IWUOnline BSBIS - Visual Basic Programming

Visual Basic .NET programming is the subject of the first two programming courses in the BSBIS Online curriculum. These Visual Basic .NET programming courses are heavily dependent on the immediate, practical application of its ideas in order for students to fully grasp them. In addition to the more measurable goals of these courses, by the end of these courses, students should be able to write simple utility programs, and be able to act as a communication bridge between senior corporate management and application programmers.

The scope of the Visual Basic .NET programming courses does not provide for students to become high-end application programmers, although it does provide a foundation for further learning toward that goal if students so desire to pursue it. This is also true of the Java programming and HTML programming courses within the BSBIS curriculum. Additional materials are provided with the Visual Basic .NET courses that will allow students to easily pursue certification in Visual Basic .NET programming if they so desire.

Rather than going into significant depth in Visual Basic .NET programming or any specific programming language, the BSBIS curriculum teaches basic programming skills. It also builds a basic understanding of the concepts and principles of programming with various languages. This allows the graduate to have a solid technical base of understanding programming concepts, yet build a knowledge base that incorporates business and managerial principles as well. Graduates of the BIS program know how to acquire knowledge in a rapidly changing world, how to evaluate information and alternatives based on both appropriate analytic methods and common sense, and to disseminate results and recommendations effectively in written and oral presentations.

This combination of technical, business, managerial, and personal skills is critical in today's business environment. In the Computer Systems Analysts, Engineers, and Scientists section of the Occupational Outlook Handbook 2002-03 Edition, it is noted that as computer applications continue to expand, these types of occupations are projected to be the fastest growing and rank among the top 20 in the number of new jobs created over the 1998-2008 period.

So why has Visual Basic .NET programming been included in the curriculum? Remember that building rich graphical applications, something we take for granted today, was anything but trivial before the introduction of Visual Basic 1.0 in May 1991. With Visual Basic programming capabilities, programmers could for the first time implement Windows applications in an intuitive, graphical environment by dragging controls onto a form. Over the past 10 years, the Visual Basic programming community has grown to a majority share of the total worldwide developer population. During that time, an entire industry of component vendors grew up around this single product.

Today, there are many Visual Basic programming resources available on the Internet. A few of these are:

Microsoft Visual Basic home page - Information about releases, top links, documentation, add-ons, VB related articles, support.
Visual Basic - Learning Visual Basic online, a collection of information. Whether a novice or an expert, there is always more to learn.
Visual Basic Explorer - A site dedicated to the novice VB programmer, or 'newbie'. Includes plenty of tutorials, sample programs, etc.
searchVB.com - A free online directory featuring thousands of Visual Basic web resources.
VBWire - A Visual Basic news source that covers everything from new product announcements to product reviews. They offer a free weekly newsletter covering all news related to Visual Basic.
Visual Basic programming zone - VB code, samples, utilities, and tutorials. Includes a five-lesson "Learn Visual Basic" course.
Visual Basic Internet programming - All you want to know about Internet programming with Visual Basic.