Apress - Accelerated VB 2008

Visual Basic 2008 (VB 2008) is relatively easy to learn for anyone familiar with another object-oriented language. Even someone familiar with Visual Basic 6.0 who is looking for an object-oriented language will find VB 2008 easy to pick up. However, though VB 2008, coupled with .NET, provides a quick path for creating simple applications, you still must know a wealth of information and understand how to use it correctly in order to produce sophisticated, robust, fault-tolerant applications. We teach you what you need to know and explain how best to use your knowledge so that you can quickly develop true VB 2008 expertise.

Idioms and design patterns are invaluable for developing and applying expertise, and we show you how to use many of them to create applications that are efficient, robust, fault-tolerant, and exception-safe. Although many are familiar to C++ and Java programmers, some are unique to .NET and the Common Language Runtime (CLR). We show you how to apply these indispensable idioms and design techniques to seamlessly integrate your VB 2008 applications with the .NET runtime, focusing on the new capabilities of VB 2008.

Design patterns document best practices in application design that many different programmers have discovered and rediscovered over time. In fact, .NET itself implements many well-known design patterns. You will see these practices detailed throughout this book. Also, it is important to note that the invaluable tool chest of techniques is evolving constantly. .NET 3.5 provides a unique and stable cross-platform execution environment. VB 2008 is only one of the languages that target this powerful runtime. You will find that many of the techniques explored in this book are also applicable to any language that targets the .NET runtime. As you’ll see, it doesn’t take years of trial-and-error experience to become a VB 2008 expert. You simply need to learn about the right tools and the correct ways to use them. That’s why we wrote this book for you.