Recommended VB tutorials?

[SRLFooty]

I'm working on expanding my programming knowledge from pascal to VB. What tutorials do you guys recommend? I've glanced over a few video tutorials, but I'm not sure which are the best...

~Footy

 

[blahnoobz]

There are tons of tutorials on YouTube but search thenewboston they are supposed to be pretty good.

 

[Raid500]

Seriously, buy a college level text, you'll learn a lot.

 

Seriously, buy a college level text, you'll learn a lot.

Honestly TheNewBoston will get the OP better training. The good thing about how TNB teaches is that each video teaches a new concept, they're only 5 minutes long, and by the end you'll have a basic, though thorough-enough understanding of the language to understand any code fed to you (which is essential when googling code bits and API calls for your first projects).

Textbooks feed you full structured ideas and ways of doing things right from the start, so you never develop your own style of coding and you end up learning less since what you learn is mostly memorization of concepts as opposed to figuring things out with only knowing the basics.

The above is also why I don't agree with degrees in software engineering and computer science and why a lot of commercial-grade software these days are poorly made.

 

[Raid500]

Honestly TheNewBoston will get the OP better training. The good thing about how TNB teaches is that each video teaches a new concept, they're only 5 minutes long, and by the end you'll have a basic, though thorough-enough understanding of the language to understand any code fed to you (which is essential when googling code bits and API calls for your first projects).

Textbooks feed you full structured ideas and ways of doing things right from the start, so you never develop your own style of coding and you end up learning less since what you learn is mostly memorization of concepts as opposed to figuring things out with only knowing the basics.

The above is also why I don't agree with degrees in software engineering and computer science and why a lot of commercial-grade software these days are poorly made.

The thing is that the textbooks show you how do to things, but the projects inside them you do all by yourself. They give you example problems to test what is taught in the chapter.

For example, a certain chapter can be about loops and after that chapter the problem will ask for you to make a program that utilize loops. This can be done your own way and you do get your own style of programming from it.

I just think that the textbooks are good because they start off at an easy pace and by the end of the chapter show you the harder things. I used to use tutorials just like you say, but when I went to college and actually used a college textbook, it was completely different. I felt like I learned the concepts fully not just partially (usually what the tutorials didn't do). It filled in all the old gaps of how one thing works with another because they build upon previous knowledge, rather than teaching you separate parts of code. Now don't get me wrong, the tutorials are great resources, but they tend to miss out on some information. (Not sure of TNB tho)

 

[RuneScapeJJ]

Hey Footy I've also been looking into .NET lately. So far I've followed TheNewBoston VB tutorials 1-30 and it is pretty similar to pascal. I suggest following those until you understand the basic things like loops, arrays, etc. From there on I would start with text books. I'm not sure how I'm going to continue.
J J

 

The thing is that the textbooks show you how do to things, but the projects inside them you do all by yourself. They give you example problems to test what is taught in the chapter.

For example, a certain chapter can be about loops and after that chapter the problem will ask for you to make a program that utilize loops. This can be done your own way and you do get your own style of programming from it.

I just think that the textbooks are good because they start off at an easy pace and by the end of the chapter show you the harder things. I used to use tutorials just like you say, but when I went to college and actually used a college textbook, it was completely different. I felt like I learned the concepts fully not just partially (usually what the tutorials didn't do). It filled in all the old gaps of how one thing works with another because they build upon previous knowledge, rather than teaching you separate parts of code. Now don't get me wrong, the tutorials are great resources, but they tend to miss out on some information. (Not sure of TNB tho)

I suppose to use tutorials you need more motivation. Personally, I completely self-taught myself VB back in grade 8 - I didn't have a computer or the internet at home, so I found an old PC in the trash, downloaded the VB6 IDE onto a USB stick, went home everyday after school and did straight code for about 2 years. Just poking at things and seeing what they do. I learned Java and C# the same way, and learned C++ in school, but have noticed that even though I spent the same amount of time learning Java on my own and C++ at school, my knowledge of Java is far more in-depth than my knowledge of C++.

Based on that, I get the feeling that how you learn is entirely dependant on how you think and how to best absorb information. I'm more of a practical do-it-yourself type person, which is why figuring things out is how I learn best. Ideally the OP should find out what their learning style is and start from there.

 

[Raid500]

I suppose to use tutorials you need more motivation. Personally, I completely self-taught myself VB back in grade 8 - I didn't have a computer or the internet at home, so I found an old PC in the trash, downloaded the VB6 IDE onto a USB stick, went home everyday after school and did straight code for about 2 years. Just poking at things and seeing what they do. I learned Java and C# the same way, and learned C++ in school, but have noticed that even though I spent the same amount of time learning Java on my own and C++ at school, my knowledge of Java is far more in-depth than my knowledge of C++.

Based on that, I get the feeling that how you learn is entirely dependant on how you think and how to best absorb information. I'm more of a practical do-it-yourself type person, which is why figuring things out is how I learn best. Ideally the OP should find out what their learning style is and start from there.

I do know what you mean about learning stuff by yourself. I learned java and c++ by myself by doing just as you, trying different things to see what they do (along with some tutorials). The same with visual basic (when I first started), but then college made it all flow together better and make sense better. And yes, it does depend on how the OP learns the best.