Visual Basic 2008 resources.

February 8, 2010 1:02 PM

I want to teach myself Visual Basic 2008 to help me get ahead at work. I have some questions about how to do it well.

It looks like this would see me through the first 90 days. Are there any free/greatly reduced price full versions for students, similar to The Ultimate Steal for Office? Or should I skip Visual Studio and stick to the free Visual Basic Express?

Then there's the question of resources. Are there good, free, online Visual Basic 2008 tutorials to introduce me to the language and walk me through simple applications? Something similar to tizag.com's PHP and MySQL tutorials would be great.

I wouldn't be adverse to picking up a book as well, of course, if that would make all the difference.

posted by jsturgill to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Visual Studio Express will do everything you'll need unless you're doing serious enterprise-y application development.

http://ASP.NET/Learn is the best place for learning VS2008.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:12 PM on February 8, 2010

Oh, and you can get all the tools for free or cheap at DreamSpark, Microsoft's site for students.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:13 PM on February 8, 2010

Nthing the notion that VB Express will be all you need. That environment will cover you well into your learning.
posted by DWRoelands at 1:30 PM on February 8, 2010

We need to clear up some terminology here folks

There is no product or language called Visual Basic 2008. The language is Visual Basic.NET. The official MSFT IDE (integrated development environment) for building applications using a .NET language is Visual Studio (current version is 2008).

Also, there is no product or language called Visual Basic Express. There is however a IDE product called Visual Web Developer Express, which is a free download for building web sites using the .NET language.

If you want to learn VB.NET in order to build web sites, you should go ahead and use the Web Developer Express product. If you want to build PC applications then you will need to buy a flavor of Visual Studio - I would suggest the cheapest.

I agree that http://asp.net is the best place to go to start learning .NET. http://stackoverflow.com is also a great resource. The MSDN Library has lots and lots of good information too.

You will probably also want to download Sql Server express, but it may come bundled w/visual web developer.
posted by askmehow at 6:27 PM on February 8, 2010

Response by poster: Askmehow, you're a bit off with your corrections. Microsoft does brand their free software development IDE as "Microsoft® Visual Basic® 2008 Express Edition." I think it's fair to condense that to Visual Basic 2008 Express. Web Developer Express is a different beast. Or at least it's on a different page with a different name and a different link. I'm not interested in the web development package at this point.

I don't mean to be pedantic, but I do want to be clear that this is about me learning to use the 2008 IDE in particular to program applications, not web apps. The language is, I assume, the same either way, but MS appears to have provided different tools depending on what you want to do with it.

I appreciate the links & feedback.
posted by jsturgill at 7:20 PM on February 8, 2010

Muphry's Law is in play...
posted by IAmBroom at 8:35 PM on February 8, 2010

Yeesh, VB? My only advice is to ask around and see if a particular team is using C#, that's the .Net language with a real future.
posted by exhilaration at 9:26 PM on February 8, 2010

I stand corrected. I've never heard of the Visual Basic 2008 express product until now, and I'm a MSFT guy. In any event, I think it's best to start w/the free version and grow into the paid versions.
posted by askmehow at 10:08 PM on February 8, 2010

Actually - if cost is a factor and you are primarily interested in learning the language and the .NET Framework, you could try "SharpDevelop" - but frankly going with the "Express" from Microsoft will mean more marketable skills.
posted by jkaczor at 4:42 PM on February 9, 2010