Who This Book Is For

Who This Book Is For

This book was written for Visual Basic programmers by a Visual Basic programmer. In my description of how to work with Visual Basic .NET, I first build a foundation, providing background about the changes in computing and software development that make knowing about the Microsoft .NET Framework of vital interest to programmers as well as a practical necessity. I cover the essentials of object-oriented programming in Visual Basic .NET and explain how to build your own classes and work with the .NET Framework classes, how to work with arrays and collections, and how to debug and handle errors in your programs. From our foundation, we climb to the next level. I cover the details of how to work with .NET assemblies, how to work with files and data streams, and how to monitor files over a network, including how to build a Windows service application that runs on a server. In three full chapters I cover how programming for data access has changed with Visual Basic .NET and ADO.NET. Then we move to the world of Web services—programs and components designed to run on the Internet. In the last chapter, I bring together what's been covered throughout the earlier chapters. Along the way, you'll see plenty of useful and interesting sample code.