This course is about programming using the Visual Basic language. It's written for complete beginners so I have tried to explain everything. If you're an experienced programmer, you'll probably discover that you already know a lot of what is in this course. But if you're completely new to programming, this course is what you're looking for.
The version of Visual Basic we'll use is called Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition and it is totally free and the course is totally free too. You can download all of the software you will need from Microsoft.
If you're looking for a more complete course that covers more advanced topics, I recommend the Visual Basic .NET 2008 Express - A "From the Ground Up" Tutorial.
Lesson Four Content
Prevent Bugs So You Don't Have To Fix Them
Use Comments
Option Explicit and Option Strict
Exception Handling - Try-Catch Blocks
Techniques For Finding Bugs
Breakpoints and QuickWatch
Debug Mode and Single Stepping
The Debug Object If you're looking for the first Lesson to start at the beginning of this tutorial, click here: Lesson One.
Although every lesson in this tutorial has featured hand-on programming, I realize that sometimes the lessons have been long on explanation and short on coding. That's because I'm deeply convinced that you have to understand what you're doing first in programming. Following "step-by-step" instructions can never make you into a real programmer because programmers invent the solutions - they don't just copy solutions that other people have created.
This lesson will be different. This one is almost all coding. The purpose of writing code this time will be to answer the question, "What do you do when things go wrong?" Or, as it's usually called, "Debugging."
We'll start with the same program that is on the last page of Lesson 3. Go back to that lesson if you don't have that program on your PC and create it using the instructions there.
