new to vbdotnet -- help

[Jim Madsen]

Hi all--

Two years ago I bought a copy of vbdotnet2003 and the book "Learn MS
VBDotNet 2003 in 21 Days", published by Sams. I started working through
the book, but lost interest. This Christmas, I decided I would continue
trying to learn this language. I am not a programmer, and am trying to
learn this as a matter of personal interest and increasing my career
potential.

I have many questions, that aren't up to the types of questions asked in
this newsgroup. Is there a forum, where I can ask more basic questions,
and not feel guilty? I work in a large lab -- we have some programmers,
but no one knows vbdotnet.

One of the difficulties, is there doesn't seem to be answers to the
exercise problems in the book, and some of these use concepts that
aren't explained in detail in the text. I just spent 2 hours on an
exercise problem in Chapter 5, before I got the program to work correctly.

I studied vb 5.0 on my own and learned quite a bit about it, but
vbdotnet seems to be a "little bit off the deep end" for me. I am sure
glad that I didn't start out trying to learn this as my first
programming language.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

I will ask one question about the problem that irritates me the most.
How does one get out of the program (running in the debugger) if it goes
into an infinite loop?

I am going to learn vbdotnet if it kills me.

Jim

 

[rowe_newsgroups]

I will ask one question about the problem that irritates me the most.

How does one get out of the program (running in the debugger) if it goes
into an infinite loop?

It's either Ctrl+Break or Ctrl+Alt+Break

Is there a forum, where I can ask more basic questions,
and not feel guilty?

The first thing you should do when you have a problem is look at VB's
help files (or object browser if you are trying to see if an object
type contains a certain property/method). After that you should check
out msdn.com or these newsgroups (archived on google groups). Most
questions should be answered somewhere in the archives, so a little
searching can often turn up a solution. After that don't be afraid of
posting a question, whether it's a "newbie" question or not.
(Personally, I like the easy one's - they make me feel smart ).
Besides, hardly anyone gets upset at a post if the poster has searched
for an answer.

I just spent 2 hours on an exercise problem in Chapter 5, before I got the program to work > correctly.

The good news is you'll probably never forget the solution!

Welcome to the newsgroup and the language!

Thanks,

Seth Rowe

 

[Jim Madsen]

The first thing you should do when you have a problem is look at VB's
help files (or object browser if you are trying to see if an object
type contains a certain property/method). After that you should check
out msdn.com or these newsgroups (archived on google groups). Most
questions should be answered somewhere in the archives, so a little
searching can often turn up a solution. After that don't be afraid of
posting a question, whether it's a "newbie" question or not.
(Personally, I like the easy one's - they make me feel smart ).
Besides, hardly anyone gets upset at a post if the poster has searched
for an answer.

I tried the help files, and in the few cases when I looked, I did not
find them very helpful, at all. The help file gives a very complicated
(to me) example of how to use a method in a program to do just about
everything it can do, but it didn't answer the exact question I had
about the method, or calling the method.

Jim

 

[Bruce W. Darby]

I tried the help files, and in the few cases when I looked, I did not find
them very helpful, at all. The help file gives a very complicated (to me)
example of how to use a method in a program to do just about everything it
can do, but it didn't answer the exact question I had about the method, or
calling the method.

Jim

Jim,

I'm pretty new myself, and teaching myself vb.net, and definitely not up to
most of the stuff that's been floating around, but I've found that the folks
on this group will treat you with respect and a can-do attitude if your
questions are in earnest and you are willing to take a bit of constructive
criticism. Myself, I find THAT easy to do. LOL The only stupid question is
the one that's never asked.

One thing that I've found to be extremely helpful is to use the search
engine if the help doesn't 'help'. hehehe It's amazing the amount of
information that's out there that can help you. Like these folks say, and
I've seen them say it a lot, Google is your best friend.

Bruce

 

[RobinS]

Have you considered upgrading to VB2005? They added a lot of new
features since the 2003 version. There's also a lot of good books out
there; you might check out Tim Patrick's "Start-to-Finish VB2005". It
has a lot of great information in it, and is very readable.

Robin S.

 

[Jim Madsen]

Have you considered upgrading to VB2005? They added a lot of new
features since the 2003 version. There's also a lot of good books out
there; you might check out Tim Patrick's "Start-to-Finish VB2005". It
has a lot of great information in it, and is very readable.

Robin S.
---------------------

No I haven't, Robin, but I will look into it if it's not too expensive.
I got a Barnes and Noble gift certificate from work, so I may look
into getting the book, as well.

Thanks for your reply

Jim

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Jim,

First to stop from a loop therefore is that little square blue button in the
middle and in top of the idea. (depends if you have played with the rows).

Secondly my best friend is MSDN.
Although it becomes worse and worse is it still and endless base of
information.
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/search/refinement.aspx?

And feel free to ask questions in this newsgroup, however please not the
ones which you can find with one click on MSDN or with the already given way
to Google, here the link with search posibilities to this newsgroup.

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8

Be aware that some "forums" are only links to this newsgroup.

Cor

 

[RobinS]

You can get Visual Studio Express 2005 for free from Microsoft.
It isn't full-featured, but many people use it.

Robin S.
-----------------------------------

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

I wrote idea, I mean IDE

Cor

Jim,

First to stop from a loop therefore is that little square blue button in
the middle and in top of the idea. (depends if you have played with the
rows).

Secondly my best friend is MSDN.
Although it becomes worse and worse is it still and endless base of
information.
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/search/refinement.aspx?

And feel free to ask questions in this newsgroup, however please not the
ones which you can find with one click on MSDN or with the already given
way to Google, here the link with search posibilities to this newsgroup.

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8

Be aware that some "forums" are only links to this newsgroup.

Cor

 

[Fabio Z]

Two years ago I bought a copy of vbdotnet2003 and the book "Learn MS
VBDotNet 2003 in 21 Days", published by Sams.

No one can learn vb.net in 21 days
It takes many days just to learn the underlaing framework (that should be
the thing to study before the language itself).

One of the difficulties, is there doesn't seem to be answers to the
exercise problems in the book, and some of these use concepts that aren't
explained in detail in the text. I just spent 2 hours on an exercise
problem in Chapter 5, before I got the program to work correctly.

If it was one of the first exercises 2h is not so much.

I studied vb 5.0 on my own and learned quite a bit about it, but vbdotnet
seems to be a "little bit off the deep end" for me.

Forget all you learned about VB5 when you write vb.net: you will reach the
result easier.
As I said, you cannot start from the language: you should start learning the
theory and the infrastructure of the framework before, elsewhere you will
spend much of the time asking yourself "why this doesn't work?".

 

[Chris Dunaway]

Secondly my best friend is MSDN.

And all this time I thought Herfried was your best friend!!

Chris

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Chris,

I hope that Ken does not read this, he will maybe disapoinent not about me,
but about you.

Cor