Contents
Teaching Approach
Visual Basic 2005 How to Program, 3/e contains a rich collection of examples that have been tested on Windows XP. The book concentrates on the principles of good software engineering and stresses program clarity. We avoid arcane terminology and syntax specifications in favor of teaching by example. We are educators who teach leading-edge topics in industry classrooms worldwide. Dr. Harvey M. Deitel has 22 years of college teaching experience and 17 years of industry teaching experience. Paul Deitel has 14 years of industry teaching experience. The Deitels have taught courses at all levels to government, industry, military and academic clients of Deitel & Associates.
Learning Visual Basic via the Live-Code Approach
Visual Basic 2005 How to Program, 3/e is loaded with live-code examples—each new concept is presented in the context of a complete working Visual Basic application that is immediately followed by one or more sample executions showing the program's inputs and outputs. This style exemplifies the way we teach and write about programming. We call this method of teaching and writing the "live-code" approach.
All of the source-code examples for Visual Basic 2005 How to Program, 3/e, (and for our other publications) are available for download from :
www.deitel.com/books/vbhtp3
www.prenhall.com/deitel
Site registration is quick and easy. Download all the examples, then run each program as you read the corresponding text discussions. Making changes to the examples and immediately seeing the effects of those changes is a great way to enhance your Visual Basic learning experience.
Objectives
Each chapter begins with a statement of objectives. This lets students know what to expect and gives them an opportunity, after reading the chapter, to determine if they have met these objectives.
Quotations
The learning objectives are followed by quotations. Some are humorous, philosophical or offer interesting insights. We hope that you will enjoy relating the quotations to the chapter material. Many of the quotations are worth a second look after reading the chapter.
Outline
The chapter outline helps students approach the material in a top-down fashion, so they can anticipate what is to come, and set a comfortable and effective learning pace.
16,452 Lines of Code in 220 Example Programs (with Program Outputs)
Our live-code programs range in size from just a few lines of code to substantial examples containing hundreds of lines of code (e.g., our ATM system implementation contains 597 lines of code). Each program is followed by screenshots of the outputs produced when the program is run, so you can confirm that the programs run as expected. Our programs demonstrate the diverse features of Visual Basic. The code is syntax colored, with Visual Basic keywords, comments and other program text emphasized with variations of bold, italic and gray text. This makes reading the code easier, especially in the larger programs.
822 Illustrations/Figures
An abundance of charts, tables, line drawings, programs and program outputs is included. We model the flow of control in control statements with UML activity diagrams. UML class diagrams model the fields, constructors and methods of classes. We use additional types of UML diagrams throughout our optional OOD/UML ATM case study.
378 Programming Tips
We include programming tips to help students focus on important aspects of program development. We highlight these tips in the form of Good Programming Practices , Common Programming Errors , Error-Prevention Tips, Look-and-Feel Observations , Performance Tips , Portability Tips and Software Engineering Observations . These tips and practices represent the best we have gleaned from a combined six decades of programming and teaching experience. One of our students—a mathematics major—told us that she feels this approach is like the highlighting of axioms, theorems and corollaries in mathematics books; it provides a basis on which to build good software.
Good Programming Practices
Good Programming Practices call attention to techniques that will help you produce programs that are clearer, more understandable and more maintainable.
Common Programming Errors
Students learning a language tend to make certain kinds of errors frequently. Pointing out these Common Programming Errors reduces the likelihood that readers will make the same mistakes.
Error-Prevention Tips
When we first designed this tip type, we thought the tips would contain suggestions for exposing bugs and removing them from programs. In fact, many of the tips describe aspects of Visual Basic that prevent bugs from getting into programs in the first place, thus simplifying the testing and debugging processes.
Look-and-Feel Observations
We provide Look-and-Feel Observations to highlight graphical-user-interface conventions. These observations help you design attractive, user-friendly graphical user interfaces that conform to industry norms.
Performance Tips
Students like to "turbo charge" their programs. We include Performance Tips that highlight opportunities for improving program performance—making programs run faster or minimizing the amount of memory that they occupy.
Portability Tips
We include Portability Tips to help you write portable code and to explain how Visual Basic achieves its high degree of portability.
Software Engineering Observations
The object-oriented programming paradigm necessitates a complete rethinking of the way we build software systems. Visual Basic is an effective language for achieving good software engineering. The Software Engineering Observations highlight architectural and design issues that affect the construction of software systems, especially large-scale systems.
Wrap-Up Section
Each chapter ends with a brief "wrap-up" section that recaps the chapter content and transitions to the next chapter.
Summary Bullets
Each chapter ends with additional pedagogical devices. We present a thorough, bullet-list-style summary of the chapter, section by section. This helps the students review and reinforce key concepts.
Terminology
We include an alphabetized list of the important terms defined in each chapter—again, for further reinforcement. Each term also appears in the index, and the defining occurrence of each term is highlighted in the index with a bold, blue page number so the student can locate the definitions of terms quickly.
Self-Review Exercises and Answers
Extensive self-review exercises and answers are included for self-study. This gives you a chance to build confidence with the material and prepare for the regular exercises. We encourage students to do all the self-review exercises and check their answers.
Exercises
Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises, including simple recall of important terminology and concepts; writing individual Visual Basic statements; writing small portions of Visual Basic methods and classes; writing complete Visual Basic methods, classes and applications and writing major term projects. The large number of exercises across a wide variety of areas enables instructors to tailor their courses to the unique needs of their classes and to vary course assignments each semester. Instructors can use these exercises to form homework assignments, short quizzes and/or major examinations. The solutions for the vast majority of the exercises are included in the Prentice Hall Instructor's Resource Center , which is available only to instructors through their Prentice Hall representatives. [NOTE: Please do not write to us requesting access to the Prentice Hall Instructor's Resource Center. Access is limited strictly to college instructors teaching from the book. Instructors may obtain access only through their Prentice Hall representatives.]
Approximately 5700 Index Entries
We have included an extensive index which is especially useful to developers who use the book as a reference.
"Double Indexing" of Visual Basic Live-Code Examples
Visual Basic 2005 How to Program, 3/e has 220 live-code examples, which we have double indexed. For every source-code program in the book, we indexed the figure caption both alphabetically and as a subindex item under "Examples." This makes it easier to find examples using particular features.