Need Advice

[I.L. Iterate]

I'm in school right now and things have gone fairly well thus far. Now we're into VB and i'm stumbling with coding. Is there anyone out there who has hit this roadblock and found a way over it. It feels like there is some simple key that I'm overlooking.

Chris

[coolbiz]

I can say VB is the easiest programming language to learn. Don't think to hard about it coz it pretty much and "english" language unlike C/C++

It toook me well over 3 month to be at intermediate level (some people might have been at expert level within the same time).

Anyway, this is why this forum is useful. To help people to learn VB. Always come and ask questions and that should be a very good help already.

-Cool Bizs

[Johnny101]

no one can be an expert in 3 months. I took two classes in VB in college (that spanned a year) and thought i knew a lot about how to program and what VB can do. Then, when i got my first programming job, i realized that knew about 10% of what the average, full time programmer knows. somethings just can't be taught. in the first month of on the job work, i doubled my knowledge and vb skills. this is fairly typical of entry level programmers. after i had about 1.5 years, i finally moved beyond the "entry level" label, according to the workplace. but, i also program on the side, as independant contractor and i worked for about a year on my own time to get my MCSD certification. Now i have 3 years expierence with VB, ASP and SQL Server. 3 yrs by itself isn't all that much, but when you add my certification and my involvement with the local programming industry, i start to get job offers that people with 5 yrs of actual experience dont.

as for the coding problems, those can only be worked out by practice. there's no quick tip to get around that. you have to be able to understand the business logic and be able to write code that represent that logic. as mentioned before, VB is very close to english, so when you're building these "What If" scenarios - you can almost write them in code verbatim. my advice to you is, spend a lot of time writing little sample apps with the controls and references in VB. they dont have to be terribly complicated, just enough to get the point across. then, keep these apps and use them as a "code library". you'll find yourself using it as a reference quite often. also, the more you do something, the less you have to look up how to do it, so build multiple projects that do similar things. sooner or later this stuff will sink in, and you'll be able to do without any references.

it just takes time and practice - like any other hobby/activity that you want to be good at.

good luck,

john

John Pirkey
MCSD
http://www.ShallowWaterSystems.com
http://www.stlvbug.org