Professional Visual Basic® 2008

Chapter 1. Visual Basic 2008 Core Elements

This chapter introduces the core elements that make up Visual Basic 2008. Every software development language has unique elements of syntax and behavior. Visual Basic 2008 has evolved significantly since Visual Basic was introduced in 1991. Although Visual Basic has its origins in traditional procedura-based programming languages, it began the transition to objects back in 1995 with Visual Basic 4.0.

With the release of Visual Basic .NET (that is, Version 7), Visual Basic became a fully object-oriented programming environment. Now with the release of Visual Basic 2008 (that is, Version 9), there are still more new features, but at the core are the same basic types and commands that have been with Visual Basic since its early stages. Object paradigms extend the core elements of the language. Therefore, while a very brief introduction to the existence of classes and objects within the language is presented in this chapter, the key concepts of object-oriented development are presented in detail in Chapters 2 and 3.

This chapter focuses on the core elements of the language, including questions about those language elements a new developer not familiar with Visual Basic might ask, such as where semicolons should be placed. The key topics of this chapter include the following:

• Initial syntax and keywords to understand the basic language elements

• Value versus reference types

• Primitive types

• Commands: If Then Else, Select Case

• Value types (structures) ...