Appropriately, the first major topic covered in the text is a full page list of differences between VB 6 - the previous (and wildly successful!) version of Visual Basic and VB.NET - the new reigning champion that we're studying. It's a good list and the main problem with it is that it's woefully incomplete. If you're completely new to Visual Basic, however, you might want to read the rest of the chapter and then come back to this page because some of the terms on the page are actually defined in detail only later.
In the first lesson, I mentioned that an MS Press book sometimes tends to give you the "party line" on things rather than the whole truth.
This is one of those cases.
The Microsoft "party line" is that VB.NET is a straightforward upgrade from VB 6.
You wish!
If you're acquainted with VB 6 and you start trying to learn VB.NET, you can get really frustrated simply by looking for the same good 'ol tricks that you loved and understood in VB 6.
But saying these things about VB.NET is really just my style of "tough love". I said it earlier and I'll say it again: VB.NET is a fabulous language and they changed everything for some very good reasons. The purpose of going over this now is to let VB 6 programmers know that they can save a lot of time and effort by thinking of VB.NET as a new language rather than an upgrade to VB 6.
