Visual Basic® Style Guide, The

Preface

I still remember the first computer program I wrote. I composed it while standing in front of a TRS-80 at a Radio Shack store in Missoula, Montana. Then a 12-year-old, I had just seen my first "real" computer a few weeks earlier in my classroom. Our teacher taught us everything that he knew about the computer over one or two days, and I was fascinated. Cautiously I approached the sleek gray terminal with its glowing phosphor screen. With excitement welling up inside of me, I set my mind on the task at hand, reached out for the keyboard, and programmed my first software application.

10 FOR I = 1 TO 1000
20    PRINT I, I + 1
30 NEXT I
40 END

It may seem infantile, especially when you consider what you can do with the same amount of code in ...