VB.NET: Not Just OOP-Sized

Most of what you read about how great VB .NET is emphasizes the fact that it's now a fully OOP (Object Oriented Programming) language. And, yes, that is a genuine big deal and deserves the emphasis. But in writing the recent New Upgrade Wizard Tricks article for About Visual Basic, I was again impressed by the simple fact that there is a bunch of new stuff there! Even if we were programming in the old VB 6 model without inheritance and all that other OOP stuff, VB .NET would be a truely major upgrade just because of all the new functionality that is possible.

For example, in the New Upgrade Wizard Tricks article, I did a simple count of the event subroutines for a Command component available using VB 6 and another count of the events for a Button component in VB .NET. VB 6 only gives you 17 events while VB .NET gives you 57! Events like HandleCreated and HandleDestroyed used to be available only through the Win32 API. Events like ControlAdded, ControlRemoved, and LocationChanged add a whole new dimension to VB .NET controls that programmers are just starting to appreciate because they never had them before!

VB .NET ... It ain't just OOP-Sized ... it's SuperSized!