Chapter 3. Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming

Before you can write quality Visual Basic applications on the .NET platform, you must have a good understanding of objected-oriented programming (OOP) concepts. This chapter presents a brief introduction to these concepts.

Visual Basic has included at least some object-oriented programming features since Version 4. But these features were limited, and some workarounds were required to simulate the missing features, if they could be simulated at all. The advent of .NET infused Visual Basic with a more complete set of OOP features.

You may be saying to yourself: "I prefer not to use object-oriented techniques in my programming." Unfortunately, this is not an option in the .NET flavor of Visual Basic. Every line of code, apart from a few statements that appear in the declarations section of each code file, appears within a classone of the core building blocks of object-oriented software development. Also, all features contained within the Framework Class Library are built on object-oriented principles.