Hi, I'm Aslan, and this is my website. VBDelight is dedicated to Visual Basic programming, and avoiding the more common pitfalls of using the language. I have been an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy for years. I was trying to think of a name, and a theme, for this site that would link my interest in programming with my interest in this genre. VBDelight is named after some magical candy in one of my favorite fantasy novels, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis.

     Remember the candy Edmund ate in the novel? It was Turkish Delight. The Witch gave it to him when he first entered Narnia, and it encouraged his worst tendencies; he was just a little bit snotty and sneaky, and this stuff made him really nasty. Well Visual Basic is like that Turkish Delight; it can be a dangerous candy in the wrong hands. A good language is a terrible thing to waste with bad code.

     Thus, in honor of the novel, let’s put on these fur coats, and meet at the street lamp to begin our journey. Remember DON’T eat any candy offered to you by a beautiful woman in a sleigh! Instead, I want you to follow me, the Lion, through this forest on our quest to save the world from sloppy code.

The Witch: You can program anything you need or want to program in Visual Basic. You can even create your own operating system.

The Lion: Visual Basic is a RAD programming language. It was NOT designed to do everything. To create an operating system in Visual Basic you’d need to install Windows, and the VB Runtime; even with all that overhead, you’d only have a shell, not an O/S. In other words, it’s an oxymoron! If you want a language that can do it all, use C++ or Assembly language. Then again, why re-invent the wheel every time you want to create a window, VB will do it for you!

Lucy: So, what can you make in Visual Basic?

The Lion: You can make a database front end, an ActiveX DLL, an ActiveX control, a web application, a windows application….

The Witch: Visual Basic makes it simple to create all of these things very quickly. That way you can have plenty of time to eat this candy….

The Lion: But, VB almost makes it too easy to create these things. It is now easier to create a bad application, than at any time in computer history.

Lucy: What can we do then?

The Witch: Come with me in my sleigh, and I will let you have more candy when we get to my castle.

The Lion: Don’t listen to her. Learn how to code for yourself instead. Think before you code, you’ll be amazed how much of a difference it makes.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXAMPLES:

     A little about the conventions used in this site. I have adopted the same default conventions as the Visual Basic code window for the font and the color of the code text. Therefore, in the code examples that follow, the font is Courier New, all comments are in green, all procedures and declarations are in bright blue (I’m using a brighter blue for readability), and the code is in black. If the example calls for it, any incorrect syntax will be in red. For your convenience, all code has been designed to paste correctly into VB.

     Links to other sites are in bold bright blue type; links to my code examples are in normal type. Keywords and definitions are in bold black. If you click on one, you will be re-directed back to the same page, if you place your mouse pointer over a word it will show a tool tip.

Obligatory Disclaimer: