redfiretruck

I personally hated Visual Basic when I was first starting, too many annoyances including version differences and especially involving the difference between .NET and regular VB which meant a world of difference. The only tutorials I could find were made by absolute morons ( this was 2~ years ago? ), and it was simply frustrating trying to start programming reading a tutorial made by someone with less experience than you ( as much as that may seem impossible ).

I started with Delphi and I can't say how great it was that tutorials I found for version 3-4 were still working in 7. Not to mention they are still working now in Version 2008, I can't say how much easier it made learning about programming when you didn't have to also learn about version changes, differences and how to figure out if a certain tutorial works for you or not ( or just hope to god every tutorial you find states the exact version they made the tutorial for, good luck with that ).

It got to a point where I was pretty much having to test every tutorial I found by copy/pasting it into VS and hoping it worked. The msdn site was ridiculous and pretty much is only useful if you already know programming exclusively because the functions, wording and setup is probably the most confusing thing I had ever seen when I was first starting.

On top of that... VS programming was, for whatever reason, confusing to me and nothing clicked at all for me... I also thought it was frustrating trying to learn programming and trying to get fun out of it when variables were constantly having different names and some things displayed the caption property while others displayed the text property. This is just some of the millions of little things I had to work through and discover while already trying to introduce myself to a whole new way of thinking and working through problems. Needless to say, I wasn't too happy and figured programming was too difficult for me until someone told me about Delphi and I spent 6-8 hours that night programming and while it was sometimes confusing, I still had a blast the whole time learning about things as opposed to just sitting there pulling my hair out.

Anyway, this is a huge text wall already... But I just simply see too many people telling beginners to try out this confusing, frustrating and simply over-complicated thing when I am sure some of them, like me, would prefer something with stability and structure...

CoderGuru

I'm not trying to be negative, but I would have to disagree with red. I learned Visual Basic when I was only 9 by reading "Learn VB3 in 24 hours" then "in 31 days" then by trial and error learning off AOL chat scroller type applications... And needless to say, they are hardly coded efficiently to learn off of, especially at the age of 9, but I managed to pick up really easily on it.

It's going to be a matter of what is comfortable to you and if you can have people who will point you in the right direction. www.ASP.net/learn has TONS of videos on learning how to install the GUI, make your first application, all the way to full database websites. While not free, http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/, has every how to you could think of under the sun from beginner to advanced, all in video format. Sure MSDN itself is for a person who knows programming, but there are TONS of Microsoft ran forums and web pages that are extremely helpful to learn from.

I never personally used Delphi but I also heard good things about it when I was younger. I do know back then it was extremely expensive for a license to the GUI and I hardly had the 1000 it cost or whatever at the time, so never tried it. It might be free now a days though?

If you want to learn Visual Studio you will get a lot out of it, and for the past few years, there have been tons of online videos to learn it (you just need to know where to find them). But in the end almost every language will take you through the same steps of developing your hello world, basic IO (file reading/writing), hopefully database concepts, maybe socket programming. It's all a matter of preference, and what seems to make sense better to you.

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DaWei

Strictly personal opinion, but I have to disagree. VB (and VBA), at least prior to .NET, was ill-conceived and poorly executed. I'll admit I haven't used it subsequent to .NET. Nor would I, with C# available. Had it been available when I was age 9 I might have thought it was slicker'n boogers.

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CoderGuru

Yeh it surely had it's ups and downs, but i mean just like any language did 14 years ago lol. I hate when i have to go back to work on apps I developed in VB6 or have to use VBA in access. Little things like their intellesence is lacking, or it's not truly object oriented really suck, but for what it was, it surely did get the job done. I've developed some pretty amazing things in VB3-6, despite people constantly telling me "VB is to weak to accomplish blah"

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Jupiter 2

I use VB6. I create utilities for my own personal use.
TextLister.exe writes all the file names, eg: "myfile.mp3" in a folder to a text file. It also provides the Directory and date created.
PrefixFiles.exe allows me to change the prefix of file names to a predefined name or a name I choose. Good for naming thousands of files in one swoop
I have others but you get the drift.
I like VB because it is basically
"If this = that then do this
else
do that
end if"


Here is a link to some I wrote many years ago, not including the ones I have just mentioned. -


http://au.geocities.com/windsofmark

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