and understand
when the OS, DOS, your program and any language
interpreter all had to reside within a 64K memory limit!

That's true, unless of course you had a ZX81 with just 8K for the OS and 1K
or 2K of RAM to play with, where you would have had even less to worry about
(or more!). 64K would seem like a dream! I didn't actually see it, but I
believe that someone once wrote a chess program that actually worked in that
2K of memory, a surprising feat since a fair chunk of it was needed for the
display! But I left all those limitations behind (the limitations of my Oric
and C64) soon afterwards, when I moved to my Amiga. Just imagine, 512K! Half
a megabyte of RAM! How could anyone ever want any more memory than that!

Mike

 

[Michel Posseth [MCP]]

It means "nader toelichten" in my language so yes i understand but no i
won`t

 

[Michel Posseth [MCP]]

Are you dragging me in a flame war !, may i ask why ?
are you really such a sociopath that you can`t even recognize a positive
comment on your behalf ?

As said before i really enjoyed your analogy , and just responded to that in
a positive way , you turned it around in a bash towards me
i wonder if the language barrier is really that big ( as i am not a native
English speaker ) or that i really must reconsider my thoughts about you .

 

[C. Kevin Provance]

| As said before i really enjoyed your analogy , and just responded to that
in
| a positive way , you turned it around in a bash towards me
| i wonder if the language barrier is really that big ( as i am not a native
| English speaker ) or that i really must reconsider my thoughts about you
..

Uh oh, you're in trouble now Mike. The poor opinion of a .Nxter would just
ruin my day. <g>

 

[Mike Williams]

Are you dragging me in a flame war !, may i ask why ?
are you really such a sociopath that you can`t even
recognize a positive comment on your behalf ?

I probably forgot to include:

Imports.System.DataCollection.InputDevice.VideoData.WrittenInput.Redirect.LocalStimuli.VisualCortex.ProcessingDevic
e.Cerebral.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Language.Cognitive

Mike

 

[Searcher7]

Assembly was once my favourite as well. Times have changed now of course and
hardware and operating systems are much more complex than they were, but
when I first started programming I found that machine code, initially
without the help of an Assembler and later with one, was just about the
simplest thing to deal with. I liked it on the grounds that it was very fast
and that once you had learned the basic machine code instruction set you
needed knowledge only of the operating system I/O functions and of the
addresses and functions of the various video and audio and other hardware
registers (there were far fewer of them of course in those days!). As faras
the actual coding was concerned you lived mostly by your own rules, and were
not required to either remember or to follow somebody else's. I actually
started with BASIC simply because a copy of it was built into the operating
system and I soon realised that (at least in those days of extremely slow
interpreted BASIC) it simply was not fast enough to do very much in real
time and so I bought a book on Assembly and I loved it. In fact one of the
very first really useful things I wrote in BASIC was a simple 6502
Assembler, which worked very well and which made it very much easier for me
to write my code. I was actually an engineer by trade, not a programmer, and
electronics was my only real hobby at the time, so I never paid as much
attention to my programming side-hobby as I perhaps should have done, butif
I had been a programmer by trade at the time I'm sure I would have stuck
with Assembler. In the end I let it go and concentrated almost totally onmy
main hobby in electronics. It was many years later that I went back to
programming as a hobby. Too late for me now of course to move into Assembler
again, operating systems and hardware are vastly more complex than they were
and I am far too long in the tooth to begin learning their intricacies, so
Assembler is out for me and I'll stick to my favourite VB6 until it finally
gets ground into the dusts of time, by which time I will almost certainlybe
in there with it ;-)

Mike

The info in this thread has given me another reason to hate Microsoft.
(As if I did have enough already).

Perhaps I should go back to Assembly. I know hardware is more
complicated, but is it really more difficult to learn the needed basic
machine code instruction set, OS I/O functions, and addresses/
functions of the peripheral registers?

Or is it no longer possible to write "simple" apps in assembly for
what it is?

(I guess that JAVA and C++, or C# will be on my to do list
eventually).

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

 

[Ralph]

The info in this thread has given me another reason to hate Microsoft.
(As if I did have enough already).

One is certainly allowed to hate whatever or whoever they wish, but such
hated, warranted or unwarrented, is less than useful. The simple fact is,
you have to deal with MS if you want to work with Windows. You do not have
to use their development tools, there are alternatives.

Perhaps I should go back to Assembly. I know hardware is more
complicated, but is it really more difficult to learn the needed basic
machine code instruction set, OS I/O functions, and addresses/
functions of the peripheral registers?

Yes. Compared to any high-level language Assembly is going to be "more
difficult" by any standard you wish to employ. It takes more lines of code
(more debugging, more room for errors). It is harder to find information. It
takes longer to write. There are fewer tools.

Or is it no longer possible to write "simple" apps in assembly for
what it is?

Of course not. What in programming is impossible?

(I guess that JAVA and C++, or C# will be on my to do list
eventually).

