A Programmer's Introduction to Visual Basic® .NET

The .NET Framework Class Library

The .NET Framework provides a number of types that are already created and ready for use in any language that targets the Common Language Runtime. These types include such items as the primitive data types, I/O functions, data access, and .NET Framework security.

Perhaps one of the biggest changes in the way developers will work with VB .NET is the entire area of namespaces. Namespaces will be covered in Chapter 3, “Major VB .NET Changes,” but it is important to understand that the .NET Framework provides a host of utility classes and members, organized within a hierarchy called a namespace. At the root of the hierarchy is the System namespace. A namespace groups classes and members into logical nodes. This way, ...