Introduction

The "A" in BASICthe predecessor of Visual Basicstands for "all-purpose." As an heir of that original programming language, Visual Basic has maintained the standard of being an all-purpose language, a language that is generic enough to handle a vast set of different programming needs. That has never been truer than with Visual Basic 2005.

The recipes included in this chapter cover a wide range of topics, from basic application management to credit card verification. The key is that you can do all these varied tasks quite easily in Visual Basic.