Updated Articles and Resources

From Dan Mabbutt, Former About.com Guide since 2002

Is WPF a 0.9 Product? Created: Friday, March 19, 2010 Updated: Thursday, September 06, 2012
.NET 4.0 is only days away from being "officially" launched and with it, a new version of WPF. I can hardly wait. The current version of WPF feels like a 0.9 product to me. But a lot of people don'...
What Development Methodology is the right one to use? Created: Thursday, March 04, 2010 Updated: Thursday, September 06, 2012
Do you have an opinion about development methologies such as Agile Development, Scrum, DSDM, Extreme Programming, or MVVM? Do you have real-life experience in using one? Do you think it's all a fra...
Have you had problems using Application Settings in VB.NET? Does the Synchronize button work for you? Created: Saturday, October 24, 2009 Updated: Thursday, September 06, 2012
I've seen a lot of questions about using the Application Settings in VB.NET, especially the Synchronize button in Project Properties. Readers respond about the problems they have had.
Do you use the SQL or traditional dot notation to code LINQ? Created: Friday, October 16, 2009 Updated: Thursday, September 06, 2012
The SQL query nototation and the dot notation are equivalent ways to express a LINQ query. Which one do you use?
COM - .NET Interoperability in Visual Basic Created: Monday, March 23, 2009 Updated: Thursday, September 06, 2012
There are still plenty of reasons to use COM, Microsoft's Component Object Model architecture, in .NET. This article walks through a program that updates an Excel 2007 spreadsheet using Visual Basi...
Development Methodologies Created: Thursday, March 04, 2010 Updated: Thursday, September 06, 2012
Do you have an opinion about development methologies? Do you have real-life experience in using one? Do you think it's all a fraud? Let us know.
The Filter Function Created: Saturday, August 18, 2012 Updated: Saturday, August 18, 2012
Strings may be the second most useful "type" in VB.NET. (Integers are probably the first.) So there is a lot of useful string processing built into VB.NET. The Filter function is one and this artic...
Shallow Copy versus Deep Copy Created: Saturday, August 11, 2012 Updated: Sunday, August 12, 2012
The pair of terms Shallow Copy and Deep Copy are seen quite frequently in articles about programming. This article explains what they mean.
Copying Reference Types Created: Saturday, August 04, 2012 Updated: Saturday, August 04, 2012
When you copy a reference type in VB.NET, you can get just a pointer to the same object in memory. This can result in an obscure bug if you're not clear about what's happening. This Quick Tip expla...
Coding the Double Linked List "The Hard Way" Created: Saturday, July 28, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, July 31, 2012
The linked list is one of the foundation concepts of programming and it's supported directly by VB.NET language elements. But you can code one "the hard way" too. This article shows one way to do t...
Design Patterns - The Factory Pattern Created: Saturday, July 21, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Design Patterns deal with the fundamental techniques of how and why you write code in a certain way. This article is one of a series that explains the popular design patterns using the syntax of Vi...
A Real World Example of the Delegation Design Pattern - Part 3 of 3 Created: Saturday, July 14, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, July 31, 2012
This is Part 3 of a series about the Delegation design pattern in VB.NET. This part shows a more real world example of the delegation pattern based on the general case code in part 1 that you can c...
Inheritance - A Contrast with the Delegation Design Pattern - Part 2 of 3 Created: Saturday, July 14, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Design Patterns can be difficult. So this article, part 2 about the Delegation design pattern in VB.NET - is actually all about inheritance since it explains an example intended to contrast with de...
The General Case Delegation Pattern - Part 1 of 3 Created: Saturday, July 14, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Technical articles, including those at About Visual Basic, usually discuss the detailed syntax of VB.NET, not the overall philosophy of why you might want to do things in a certain way. Design Patt...
Using TimeSpan and DateTime Created: Saturday, July 07, 2012 Updated: Monday, July 09, 2012
There are two ways to represent time in VB.NET, DateTime and TimeSpan. They're very different, even though they're companion objects. This Quick Tip reveals how they work.
