Visual Basic® .NET Power Coding

Implementing Event Handlers

Windows is an event-based, or messaging, operating system. This means that Windows applications communicate by sending messages to controls that have Windows handles, and controls that have Windows handles can forward messages to constituent controls.

NOTE Event-driven operating systems date back at least to the 1970s, when they were used at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The evolution of messaging, events, and event handlers was adopted more recently in microcomputer programming languages. (On reflection, I recall using callback functions, an essential precursor to event handlers, in C++ and Turbo Pascal as early as 1992.) A good book by Freiberger and Swaine [1984], Fire in the Valley: The Making of the ...