Visual Basic Essential Training

7h 20mBeginner2025-01-31

Authors

Walt Ritscher

Programmer, UI Designer, Staff Instructor at LinkedIn Learning

Learn-it Labs

Course details

Visual Basic is one of the core Microsoft languages for building desktop, mobile, and web applications. This comprehensive course was designed to help you start programming with Visual Basic using Visual Studio. Join instructor Walt Ritscher as he provides an overview of applications for three common application architectures: console, desktop, and ASP.NET apps. Along the way, discover the core concepts and technical skills required to use a variety of language fundamentals including classes, data types, operators, strings, looping constructs, conditionals, exceptions, lists, and querying data with LINQ.

Learning objectives
Use .NET classes in your application.
Declare variables and data types.
Work with numbers and dates.
Use strings.
Repeat blocks of code with loops.
Evaluate conditions with if, then, and else.
Debug and handle exceptions.
Work with lists.

Skills covered

Visual BasicEssential TrainingProgramming LanguagesMicrosoftSoftware Development

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Write applications with Visual Basic
02 - Choose an editor or IDE
03 - Install Visual Studio and choose workloads
04 - How to access the sample code on GitHub

1. Quick Tour

05 - Visual Basic and you
06 - .NET and Visual Basic
07 - What can you build with Visual Basic

2. Build Your First Application

08 - Chapter roadmap
09 - Set up the tools
10 - Create a console app
11 - What files are in the new project
12 - Build and compile the application
13 - Run the application
14 - Work with the console class
15 - The forgiving nature of VB code

3. Create Projects in Visual Studio

16 - Optimize the Visual Studio settings
17 - Create a console project in Visual Studio
18 - Projects and solutions
19 - Examine the template structure and code
20 - How the editor enhances our code
21 - Use the auto suggestions when editing
22 - Compile the project code
23 - Run the example code from Visual Studio
24 - Run the example code with a debugger

4. Work with Multiple Projects

25 - What applications can you create
26 - Add additional projects to the solution
27 - Understand code containers - Modules and classes
28 - Choose a startup project
29 - Review the desktop template code
30 - Review the web application template code

5. Program Flow

31 - Understand default code flow for an application
32 - Event driven code
33 - Create a program loop to run an application indefinitely
34 - Listen for KeyChar to terminate the loop
35 - The To-Do application
36 - Work with a Windows UI project
37 - Add click event handler code
38 - Add TextChanged event handler code

6. Variables and Constants

39 - Work with variables and constants
40 - Use the code explorer project
41 - Declare a variable
42 - Variables and .NET types
43 - Naming your variables
44 - Understand the variable scope - What code can access the variable
45 - How data conversion works
46 - Convert numeric values
47 - Create custom constants
48 - Work with built-in constants
49 - Work with enum values
50 - Create a custom enum

7. Work with Strings

51 - Understanding strings
52 - Create string variables
53 - Concatenation and interpolation
54 - Search string contents
55 - Modify string contents
56 - String creation with StringBuilder
57 - Compare and equals
58 - Convert and format numbers to strings
59 - Implicit covert strings to numbers
60 - Use Parse and TryParse conversions

8. Date and Time

61 - The date types
62 - Define date and time variables
63 - Initialize date and time values
64 - Output formatted date values
65 - Date manipulation
66 - Challenge - Strings, dates, and parsing
67 - Solution - Strings, dates, and parsing

9. Refactor Your Code Into Functions and Subs

68 - Understand procedures and methods
69 - Add procedures to a module
70 - Call procedures from the application
71 - Add procedures to a class
72 - Add code to functions
73 - Use parameters with procedures

10. Debugging Your Code

74 - Some essential debug tools
75 - Add breakpoints to code
76 - Step through the code while debugging
77 - Use the watch windows to see runtime data

11. Operators

78 - Explore the arithmetic operators
79 - Explore the comparison and logical operators

12. Control Flow - Branch Statements

80 - The Code Explorer updated UI
81 - If and else statements
82 - Use the AndAlso and OrElse logical operators
83 - Select case - A better way to branch
84 - Challenge - Logic statements and string compare
85 - Solution - Logic statements and string compare

13. Control Flow - Loop Statements

86 - Use For loops to run code a specific number of times
87 - Use Do loops to run code until a condition is fulfilled
88 - Exit or continue loops
89 - Challenge - Pentagonal rings
90 - Solution - Pentagonal rings

14. Object-Oriented VB

91 - Classes and OOP
92 - Define a property
93 - Create a constructor
94 - Object inheritance
95 - Interface inheritance

15. Work with Lists and Arrays

96 - Explore the collection classes
97 - Use a ListBox instead of a text control
98 - Create new collections
99 - Initialize a collection
100 - Add items to a list
101 - Get items from the list
102 - Remove items from a list
103 - Iterate over a list
104 - Bind a list to a user control
105 - Delegates and lambda expressions
106 - Customize a method with predicate functions
107 - Quick look at other collection classes

16. Query Lists with LINQ

108 - LINQ - Enumerable and extension methods
109 - Work with extension methods
110 - Use LINQ with lists
111 - Use lambda expressions with LINQ

17. Error Handling

112 - What happens when the unexpected happens
113 - The default response to unhandled exceptions
114 - The Windows event log
115 - Use try catch for exception handling

Conclusion

116 - Next steps