How hard is it to learn Visual Basic? Just for entertainment's sake

[purplehayes]

I'm interested in learning Visual Basic for my own enjoyment. I'm just wondering how hard it is to learn. I haven't done much non-web based programming before and I'm just wondering if maybe VB wouldn't be a good place to start.

I want to learn how to write simple little programs for my own use and I want a language that is easy enough to learn and powerful enough to keep me interested. Is VB what I'm looking for or are there better languages out there for me?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I wouldn't mind a few links to web sites aimed at programmers, too.

Thanks,
PH

 

[bruzbros22]

I sure liked it alot better than C programming,Assembler or Basic.
You should be able to get a book and pick up pretty fast.

My opinion, it's a relatively easy to grasp the basics......the more intricate stuff is a little harder.

I don't program that much anymore, but when I took a VB class in school it was pretty easy.


Hope this helps.

 

[Kappo]

FYI...if you are going to learn a language you might as well learn something like C/C++...it may take longer to learn it, but it works on more than MS products and you have more flexiblity and whatnot...just my opinion, of course

 

[Oli]

For the basic things it's very easy. I'm a professional programmer and use VB vs SQL and Office and you can make great things, but you must practice.

 

[johnjohn320]

C is definetly hard to learn. My sig is a Hello World program in C code. As for visual basic, a friend of mine said it's a piece of cake, especially if you already know BASIC cause there's a lot of similarities (according to him).

 

[PliotronX]

It is very simple. Any book on VB should get you going fairly quickly especially if it's a "hands on" book. Just for your own enjoyment, VB should fit your need perfectly. I strongly recommend learning C/C++ (without MFC) as soon as you start programming seriously, cause VB is just for sh*ts n giggles.

 

[trmiv]

I found VB incredibly easy to learn, especially compared to Java. I had to take a VB class for my major last semester and it was breeze. The advanced stuff is of course a bit tougher to learn, but if you have a good foundation you should be OK. I really like the Visual Basic development environment and I think it's great for a beginning programer, it makes it pretty easy to get in there and make some useful programs pretty quickly (especially compared to something like JBuilder for Java).

 

[Supergax]

Actually, I have found C very easy to learn, haven't hit up C++ much though. A good but outdated language to learn on is Pascal, it's very strict and teaches people how to program properly. If you are looking for something that isn't too hard another place to start off is shell scipting with bash, they are only shell scripts, but bash can get pretty powerful (two dimensional arrays and whatnot).

 

[Shalmanese]

a good visual basic code should be able to be understood by a person who doesnt know VB. Its that easy and intuitive to learn. (at the start)

 

[jpsj82]

if you know any computer lang you should be able to pick up VB easily. I first learned Turbo Pascal at school and then we moved into VB and it was easy to do, many similarities.