Visual Basic Info Sheet 1

The Nine Steps of Writing A Visual Basic Program

1. Decide what you want the computer to do.
2. Decide how your program will look on the screen.  (The appearance of your program is its user interface.)
3. Draw your user interface using common parts such as windows, menus, and command buttons.  (The parts of a user interface are objects or controls.)
4. Define the name, color, size and appearance of each user interface object. (An object’s characteristics are its properties.)
5. Write instructions in BASIC to make each part of your program do something.  (BASIC instructions are commands.)
6. Run your program to see if it works.
7. Cry when tour program doesn’t work perfectly. (Required.)
8. Fix any errors (or bugs) in your program.
9. Repeat steps 6 through 8 over and over again until you get tired of searching for more bugs.

Definitions from these steps:

User Interface:           The appearance of your program.  This is the part of the program that the user of the program interacts with.  It usually consists of forms with objects on them.  Each form is a window that displays thing and waits for something to happen.

Object:                        Something (usually on a form) that you can interact with.  Objects have properties and methods.  Properties are values that can be read and assigned, such as ‘color’.  Methods cause something to happen to the object, such as ‘play’.

Property:                    Something in an object that can be changed to cause the object’s appearance to change, or read to get information about the object.

Command:                  A BASIC instruction.

BASIC:                       A general command-at-a-time programming language.  (“Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code”).  Visual Basic combines objects with BASIC.

Bug:                            Anything that happens in a program that is not the intended result.  Note that if a bug is documented to the user, it may become a ‘feature’.