Learning VB

[TeMpT]

A friend of mine is thinking about learning VB and is wondering if he needs a separate development suite or just use the stuff in office.

If a separate suite is better, what do people recommend? Apparently, his company has set a budget aside for this stuff, so if they don't have it already, they are willing to purchase.

 

[mundane]

AFAIK, the VB in Office allows you to write VB for Applications. More of a lightweight form, allows you to develop macros and plugins.

-Josh

 

[bunker]

Originally posted by: diegoalcatraz
AFAIK, the VB in Office allows you to write VB for Applications. More of a lightweight form, allows you to develop macros and plugins.

-Josh

Correct. If he needs to learn everything, he's going to need a VB developer's edition.

 

[TeMpT]

Anyone has a suggestion for what VB development software he should buy? Is Visual Basic .Net the way to go?

 

[BZ]

.net is finally starting to become useable / used. At this point better to start with that than learn "classic" vb first and then switch.

One other option though is to not buy anything and use VBscript via asp and iis. Its all built in to windows (not sure if all versions). It doesn't have an IDE and its web based instead of creating desktop apps, but the language differences are minor

 

[DT4K]

What does he want to learn it for?
What is he going to do with it?

If all he needs to do is MS Access / Word / Excel stuff, he can do it all with VBA.
If he actually wants to become a programmer/software developer, there are a number of good language choices, but it sound like a MS shop, so buying Visual Studio.Net would be the best way to go. Then take your pick between VB.Net and C#.

VB.Net is completely different from VB6, 5, 4,3 etc.

 

[TeMpT]

Shanti,

Actually, from what I gathered, he is trying to pick up VB for his Office (Excel/Access/Word) programming. So should he just stick with the VB thingy in Office?

 

[AdamSnow]

Personally I would not learn VB6 and then go to VB.net.

The languages are different. It is just going to compicate someone with little programming experiance.

Go straight to .Net in my oppinion.

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: AdamSnow
Personally I would not learn VB6 and then go to VB.net.

The languages are different. It is just going to compicate someone with little programming experiance.

Go straight to .Net in my oppinion.

Well, I would agree if he wants to become a professional developer/programmer and build applications.

But it sounds more like his goal is to just be able to build macros and Access db's.

Originally posted by: TeMpT
Shanti,

Actually, from what I gathered, he is trying to pick up VB for his Office (Excel/Access/Word) programming. So should he just stick with the VB thingy in Office?

So for that, learning .Net may be overkill. He may be better off just to pick up a good VBA book and play around with programming in those environments. You can build some apps in Access that are almost just like VB6 apps with forms, buttons, text boxes, combo boxes, etc, etc.
But you may want to look into what MS has planned for future versions of Office. I don't know if they will be sticking with VBA, or if they will be trying to incorporate .Net languages into the office apps.