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Subject: 
Re: Programming Language Choice
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.geek
Date: 
Thu, 7 Sep 2000 13:15:13 GMT
Viewed: 
75 times
  
If you already know VBA then I'd suggest you use Visual Basic. While it's
not as powerful as something like Visual C++ it is remarkably good for
building small utilities really quickly. I have been using Visual Basic for
nearly 5 years and I'm really happy with it, and once you start messing with
the Win32 API you'll find that you do pretty much anything. My VB apps range
from little programs to search through files for bits of text (used to clean
up mailing lists I run here to remove old addresses) through to web site
monitoring apps (I've got one that runs on my web server and reboots it when
it becomes unstable so my server is never down for more than 2 or 3 minutes
when the office is closed) all the way to the actual apps on my web server
(catalogue browsing, searches, and full e-commerce shopping system). Plus
your VBA knowledge stands you in good stead for things like ASP for building
your own web sites (where VB is again useful for building your own COM
components). And to keep things LEGO related I did recently build a quick
little app to take 2 LDraw .dat files and list the differences in the parts
so I know which extra parts I need to find to build a new model by changing
an existing one, and I've previously used the Spirit.OCX from the RIS to
program my RIS robots. Visual Basic isn't drastically different from VBA,
it's just not tied to any application so the programs you create can run on
their own (plus there are a load of functions that aren't available in VBA
that allow more powerful programming). You can even send the VB apps you
create to other people and they don't need to have VB on their machine -
just use the Package and Deployment Wizard (Setup Wizard in older versions)
or the Windows Installer for Visual Studio to build the installation files
and that's it!  If you want to be able to write large robust applications
(or your own operating system!) you'll need to use something like Visual
C++, but for general programming I find Visual Basic more than adequate and
a breeze to use.

Dan

"Jude Beaudin" <shiningblade@home.com> wrote in message
news:G0IMuE.57G@lugnet.com...
Recently, I have gotten quite a bit of experience programming in VBA due • to a
database I designed for work. I have had experience programming in several
languages before but haven't used it to much until now.

I now have a desire to program for myself at home. I guess I want to keep • up
with changes.

So my question is, what single language is most practical to use to • program
little utilities. I am looking to do this on a Windows 9x platform. So
obviously a 'visual' language is probably the way to go.

Is Visual Basic drasticly different from VBA?

In the end it comes down to... What do you like best?

Thanks in advance for your counsel,

Jude



Message is in Reply To:
  Programming Language Choice
 
Recently, I have gotten quite a bit of experience programming in VBA due to a database I designed for work. I have had experience programming in several languages before but haven't used it to much until now. I now have a desire to program for (...) (24 years ago, 7-Sep-00, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

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