Wanting to learn VB!

[ZeroPaladn]

I've searched and searched but ahve found no decent tutorial on the basics of VB (unless you include that "Hello World" Tutorial by Tony). Can anyone teach me the basics?

[wtd]

Very few people here have any great interest in VB and a well-developed skillset and the ability to convey information well.

There are however plenty of skilled people here who can teach you the basics of programming in any number of programming languages with good, freely available environments. If you wish to avail yourself of the talent present at compsci.ca, I would suggest that VB is a poor route to take.

[ZeroPaladn]

Why not, Turing is much too simple for me to do anything, and anything complicated in turing takes 50, 100, 500 lines of code to do. If you have any other suggestions for me, i'd gladly apreciate it.

[Tony]

ZeroPaladn wrote:

anything complicated in turing takes 50, 100, 500 lines of code to do

so... you're looking for complicated one liners, perhaps you should look into Perl

[ZeroPaladn]

Not exactly, its just that i have gotten EXTREMELY bored of turing, and I want to learn something new. I just thought that VB would be good.

[wtd]

Ruby and O'Caml are both fascinating languages. They're also ones you can learn fairly rapidly, and expose yourself to interesting concepts quickly and easily.

You may wish to check out http://tryruby.hobix.com.

[cool dude]

u do realize that the internet tutorials and books are good sources too. i might write a beginner vb walkthrough of some of the basics in the summer i just have too much work now to write a big tutorial like that plus i'm currently teaching myself java. u might want to learn java instead!

[Darkmantis]

.. Im basically looking for a good language too, what can u do useing java, ruby and O'Caml? are they better for making games and such?

[wtd]

You can make games in any of them yes. They are all general purpose programming languages.

However, you need to understand a very basic rule that governs programming. Programming is all about solving problems. To solve problems well you need to realize that a big complex problem (games easily fall into that category) is simply a composition of several smaller, simpler problems. Each of those smaller problems is likely also composed of even simpler problems.

Once you understand this, and how to approach complex problems in general, the specifics of any given programming language become much easier to master.

Now, how does this relate to which programming language you should learn?

It will be quite beneficial to learn a programming language which makes it easy to break a program down into smaller problems. Most programming languages make this eminently possible, but some make it more convenient than others. If it's convenient syntactically, you're more likely to use it.

Consider function definition:

Ruby:

code:

def factorial(n)    if n <= 1       1    else       n * factorial(n - 1)    end end

O'Caml:

code:

let rec factorial n =    if n <= 1 then 1    else n * factorial (n - 1)

VB6:

code:

Function factorial (ByVal n As Integer) As Integer    If n <= 1 Then       factorial = 1    Else       factorial = (factorial (n - 1)) * n    End If End Function

See the difference? And this is only a very simple problem. Imagine the difference for larger, more complex problems.

At the same time, Ruby and O'Caml (as well as others) have "interactive intepreters". These programs give you a prompt where you can write and call code, like the above function, without having to write it to a file and save it and compile it and run it.

I am not saying "do not learn VB", but rather that you should do yourself a favor and get a grounding in the fundamentals of problem-solving in a language that's a bit nicer to work with first. If/when you do eventually learn VB, it'll make you a better VB programmer.

[Darkmantis]

awesome thx (here take 10 bits )

[wtd]

Thanks, but as a mod, my bits are fixed at 1000.

[Darkmantis]

ok cool, I never knew

[ZeroPaladn]

i will take your post into concideration wtd, and ill try out your link. I think I'll try out Ruby.

[wtd]

Good luck, and if you have questions, feel free to ask.

[ZeroPaladn]

will do wtd, and thanks for your help.