Learning curve for Visual Basic 6 programmers moving to Visual Basic.net

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris Asaipillai
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Chris Asaipillai

Hi there

I have some questions for those experienced Visual Basic 6 programmers out
there
who have made the transition from VB6 to Vb.net.

How long did it take you to learn at least the basic elements of
VB.net....so that
you were confident to write a application from scratch. This wouldnt
necessarily
have to be a complex (ie 3 layer) or use COM/ Active X.

But say a database application connecting to SQL Server with a few forms...

Did you find the process easy or were there a few pitfalls on the way?

I am a Visual Basic 6/VBA programmer with 6 years full lifecycle
development experience of building and maintaining applications.

My company plans for me to re-write some of the in house applications
but will send me on training courses....in order for me to translate the
aspects i know in VB6 into Vb.net

Many thanks


Chris Asaipillai
 
Hi Chris,

I wrote VB5 & VB6 software for a number of years before moving to .Net.
Because I did quite a bit of COM/DCOM/MTS work I found that I was
increasingly trying to write OO-style code with VB6. When moving to VB.Net I
found it was much easier to do the things I had been struggling to do in VB6.
So much so that within a few weeks I was writing much better apps in .Net
than I could with VB6. The biggest learning curve is probably moving from a
traditional VBA/VB approach to using an OO approach.

The libraries supplied with .Net are huge so you won't learn everything for
a long time and your learning curve will never flatten out by the time
Microsoft bring out the next version but this is nevertheless a move I'm sure
that you will probably enjoy. I hate writing VB6 code now!

Regarding database access and distributed architecture - this is very
different but the basics are easy to learn.

Hope this helps.

Pete
 
Hi Pete


I have studied the concepts of OO through both VB6
and C ++ but have programmed more in the procedural
manner.

So I think that understanding will help me ease into .net

I think i will get to grips with the database stuff inc connections,
data readers etc.

Thats encouraging that you were able to write .Net applications,
i was giving myself 3 months!!!

Thanks for your post that was most useful indeed.

Kind Regards

Chris Asaipillai
 
Chris Asaipillai said:
Hi there

I have some questions for those experienced Visual Basic 6 programmers out
there
who have made the transition from VB6 to Vb.net.

How long did it take you to learn at least the basic elements of
VB.net....so that
you were confident to write a application from scratch. This wouldnt
necessarily
have to be a complex (ie 3 layer) or use COM/ Active X.
Click to expand...

In about a week is all it took for me.
But say a database application connecting to SQL Server with a few
forms...

Did you find the process easy or were there a few pitfalls on the way?
Click to expand...

None, you need to get a good ADO.NET book to teach you the basics of
ADO.NET. And you may want to get a good book on .NET Remoting.
I am a Visual Basic 6/VBA programmer with 6 years full lifecycle
development experience of building and maintaining applications.

My company plans for me to re-write some of the in house applications
but will send me on training courses....in order for me to translate the
aspects i know in VB6 into Vb.net
Click to expand...

All you have to know is how Inheritance and Polymorphism work in OOp(s)
programming.

VB is VB. You have to know about the namespaces.

This may give you a start but you may not need it.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/learningpath/

You already have the experience and expertise.

Even if they send you to school, you may want to get the MSPress Training
Kit books, make the company buy them, which gives one a good foundation on
the basics and are good references books, forget that they are certification
books.

Depending upon which way you need to go, make them get the MCPD Web
Developer or MCPD Windows Developer Kit. ISBN 978-0-7356-2376-7 is for Web.
You can find the one for Windows, if need be.

Or get the books for .Net 2003, if they are not using .Net 2005.

Now, if you really want to come up to speed fast, then get the CSLA VB 2005
book read it, put the CSLA Framework together and put the project together
for Web and Windows desktop. You will then know how to use VB.Net.

http://www.lhotka.net/Article.aspx?id=1351540e-b941-446a-bacb-e0059cc82ee7
 
Chris Asaipillai said:
Hi there

I have some questions for those experienced Visual Basic 6 programmers out
there
who have made the transition from VB6 to Vb.net.

How long did it take you to learn at least the basic elements of
VB.net....so that
you were confident to write a application from scratch. This wouldnt
necessarily
have to be a complex (ie 3 layer) or use COM/ Active X.

But say a database application connecting to SQL Server with a few
forms...

Did you find the process easy or were there a few pitfalls on the way?

I am a Visual Basic 6/VBA programmer with 6 years full lifecycle
development experience of building and maintaining applications.

My company plans for me to re-write some of the in house applications
but will send me on training courses....in order for me to translate the
aspects i know in VB6 into Vb.net

Many thanks


Chris Asaipillai
Click to expand...
Hi, Chris.
I think the secret is to realize that you are entering a new world and that
you need to let the past go.
Once you've done that, you'll find the .NET Framework class library,
especially ADO.NET to be far superior to what you're used to.
Grab some tutorials on MSDN and/or CodeProject and give it a couple of
weeks. You won't look back.
 
You can check this out:
http://sholliday.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!A68482B9628A842A!140.entry

Its in C#.

However, you could learn, by translating it into vb.net.
(without the auto translaters)

Add the projects in this order

MyApp.DataSets
MyApp.Data
MyApp.BusinessLogic
MyApp.Console1 (or MyApp.Winforms1)

MyApp.Data references MyApp.DataSets
MyApp.BusinessLogic references MyApp.DataSets, MyApp.Data
MyApp.Console1 references MyApp.DataSets, MyApp.BusinessLogic

MyApp.Console1 does not reference MyApp.Data

Make sure you turn on (in vb.net)

Option Strict On
Option Explicit On

Its better to do this up front, so you don't have auto-converters always
running for you.
 
I've been using DotNet most days from Beta 1.0 and it's fair to say that I'm
still learning most days! You're probably lucky as the transistion from
VB6 windows forms to DotNet windows forms is far easier than to transistion
from classic ASP to ASP.NET. However with your experience you should be
able to hit the ground running! Probably seeing it for the first time the
strangest thing is that most things are either an object or a method, so
there's far fewer keywords.

For me personally, being introduced to design patterns really helped (I
found this site to be a good help:
http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx), as did taking the time to
get my head around lists and enumerators. But some of these things may
actually slow down your learning curve to start with.

Regards,

- Paul
 
I made the switch from VB6 to VB.Net last year. The OO stuff was kind of
like algebra to me -- at first I didn't get it, and then one day it clicked
and it all made sense.

I found the book "Doing Objects in VB2005" by Deborah Kurata to be really
helpful. It explains and exemplifies the OO principles, and shows how to
set up a 3-layer app using business objects, and covers some of the new
stuff in Visual Studio (like code snippets and user settings, how to set up
SQLServer stuff from VS) along the way. As you work through the examples,
you end up with a completed application.

Another one I liked was Tim Patrick's "Start-to-Finish VB2005". It doesn't
really follow standard coding practices, but it's a cool application with
some neat UI examples. This book covers the basics of more topics than any
other book I found -- from variables and loops to XML, deployment,
licensing, internationalization, the whole enchilada. It's not detailed
information on each topic, but enough to get you started.

And I read Francesco Balena's book "VB2005: The Language". It points out
differences between VB6 and VB2005, and is very readable.

Hope this helps.
Robin S.
 
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