Visual basic

Visual Basic is a Microsoft product. I use the programming language Visual Basic for Applications - VBA - within Access, a database and GUI system not very different from VB itself. For the VBA language your main document should perhaps be the Visual Basic Programmer's Guide 1-57231-863-5, published by Microsoft at 37 pounds or $40. When you need to expand your range of capabilities, and when you begin to find gaps in the Guide, procure the Visual Basic Reference Library in 3 volumes: Language Reference, Controls Reference and Component Tools Guide. You will still find the Programmer's Guide useful.

As for a good first exercise, I recommend a mortgage calculation engine: The user inputs the amount of the mortgage, the annual interest rate, the minimum monthly payment and the starting date, then a report is produced showing the status each month. I would love to do this, but as I am not in a research environment I have no excuse for such a sideline. Ask me for advice on the project if you choose it, because I have some ideas. It would make you use form, report and table features in a fairly straightforward manner, and you would see VB code and SQL along the way. Thus you would know a little of everything in VB pretty quickly, and would also have a practical tool for consideration of accelerated pay-off, etc. Be warned: credit-card interest is calculated differently from mortgage interest, so you cannot use the same algorithm for credit card debt, but you can use it for most consumer loans.

I have absoultely no programming experience how long dio you reckon it would take me to become reasonably profficient at VB?
Thanks for the reply btw

It is impossible to say how long it would take someone to become a competent programmer. VB code is probably easier than many languages, but there are also the GUI aspect and SQL to think of. Generally, as Dijkstra said in 1969 or so, the best criterion for programming ability is excellent command of one's native language, and close behind that must come experience with a different natural language, e.g. Latin if you think in English. For SQL, exposure to set theory is very valuable. For GUI, concepts of symmetry and user-mindedness are important, but a lot of successful programmers obviously lack these and perhaps you, like them, can tack that on later.
Knowledge of the application field is relevant, but everyone with a good batch of GCSEs should have the application knowledge needed for the exercise I propose. Every computer program is an implementation of a mapping from one set to another. Can you set up some mapping diagrams for the exercise I proposed? Then design tables?

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