VB Quip

Programming is all about making the user happy. As a developer, your mission is to produce a product that fulfills a need for the user and makes them want to use your program. The easier you can make their computing experience, the better. That's a double-edged sword. Often, it's easier to make a program work than it is to keep the user happy. And, the more you try to please the ubiquitous end user, the harder it is for you as a developer. It's often said, “This whole software development thing would be a whole lot easier if it wasn't for all those end users.” While that may seem true, the computer industry wouldn't be where it is today without end users. They buy programs to make their work faster and easier and their fun more enjoyable. They're demanding, fussy, stubborn, and every year they spend billions on what works.

This chapter expands your knowledge of variables and their use. You'll get a taste of methods.

VB Quip

Think of a program as a play and you're the director. The actors are the controls and the code is your script. It's up to you to bring all of them together to make it work. Most actors can get the words right and learn to hit their marks, but there's far more to it than just memorizing lines and taking cues. As a developer you have to make your program – your play – flow and get all the parts to work together.

Most programs follow the same general path: declarations, input, processing, and output. That helps, but the hard part is getting a human to understand how the computer works. Usually, this understanding comes only from practice. To become a good programmer, you must write programs. To write good programs, you often must write lots of code. And the more code you write, the more mistakes you'll make. Mistakes are a good thing, though. Often, especially in programming, mistakes are a great way to learn. Just like a good director needs to rehearse lots of scenes and try them in many ways, a programmer has to learn what works and what doesn't. In programming, mistakes can be your ally. “OK, this worked, but what if I try this?” “What happens if…?”

VB Quip

Life is filled with repetition. And every once in a while it throws you for a loop. Every day and every week has a routine. For example, chores are a series of often mundane tasks that get repeated time and again. Make your bed, take out the garbage, walk the dog, do the dishes. That's why they're chores. You've probably reduced these tasks to a series of steps and then repeated them as needed. Business is much the same. The steps to calculate the weekly pay are pretty much the same for every employee. So is the process for calculating a bill or determining a student's grade. Once you know the proper steps for a process, it's easy to repeat them. However, if you can get the computer to do these tasks, it will be much faster and cheaper. And, it would free you to do more pleasant and important tasks.

Until now, the only way for the computer to repeat these tasks was by clicking on a Button over and over. That's slow and hard and boring. This chapter covers repetition structures – in programming parlance, loops. With them, a series of commands can be repeated. Some loops run a specified number of times.

VB Quip

What Are Decision Structures?

Decision structures give the computer a brain. Sort of. So far, every program has followed a sequence of commands. Every command has executed, in order, when needed. That's great if you're riding the kiddie cars at the carnival, but you want some real power and the ability to make your own decisions. Think open road, the wind in your face, and the power to take whatever road suits your fancy. That's where If and Case statements come in. Quite literally you'll be able to pick one path or the other with an If statement. With a Case statement, you'll be able to choose one path from many. Are you hungry? Do you need gas? Then stop. It's your decision. Without them, you're merely a passenger on the bus and someone else makes all the decisions. With them, you turn the computer from a calculator that can only solve one problem into a thinking machine that can make decisions for various outcomes based on the input provided and the directions given to it by the developer. In short, you're on your way to teaching the computer how to think.

If…Then…Else Structures

Decision structures give the computer multiple blocks of code and the ability to select the block of code to execute.

Who Should Use This Book?

This book is written for the newbie. It's not for those who already know programming. If you know the basics of the computer, like word processing, spreadsheets, email, and surfing, then you're ready to go.

What's Included?

This book covers the basics, like variable and assignment statements. It explains programming sequence, selection, and repetition structures – fundamentals to the design of any good program. It explains controls and their uses, the basic tools for designing your interface. Procedures and functions are covered, which are the basic building blocks of larger programs. File input and output (I/O) is introduced. Good programs run on data and I/O is how data get into and out of the computer. From there, arrays are introduced and used to implement more complicated programming logic including control breaks, sorting, and searching. Events make things happen in a program and one chapter is dedicated to events, including drag and drop. Objects are introduced and an understanding of them is crucial for successful developers. For a little fun, there's a chapter on graphics and sound, but you'll need a good foundation in programming sequence, logic, and repetition to get the most from it. The world runs on databases and the last two chapters cover the basics of databases, including an introduction to LINQ to SQL and Crystal Reports. LINQ connects programs to databases. SQL (Structured Query Language) is designed to find, update, and report data, and Crystal Reports is designed for data presentation.

VB Quip

The world runs on databases. Data of all kinds are tracked and stored, managed, massaged, manipulated, and, sometimes mangled. You got of taste of that in the last chapter. You even saw a little of it with control breaks back in Chapter 9. A report is the key tool for managing data. With a report, data become information, a list of numbers becomes a total or an average, and meaningless figures become a report, complete with a colored chart. Crystal Reports is a full-featured database reporting tool from Business Objects®. It crunches the numbers and produces printable reports. It's one of literally hundreds of third-party add-ons for Visual Studio. It handles data from almost any database and integrates it into reports.

VB Tip

Crystal Reports Tutorial

VB Tip

Be sure to use the Professional version of Visual Studio and have either the trial version or the full version of Crystal Reports installed on your system. Make sure the TouristStops.mdb database is in the C:\CRFiles folder on your system. TouristStops is an Access database that contains information on vacation spots throughout the United States.