Perhaps. Depends on what you want to do. I would pick something you enjoy
working with. If you intend to treat programming as 'hobby' then nothing
else matters. If you intend to make a buck programming (full or part time)
the opportunities available or your employer will have more say about your
future "To Do List". <g>

-ralph

 

[Searcher7]

One is certainly allowed to hate whatever or whoever they wish, but such
hated, warranted or unwarrented, is less than useful. The simple fact is,
you have to deal with MS if you want to work with Windows. You do not have
to use their development tools, there are alternatives.

My ultimate goal is not to have to be confined to Windows.

Yes. Compared to any high-level language Assembly is going to be "more
difficult" by any standard you wish to employ. It takes more lines of code
(more debugging, more room for errors). It is harder to find information.It
takes longer to write. There are fewer tools.

I didn't mean in comparison to high level languages. I mean Assembly
today compared to the Assembly of "yesterday".

Of course not. What in programming is impossible?

To clarify my meaning, when I said simple apps I meant will it be just
as easy to grasp Assembly and write a specific app as it was to grasp
Assembly and write the same app years ago when Assembly was popular?

(From what I've read VB in the book so far does seem kind of limited
for what I want to do).

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

 

[Nobody]

Perhaps I should go back to Assembly.

Why not C++? It's easier to code and the output is very close to Assembly.

http://www.learncpp.com
http://www.cplusplus.com

Another option is KBasic. It's 100% code compatible with VB6, but not the
GUI part. It's multiplatform and uses Qt as GUI. It's open source and
currently free(Donateware).

http://www.kbasic.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(framework)

 

[Ralph]

My ultimate goal is not to have to be confined to Windows.

In that case, then go C/C++. In terms of 'a' programming language it is
about as universal as they get.

-ralph

 

[Ralph]

Searcher7 wrote:

I didn't mean in comparison to high level languages. I mean Assembly
today compared to the Assembly of "yesterday".

That is hard to answer. Modern processors, chipsets, devices, ... , are more
complex. So can you write more complex Assembly than "yesterday" - yes. Can
you still write a "Hello World" using limited instructions - yes.

To clarify my meaning, when I said simple apps I meant will it be just
as easy to grasp Assembly and write a specific app as it was to grasp
Assembly and write the same app years ago when Assembly was popular?

Sure.

(From what I've read VB in the book so far does seem kind of limited
for what I want to do).

Sounds like it.

-ralph

 

[Michel Posseth [MCP]]

yep Sociopath

Thought so ,,, so i will now gracefully step out of this thread as with
crazy people you can`t argue
they even forget what it was all about as i have never chosen sides i love
VB6 as much as i love VB.Net
i see both there strengths and weaknesses .

In a lot of the threads you step in i even can see your point , however what
you now do to me is plain sick ( you have some loose wires )
this makes me wonder if all your other "victims" .......... where not just
like me .

I called you a genius before but i have now the proof that geniusly and
madness are really on a thin line , i feel now sorry for you

Regards

Michel

 

[Mike Williams]

yep Sociopath Thought so ,,, so i will now
gracefully step out of this thread as with crazy
people you can`t argue

Calling someone a sociopath and labelling him as crazy and actually posting
those comments here on the group is not being "graceful", Michelle, and
neither is it "stepping out of the thread". Stop lying to yourself.

In a lot of the threads you step in i even can see your
point, however what you now do to me is plain sick
( you have some loose wires )

There you go again, Michelle. Hardly "graceful". I am not doing anything to
you. I have never accused you of being a sick sociopath, nor of being crazy,
nor of having "some loose wires". Can you not step back a little and see
yourself as you really are? Perhaps then you will not get so offended when
somebody retaliates against one of your attacks?

they even forget what it was all about as i have
never chosen sides i love VB6 as much as i love
VB.Net i see both there strengths and weaknesses.

I don't know who "they" are, Michelle? Presumably you are addressing your
"Crazy sick sociopath with loose wires" accusation to other people as well?
Or is inserting the word "they" perhaps merely a sign of paranoia? The tone
of my response was nothing to do with whether you like VB6 or not. I
responded in the way I did because I took offence at the way you shoved your
MCP qualification down my throat and implied that I cannot code, as you did
when you signed yourself off in the following manner:

Michel Posseth [MCP]
That guy that can code and is certified in
VB and the imposter as you call it i believe

The little smiley against it did nothing to dilute its content. I could of
course have simply misinterpreted what you said, but I decided that I had
not done so when you then posted further comments making your position quite
clear by saying that you are yourself /one of the few/ VB6 coders who can
code in VB6 and in VB.Nxt. I think you have delusions of grandeur, Michelle.
It is not just me being a little "touchy" because there is at least one
other person who has posted an indication that he was offended by your
comments.

Statements to the effect that you are /one of the few/ people who can code
in VB6 and VB.Nxt do not really bother me too much because I don't code in
VB.Nxt myself (although I expect it might bother the thousands of other
peple who can also code in both languages). What bothered me was the part
where you shoved your MCP qualification down my throat and said, "That guy
that can code and is certified in VB6". That /did/ bother me, Michelle. I
can code, and I take offence at your suggestion that I cannot.

