Introduction

Microsoft Visual Basic 2010 is an important upgrade and enhancement of the popular Visual Basic programming language and compiler, a technology that enjoys an installed base of millions of programmers worldwide. Visual Basic 2010 is not a stand-alone product but a key component of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010—a comprehensive development system that allows you to create powerful applications for Windows, the Web, handheld devices, and a host of other environments. Whether you purchase one of the commercial editions of Visual Studio 2010 (described later in this Introduction) or you download Visual Basic 2010 Express for a free test-drive of the software, you are in for an exciting experience. The latest features of Visual Basic will increase your productivity and programming prowess, especially if you enjoy using and integrating information from databases, entertainment media, Web pages, and Web sites. In addition, an important benefit of learning Visual Basic and the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is that you can use many of the same tools to write programs for Microsoft Visual C++ 2010, Microsoft Visual C# 2010, Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010, and other popular products.