Summary

Visual Basic has left behind its roots in the COM-based, pre-Internet world. Visual Basic 2005 is built with completely different assumptions about the kind of software you need to develop, and it is built on a platform that is central to Microsoft’s entire product strategy. This chapter discussed the overall structure of this platform, .NET, and summarized the purposes and capabilities of many of the major component pieces of it.

The .NET platform is now at version 3.0, and each version continues to add impressive new capabilities. Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, and Windows Workflow are the major new technologies for .NET Framework 3.0, and each looks poised to have a dramatic effect on the way we develop our software systems.

The next chapter takes a closer look at the core basics of VB 2005. It is a foundation for much of what follows. Following that, Chapters 3 and 4 discuss object orientation and syntax. Those three chapters provide the foundation for the rest of the book, as they go into detail about specific .NET technologies and Visual Basic features.