Where to start learning VB?

if you have microsoft office, try the macro tutorials, since the macros are visual basic.
a starting point for learning the language.

often you can get books with software in local bookstores for under $100.

Hello MommieGeek,

I'm a programming hobbyist (non-Computer Science or IT major), and I started with Visual Basic. You can download a copy of Visual Basic from Microsoft for free, called the Control Creation Edition. It will let you play around, but you can't generate executables.

The best book that I have used is "Visual Basic 6.0 Step-By-Step", by Michael Halvorson. It includes all the code examples, and has easy to write, but useful and interesting programs.

I believe the first book I picked up was from SAMS, and it was called something like "Learn To Program Visual Basic in 24 Hours", or something of that nature. Basically, any book along those lines should be relatively straight forward use.

Good luck!

I'd also recommend the same book as dsanborn3 above (Visual Basic 6.0 Step-By-Step) as a good starting point and the SAMs 24 hour books are generally good too. Once you've got the basics, buy a thicker manual, and possibly a pocket guide ( I find these useful for quick reference). The first place i'd look for books of this type is on eBay or in discount book stores.

If you use msoffice at work, it may be possible that you can get some practise here as VB for applications is ready to go in most versions of msword, excel, access, etc

The website www.planetsourcecode.com is highly recommended so you can download something that is similar to what you are trying to do and then modify to suite your needs.

Learning any computer language would be really helpful because the logical sequences are more or less the same. JavaScript or Perl and HTML are good for beginning, people are always wanting someone who can 'update the website' especially in not for profit or small businesses.

Here you can learn on nothing more than a text editor and a webbrowser. And a plethora of easy to follow tutorials on the web.

Hi,

Go to ebay, search using keyword "visual basic 6" and you can buy many books at very low price. As for which books, it depends on your learning style. Check out what's on ebay and you can find many books recommended by others as low as $0.99 (plus about $3 for P&H). For example, the book from SAM recommended by others can be found at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2228&item=4527262330&rd=1

Good luck.

Kongphutu

mindleaders.com has among the tech training, a series of VB courses. you can sign up for tech package or buy septly, (I think is $30-60). they are online and enuf to get you a running start so that reading the books is not a bunch of words.

msdn is also good to have, it is the online help for vb, good for looking up functions.

also good but out of your price range is subs to books24x7.com. search for VB or vb.net in title turns up dozens of books, including specialized ones on using vb with databases, etc.

Here in the Portland area we have a large bookstore with a tech book section. You might see if you can find something like that as some of the how to books will have partial programs contained within them. The one I'm working through now is SAM's (publisher) Teach yourself Visual Basic 6 in 24 hours. It contains a disk of VB Standard for use with the book. You can't compile with it, but you will get some experience.
SStone

you can borrow from your friends a visual basic installer and install it to your PC. after that you can get some ideas and sample's code you can start with VB thru www.planetsourcecode.com. If you want to have a job fast, just focus on ADO since all company now are looking for programmer knowledgeable in ADO(Activex Data Objects). Ado is in the middle Database-ADO-VB Application. Hope it helps you..