Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers (2nd Edition)

3.10. Wrap-Up

We discussed many features of Visual Basic in this chapter, including displaying data on the screen, inputting data from the keyboard and declaring variables of primitive types Integer and Double. You used the WriteLine, Write and ReadLine methods of class Console to build simple interactive programs that input and output text. You learned how to use the arithmetic operators to perform calculations, and the order in which Visual Basic applies these operators (i.e., the rules of operator precedence). We demonstrated how Visual Basic's If...Then statement allows a program to perform actions based on a condition. You created conditions using the equality and relational operators. We demonstrated several features of Visual Basic 2005 Express, including creating console applications, modifying the IDE's settings and adding references to assemblies.

In the next chapter, we return to Visual Basic Windows applications that provide graphical user interfaces. The chapter begins our discussion of structured programming. We study how to specify and vary the order in which statements are executedthis is called flow of control. You'll use control statements to select between alternative actions based on the truth or falsity of a condition, or to perform actions repeatedly based on a condition. We present several case studies that demonstrate the types of repetition that can occur in Visual Basic programs.