In this chapter, we present a brief and succinct introduction to object-oriented programming. Since this is not a book on object-oriented programming per se, we will confine our attention to those topics that are important to VB.NET programming.
As you may know, Visual Basic has implemented some features of object-oriented programming since Version 4. However, in terms of object-orientation, the move from Version 6 to VB.NET has been dramatic. Many people did not consider VB 6 (or earlier versions) to be a truly object-oriented programming language. Whatever your thoughts may have been on this matter, it seems clear that VB.NET is an object-oriented programming language by any reasonable definition of the term.
You may be saying to yourself: “I prefer not to use object-oriented techniques in my programming.” This is something you could easily have gotten away with in VB 6. But in VB.NET, the structure of the .NET Framework — specifically the .NET Framework Class Library — as well as the documentation, is so object-oriented that you can no longer avoid understanding the basics of object-orientation, even if you decide not to use them in your applications.
Get VB.NET Language in a Nutshell, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
