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1.1 The concept of computer programming
Before we begin
Visual Basic 6 programming, let us understand some basic concepts of programming. According to Webopedia, a computer program is an organized list of instructions that, when executed, causes the computer to behave in a predetermined manner. Without programs, computers are useless. Therefore, programming means designing or creating a set of instructions to ask the computer to carry out certain jobs which normally are very much faster than human beings can do.
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A lot of people think that computer CPU is a very intelligent thing, which in actual fact it is a dumb and inanimate object that can do nothing without human assistant. The microchips of a CPU can only understand two distinct electrical states, namely, the on and off states, or 0 and 1 codes in the binary system. So, the CPU only understands a combinations of 0 and 1 codes, a language which we called machine language. Machine language is extremely difficult to learn and it is not for us laymen to master it easily. Fortunately , we have many smart programmers who wrote interpreters and compilers that can translate human language-like programs such as BASIC into machine language so that the computer can carry out the instructions entered by the users. Machine language is known as the primitive language while Interpreters and compilers like Visual Basic are called high-level language. Some of the high level computer languages beside Visual Basic are Fortran, Cobol, Java, C, C++, Turbo Pascal, and etc .
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1.2 What programs can you create with Visual
Basic 6?
With VB 6, you can create any program depending on
your objective. For example, you can create
educational programs to teach science , mathematics, language,
history , geography and so on. You can also create financial and
accounting programs to make you a more efficient accountant or
financial controller. For those of you who like games, you can
create those programs as well. Indeed, there is no limit to what program you can
create !
There are many such programs in this tutorial, so you must spend more
time on the tutorial in order to learn how to create those programs. If
you wish to see some of the sample programs, you can take a look at the link
below:
VB Sample Programs
1.3 The Visual Basic 6 Integrated Development Environment
Before you can program in VB 6, you need to
install Visual Basic 6 in your computer. If you do not own a copy of Visual Basic 6
software yet , you can
purchase it from Amazon.com by clicking the link below:
Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional
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Basically any present computer system should be able to run the program, be
it a Intel Pentium II, Intel Pentium III, Intel Pentium IV or even AMD
machines, Visual Basic 6 can run without any problem. It might not be true for VB2008, older
machines might not be able to run VB2008 as it takes up much more resources,
therefore I still prefer VB 6 as it is light and easy to program. It is
still very useful and powerful, and I am happy to know that Microsoft Windows
Vista can support VB 6. However, if you prefer to learn VB
2008, you can refer VB 2008
Tutorial.
On start up, Visual Basic 6.0 will display the following dialog box as
shown in figure 1.1.
You can choose to either start a new project, open an existing project or select a list
of recently opened programs. A project is a collection of files that make up
your application. There are various types of applications that we could create,
however, we shall concentrate on creating Standard EXE programs (EXE means
executable program). Now, click on the Standard EXE icon to go into the actual
Visual Basic 6 programming environment.
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