I realise that there is a language barrier at work here and if I have
totally misinterpreted your various statements then I apologise for
retaliating, but at the moment I think not. And, of course, notwithstanding
the outcome of any reinterpretation of your comments about my coding abilty,
I think I shall remain a little bit "miffed" about your accusation that I am
a crazy sick sociopath with loose wires.

I called you a genius before but i have now the
proof that geniusly and madness are really on
a thin line , i feel now sorry for you

I'm not sure whether to take that as an insult or a compliment, Michelle,
but I am in a conciliatory mood at the moment and so I think I'll go for
compliment.

I might even stop calling you Michelle

Mike

 

[dpb]

Searcher7 wrote:
....

To clarify my meaning, when I said simple apps I meant will it be just
as easy to grasp Assembly and write a specific app as it was to grasp
Assembly and write the same app years ago when Assembly was popular?

Depends...what processor? I modern processor isn't anything at all like
a 6809, 6502 or Z80 and if you're talking about writing for a recent OS
interacting nicely w/ it isn't the same, either.

What would your definition of "simple" look like?

(From what I've read VB in the book so far does seem kind of limited
for what I want to do).

What do you want to do?

And, on another point, if you don't want to be tied to Windows, there
are quite a number of other languages w/ published Standards such that
compilers are capable of taking the base language from any and at least
compiling it on another platform. That there are significant issues
still in terms of OS and possibly hardware is another topic of quite
large proportions.

C/C++, Fortran, ADA, ... the list goes on.

What the objective is is the key and there's certainly nothing specific
enough in this thread as yet to make any recommendation meaningful.

--

 

[Searcher7]

Not to mention targeting a single processor in a dual/quad/etc system.

Hmmm. Ok, let me describe the project that inspired me to all this.
(Perhaps I can learn enough to get it done one day).

I would like to create an app that will allow "simple" edits on full
screen video on the fly. Sequential edits initiated via the key board
so a GUI would not be needed while it is running.

Since video constitutes stationary images shown one right after the
next, I want to be able to pick and choose individual images and chain
them together to run border-less from a large database of images and
also allow the edits, which would be no more complex than lighten and
darkening, to carry over from one frame to the next.

Since each image is slightly different than the next, I'll need to be
able to manipulate at the pixel level.

The resulting border-less videos will also sometimes overlap each
other and slowly change in size and position on screen.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

 

[dpb]

Searcher7 wrote:
....

Hmmm. Ok, let me describe the project that inspired me to all this.
(Perhaps I can learn enough to get it done one day).

If you were serious in the comments re: assembler I think that day is a
long way in the future...

I would like to create an app that will allow "simple" edits on full
screen video on the fly. Sequential edits initiated via the key board
so a GUI would not be needed while it is running.

Since video constitutes stationary images shown one right after the
next, I want to be able to pick and choose individual images and chain
them together to run border-less from a large database of images and
also allow the edits, which would be no more complex than lighten and
darkening, to carry over from one frame to the next.

Since each image is slightly different than the next, I'll need to be
able to manipulate at the pixel level.

The resulting border-less videos will also sometimes overlap each
other and slowly change in size and position on screen.

....

This is hardly what I would term a "simple edit". I'm not a video
processing type but this ain't gonna' be a trivial app no matter what
it's written in and to attack it from the ground up as an assembly-coded
app is a non-starter to ever getting anything functional in any
reasonable amount of time.

I'd think there would already be app's that could do this in existence
in the open source community which would be where I'd think you ought to
start.

--

 

[Schmidt]

[Video-Processing]

This is hardly what I would term a "simple edit". I'm not a
video processing type but this ain't gonna' be a trivial app
no matter what it's written in and to attack it from the ground
up as an assembly-coded app is a non-starter to ever
getting anything functional in any reasonable amount of time.

Exactly - not to mention, that fast decompressing is done
nowadays over Codec-Interfaces (which on Windows are
DirectShow...COM-Interfaces) ... and the Video-output
needs to deal with Color-Spaces efficiently (usually the
faster Decoder-Outputs end up in YUV or UYVY/YUY2
Color-spaces when we talk about Video-Codecs) + the
then following high performant and high-quality Stretching
of such decoded Output-Buffers (+ additional Lightening/
Darkening) is then performt over DirectX or OpenGL directly
in the graphics-card hardware, meaning you nead another
"HighLevel"-API to address these devices over their
appropriate API-Interfaces on your platform of choice.

You will "go nuts", if you try all that in plain Assembler.

I'd think there would already be app's that could do this
in existence in the open source community which would
be where I'd think you ought to start.

Yep - and the language of choice in most OpenSource-
Projects is C (close enough to Assembler IMO), directly
followed by C++.
Maybe looking at the Sources of VirtualDub (just google
for it), is a good start.

Olaf