Microsoft Visual Basic 2010: Reloaded Fourth Edition Chapter One An Introduction to Visual Basic 2010 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 2 Overview ■ What Is a Computer? ■ Machine, Assembly and High-Level Languages ■ Visual Basic & Other High-Level Languages ■ Object Technology ■ The Internet and the World Wide Web ■ Introduction to Microsoft .NET ■ Language and Syntax ■ Visual Studio 2010 IDE ■ Solutions and Projects ■ Creating a New Project ■ Examples 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 3 What Is a Computer? ■ A computer is a device that can perform calculations and make logical decisions much faster than humans can. ■ Computers process data, using sets of instructions called computer programs. – These programs guide computers through orderly sets of actions that are specified by people known as computer programmers. 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 4 What Is a Computer? ■ A computer is composed of various devices known as hardware: – keyboard – screen – mouse – hard drives – memory – DVD drives – printer – processing units ■ The programs that run on a computer are referred to as software. 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 5 Computer Components Computers can be thought of as being divided into six units: ■ Input unit: This “receiving” section of the computer obtains information from input devices. – Input can come from devices such as the keyboard and the mouse. ■ Output unit: This “shipping” section of the computer takes information that the computer has processed and places it on various output devices. – Output can be displayed on screens, printed on paper, played on audio/video devices, and transmitted over the Internet. 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 6 Computer Components ■ Memory unit: This “warehouse” section of the computer stores data while an application is running. Its information is immediately available for processing. – To be executed, computer programs must be in memory. – The memory unit retains information until it can be sent to output devices. – Often, the memory unit is called either memory or primary memory. – Random-access memory (RAM) is an example of primary memory. – Primary memory is usually volatile, which means that it is erased when the machine is powered off. 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 7 Computer Components ■ Central processing unit (CPU): The CPU supervises the operation of the other sections. ■ Arithmetic and logic unit (ALU): The ALU (a part of the CPU) performs calculations and makes decisions. ■ Secondary storage unit: This unit is the “warehousing” section of the computer. – Devices such as hard drives, CD-ROM drives, DVD drives, and USB memory sticks are secondary storage units. – These normally hold programs or data that other units are not actively being used. – The computer can retrieve this information when it is needed later in time. Secondary storage is nonvolatile. – Information in secondary storage takes much longer to access than information in primary memory. 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 8 Machine, Assembly and High-Level Languages ■ Programmers write instructions in programming languages. Some of these are directly understandable by computers, and others require intermediate translation steps. ■ Computer languages that are in use today can be divided into three general types: – machine languages – assembly languages – high-level languages 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 9 Machine, Assembly and High-Level Languages ■ A computer can directly understand only its own machine language. ■ As the “natural language” of a particular computer, machine language is defined by the computer’s hardware design. Machine languages are machine dependent. ■ Machine languages generally consist of streams of numbers (ultimately reduced to 1s and 0s in the binary number system). 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 10 Machine, Assembly and High-Level Languages ■ The following section of a machine-language program demonstrates the incomprehensibility of machine language to humans: +1300042774 +1400593419 +1200274027 ■ Machine-language programming proved to be slow and error prone. [...]... All rights reserved 15 Visual Basic ■ In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, Microsoft developed the Microsoft Windows® graphical user interface (GUI) ■ Visual Basic was introduced by Microsoft in 1991 to make programming Windows applications easier © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 16 Visual Basic ■ Visual Basic is a so-called object-oriented, event-driven visual programming language... overTimePay ■ Visual Basic is one of the world’s most popular high-level programming languages © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 14 Visual Basic ■ Visual Basic evolved from BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), which was developed as a language for writing simple programs quickly and easily ■ When Bill Gates founded Microsoft Corporation in the 1970s, he implemented BASIC. .. Environment (IDE) ■ The latest versions of Visual Basic are fully object oriented and respond to user-initiated events such as mouse clicks, keystrokes and timers ■ In Visual Studio, it is convenient to make programs by dragging and dropping predefined objects like buttons and textboxes © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 17 Visual Basic ■ Microsoft introduced its NET strategy in 2000... Education, Inc All rights reserved 33 Examples of Programming Languages ■ C: fast, efficient code ■ Java: platform independence ■ BASIC: ease of use ■ Visual Basic: user interface design using forms ■ Perl: text manipulation © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 34 Visual Basic. NET syntax If x>5 Then MessageBox.Show("I am greater than 5.") Else MessageBox.Show ("I am not greater than 5.") End... communicate among the world’s computers This is the focus of Microsoft s NET strategy ■ The Internet and the World Wide Web: – make information instantly and conveniently accessible, – and allow individuals and small businesses to achieve worldwide exposure © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 28 Introduction to Microsoft NET ■ In June 2000, Microsoft announced its NET initiative – The NET initiative... in any NET-compatible language – Part of the initiative includes Microsoft s ASP.NET ■ The NET strategy extends the idea of software reuse to the Internet ■ Visual programming enables NET programmers to create applications using prepackaged graphical components © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 29 NET Framework ■ The Microsoft NET Framework: – executes applications and web services... build large-scale enterprise applications, to enhance the functionality of web servers, and to provide applications for consumer devices ■ In 2000, Microsoft announced C# The C# programming language was designed specifically for the NET platform Like Visual Basic, C# is object oriented and has access to NET’s library © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 21 Object Technology ■ Object technology... Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 23 Object Technology ■ Instead of worrying about the details of how objects are implemented, you can focus on the behaviors and interactions of objects ■ Visual Basic is one of the world’s most widely used object-oriented languages © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 24 The Internet and the World Wide Web ■ In the late 1960s, ARPA rolled out... am not greater than 5."); } © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 36 Learning a Programming Language ■ Syntax ■ Structure ■ Rules ■ Punctuation ■ Reserved Words (keywords) eg If, Else ■ Visual Basic. NET is NOT case sensitive MyCase is the same as myCase and MYCASE ■ Comment lines start with an apostrophe (') © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved ...11 Machine, Assembly and High-Level Languages ■ Programmers began using English-like abbreviations to represent the computer’s basic operations ■ These abbreviations formed the basis of assembly languages LOAD ADD STORE BASEPAY OVERPAY GROSSPAY © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reserved 12 Machine, Assembly and High-Level . Microsoft Visual Basic 2010: Reloaded Fourth Edition Chapter One An Introduction to Visual Basic 2010 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights. overTimePay ■ Visual Basic is one of the world’s most popular high-level programming languages. 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 14 Visual Basic ■ Visual Basic evolved from BASIC. Languages ■ Visual Basic & Other High-Level Languages ■ Object Technology ■ The Internet and the World Wide Web ■ Introduction to Microsoft .NET ■ Language and Syntax ■ Visual Studio 2010 IDE ■ Solutions