Visual Basic
CHARACTERISTICS AND DATA TYPES OF VISUAL BASIC
INTRODUCTION
The characteristics and data types of Visual Basic elucidated its advantages and disadvantages. Visual Basic is a popular event-driven visual programming system from Microsoft Corporation for Microsoft Windows (Morley, 2008). It is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which uses a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to create and modify code (Capron, 2004). It enables Rapid Application Development (RAD) of graphical user interface applications, access to databases using Data Access Objects (DAO), Remote Data Objects (RDO), or Active X Data Objects (ADO), and creation of Active X Controls and objects (Zak, 2004). It is an advanced structure dialect intended to help programmers to develop quite complex applications (Joos, 2001). It is an extremely powerful third-generation compiled language capable of both text and graphics (Bell, 2002). It is the visual form of BASIC (Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a language that emphasizes ease of use (Capron, 2004).
History of Visual Basic In 1988, Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic, showed a drag and drop shell prototype called Tripod to Bill Gates. Microsoft immediately bought the concept. They contracted with Cooper and his associates to develop Tripod into a programmable form system for Windows 3.0, under the code name “Ruby”. But Tripod did not include a programming language at all. So, Microsoft decided to combine Ruby with BASIC language to create Visual Basic. Ruby employed a string-based system of messages between controls. The first conservative draft of ideas included simply replacing the crude string language with BASIC. But these messages were modeled in a graph-like user interface whose complexity scaled rather poorly from shell construction set to general programming environment. So such ideas were quickly considered unworthy. The event model was evolving for Omega and could be modeled into unified concept suitable for
INTRODUCTION
The characteristics and data types of Visual Basic elucidated its advantages and disadvantages. Visual Basic is a popular event-driven visual programming system from Microsoft Corporation for Microsoft Windows (Morley, 2008). It is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which uses a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to create and modify code (Capron, 2004). It enables Rapid Application Development (RAD) of graphical user interface applications, access to databases using Data Access Objects (DAO), Remote Data Objects (RDO), or Active X Data Objects (ADO), and creation of Active X Controls and objects (Zak, 2004). It is an advanced structure dialect intended to help programmers to develop quite complex applications (Joos, 2001). It is an extremely powerful third-generation compiled language capable of both text and graphics (Bell, 2002). It is the visual form of BASIC (Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a language that emphasizes ease of use (Capron, 2004).
History of Visual Basic In 1988, Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic, showed a drag and drop shell prototype called Tripod to Bill Gates. Microsoft immediately bought the concept. They contracted with Cooper and his associates to develop Tripod into a programmable form system for Windows 3.0, under the code name “Ruby”. But Tripod did not include a programming language at all. So, Microsoft decided to combine Ruby with BASIC language to create Visual Basic. Ruby employed a string-based system of messages between controls. The first conservative draft of ideas included simply replacing the crude string language with BASIC. But these messages were modeled in a graph-like user interface whose complexity scaled rather poorly from shell construction set to general programming environment. So such ideas were quickly considered unworthy. The event model was evolving for Omega and could be modeled into unified concept suitable for