Recommend a beginner's book for Visual Basic

[Paul R. Jackson]

Doug,

> like substring functions.  In almost every computer language, 
> it's called substr().  I spent an hour digging through the 
> worthless help pages finding that it's called Mid$() in VB.

This wasn't Microsoft, the Mid function has been used in Basic for at least
25 years that I am aware of and the Basic language was around for 20 years
before that, I would guess that Mid was too. In fact Basic is older the C
(1970s Vs 1960s).

Yes Microsoft has done many many stupid things over the years but this
wasn't one of them!

Paul


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Paul R. Jackson
 Experimental Programmer

 School of Psychology
 University of Queensland
 E:paulj at psy.uq.edu.au
 P:3365-6713
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: eprime at mail.talkbank.org 
> [mailto:eprime at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Doug Fuller
> Sent: Friday, 1 July 2005 8:08 AM
> To: eprime at mail.talkbank.org
> Subject: RE: Recommend a beginner's book for Visual Basic
> 
> >I've always found C an easier language to learn (I didn't 
> really grok 
> >VB until after I'd taken enough C++ and Java to translate).
> >
> >So, I'm gonna recommend
> >http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ .  Of course, the memory 
> >management is unnecessary (your student shouldn't be looking at 
> >"Advanced Concepts", as they don't exist in VB), and all the syntax 
> >will be different.  But, hey, that's part of what learning 
> programming 
> >is about... learning that the syntax doesn't really matter.  What 
> >matters is what you want to do, and how difficult it's going to be.
> 
> As someone coming from a C/C++/Java background, I can't stand 
> VB.  Why does Microsoft have to reinvent the wheel (i.e. 
> standard library functions) in everything they do?  Things 
> like substring functions.  In almost every computer language, 
> it's called substr().  I spent an hour digging through the 
> worthless help pages finding that it's called Mid$() in VB.
> 
> Now, having said that, I do want to briefly address that last 
> quoted paragraph - syntax does matter, insomuch as it 
> contributes to readability/maintenance.  In the spirit of 
> collaboration and/or modification, knowing how to write clear 
> code and document it well will save time and effort in the 
> future if you or a collaborator decide to tweak parameters.
> --
> Doug Fuller
> dfuller at wayne.edu
> Research Assistant, Wayne State University Department of 
> Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences
>