Hi, i don't know anything about vb and want to start learning about it but don't know where to start. I ultimately want to write an interactive program that asks questions, (or maybe input from a form type thing), then does some calculations and outputs the information on the screen.
Can anyone explain how to start and point me in the right direction.
Can vb programs be stand alone executable files that run on any ms windows machine?

thanks

David

First get yourself a copy of VB. Then read the help files therein - there is a wealth of information in there. Visit the Microsoft web site. That also has buckets of information on Vb, both VB6 and VB.Net.

http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?View=msdn&p=1&s=1&st=b&qu=visual+basic&na=54

Do a search on Google. There are literally hundreds of sites dealing with VB in all its different forms.

VB needs support files in order to run on a machine that does not have VB installed on it. In fact any non-trivial VB programme needs an installation package to run on another machine.

Visual Basic can be made to run on any Windows machine, in fact Visual Basic will only run under Windows. However, an application compiled on an XP machine won't necessarily work under windows 98. You may need need to compile the application on a Windows 98 machine depending on what functions it uses. That's common to most programming languages, not just VB.

Stuart

Dave. I would suggest getting a good book from a book store. There are probably many you can choose from. Look 'em over and find one you like. I get the impression you don't have any programming experience yet. You may want to take a few programming courses at your local community college. Object oriented programming ( that is what VB is) is a tricky bugger at first. Once you get the hang of it, it is really neat though. Learing any OOP ( object oriented programming ) language will help. Some intro to programming courses are now offered in C#, many in VB, and a few may be in C++. There are a great deal of similarities, but VB has a few idiosyncrasies, just as most languages do. The more programming experience you acquire, the easier it will be. If you choose VB as your primary language, you may end up with lots of job opportunities to use it. I know of an engineering firm that is using VB and C++ to do their programming. Buying a book is much cheaper than buying the software. If you can afford to buy a VB compiler, you are better off having it so you can play with it to your hearts content. But be forwarned. If you are any good at programming, it can take over your life and consume several lifetimes :)

Thanks for all the help. Where do i get a compiler, what's it called? Do i get .net or vb6 or something, what's the difference? What's visual studio?

David :D

You have one choice with Visual Basic as far as a compiler goes and that is Microsoft. There is a VB clone available but that is almost as expensive as the original.

Vb.Net is the latest version of VB. The differences wouldn't make a lot of sense to you at the moment, but if you can afford it, it is the one to go for.

Visual Studio is just the collective name for all the programing applications produced by Microsoft including VB ,C++ and C#.

Stuart