Summary
So Visual Basic 2005 promises a lot of great abilities, as .NET always has. The difference? With Visual Basic 2005, we have a faster means to access these advanced features. At no extra cost. For me, Visual Basic 2005 means I also have a way to let my students return to a fun example that uses something as simple as the TextFieldParser object. We can return to this nice application quite easily. I might even be able to squeeze in victory sounds. Can't wait to spring this on the students.
That is, sometime after VB 2005 is released. Maybe I'll let them struggle through the SPLIT function way of doing things? Yes! I'll make them type out those massive Win API calls, same as I had to do. When I was a beginning VB coder, that's all we had—and we were happy to have it. Might even force my students into some inline Assembler or C coding to make up for older VB inabilities. Make them code 30 miles to class, in the snow, as a character-building experience?
Okay, maybe legacy VB wasn't as easy as I thought it was. Visual Basic 2005 just may be the easiest, most fully featured Visual Basic yet, and those My objects just may give you a speed dialer into advanced .NET functions long hidden in the Framework itself...
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