Designing Classes - Singleton design pattern Created: Saturday, June 30, 2012 Updated: Saturday, June 30, 2012
Technical articles, including those at About Visual Basic, usually discuss the detailed syntax of VB.NET, not the overall philosophy of why you might want to do things in a certain way. Design Patt...
Multiple Interfaces in Visual Basic .NET Created: Saturday, June 23, 2012 Updated: Saturday, June 23, 2012
Programmers of the C++ religion believe that something called
The Abstract Base Class in Visual Basic .NET Created: Thursday, June 21, 2012 Updated: Thursday, June 21, 2012
VB.NET fully supports what is called an
Raising Inherited Events Created: Saturday, June 16, 2012 Updated: Saturday, June 16, 2012
When a class contains an event that you want to raise using the RaiseEvent keyword in an inherited class, you can have a problem. VB.NET doesn't allow you to raise the event directly. This Quick Ti...
The New Constructor and Inheritance Created: Thursday, June 14, 2012 Updated: Thursday, June 14, 2012
The New constructor is a special method. It's special because it doesn't follow all of the normal rules of VB.NET methods. In particular, it's different when a class is inherited. This Quick Tip sh...
Coding New Instances of Objects Created: Monday, June 25, 2007 Updated: Sunday, June 10, 2012
The concept of an object
What does MyClass Mean in VB.NET compared to Me and MyBase Created: Saturday, June 09, 2012 Updated: Saturday, June 09, 2012
MyClass isn't seen nearly as often in code as the more common Me and MyBase keywords. In fact, most programmers may not even be aware how how it's used. This Quick Tip explains MyClass and compares...
Overriding ToString Created: Saturday, June 02, 2012 Updated: Saturday, June 02, 2012
ToString is one of the fundamental objects in .NET because it's in the Object Object. That means it's available to every object. All of them. Since it's fundamental, it's worth learning more thorou...
Shadows in VB.NET Created: Saturday, May 26, 2012 Updated: Thursday, May 31, 2012
Shadows, Overloads and Overrides redefine an inherited element. But there are confusing and potentially critical differences. This is the
Shadows - The risks of using shadows to override in VB.NET class definitions Created: Thursday, May 31, 2012 Updated: Thursday, May 31, 2012
Shadows is usually used to ensure that if you code something and you happen to use a name that is the same as another element, your code will be used instead of the other code. But this behavior ca...
Overrides in VB.NET Created: Saturday, May 26, 2012 Updated: Saturday, May 26, 2012
Shadows, Overloads and Overrides redefine an inherited element. But there are confusing and potentially critical differences. This is the
Overloads in VB.NET Created: Saturday, May 26, 2012 Updated: Saturday, May 26, 2012
Shadows, Overloads and Overrides redefine an inherited element. But there are confusing and potentially critical differences. This is the
Declaring Reference Types in VB.NE Created: Saturday, May 19, 2012 Updated: Saturday, May 19, 2012
A reference type in VB.NET is an object stored in a type of memory called the Heap. Program code doesn't use the memory directly; it uses pointers to the memory instead. If you create a class in yo...
The VB.NET Form as a Class Created: Saturday, May 12, 2012 Updated: Saturday, May 12, 2012
The Form is a special object in VB.NET, but it's still a class. This Quick Tip covers some of the implications of this fact.
Classes - Base Classes and Derived Classes Created: Thursday, May 10, 2012 Updated: Thursday, May 10, 2012
Classes are the heart of .NET and VB.NET because they're the way Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is actually implemented. A class is the basis of an object. This is one of a series of detailed ar...
Classes - The Class Diagram Tool in Visual Studio Created: Saturday, May 05, 2012 Updated: Monday, May 07, 2012
The Class Diagram tool in Visual Studio Professional can help you code your VB.NET programs in multiple ways. You may not be using this tool now because it's just not required for writing programs....
VB.NET Versus Python in a Recursion Program Created: Saturday, April 28, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, May 01, 2012
A personal perspective of Python based on my attempt to code a finite state machine in Python. After struggling for days to write the program in Python, I wrote the same program in a few hours in V...