The VB.NET Information Center is one of my newest sites and is under development (August, 2007) in parallel with my C# and Visual C++ sites. I've decided to learn all three of the languages and to build web sites for each to help others benefit from the experience.

This introductory page covers the basic resources available from Microsoft to help you get the most out of VB.NET. The topics covered include:

Downloading VB.NET Microsoft Registration Getting Started VS Express Edition Home Page

Beginner Developer Learning Center Kids Corner Express Editions Forums Microsoft Developers Network

The changes in available programming languages over the last several years have caused me to decide to move away from VB6, which I have been reasonably happy with. Now, the question is which language to learn? Since I'm an independent programmer, I don't have any requirement to stick with a single language, hence the decision to learn several, starting with the .NET family of C#, VB.NET, and VC++. I'm certain that I'll follow up with Java, PHP and ASP. I'm already experienced with JavaScript and Perl.

There's an old saying that "It's a poor carpenter who blames his tools!". I'm guessing I'll find this to be true with languages. I've always believed that a good programmer can make any language sing, whereas a weak programmer will struggle with the best of languages.

As part of my learning experience I'll be putting together a comparison of the languages. It's barely begun and I'd be very interesting in any work anyone else has done in this area.

Part of the comparison will include the creation of snippets in each language, starting with what I've identified as the Top 100 Code Snippets found in my freeware code librarian.