visual basic 6 in microsoft office xp

[Borgster]

i have microsoft office xp professional, and i have been using the built in visual basic editor that microsoft put in office xp to sort of learn how to do vb coding. i have heard people say that the visual basic program in microsoft office is very slimmed down then the enterprise version. i am trying to learn visual basic, and i thought since i already had office installed i should use the built in vb6 in office.

can you do a whole lot in the built in visual basic in office? i want to learn how to program a little bit, so im looking somewere to start.

[aqlo]

Yes you can do a whole lot in VBA, you can in fact teach yourself VB like you want to. What you can't do very effectively is to create distributable software, you will need to steal the real package for that. So after you have learned enough in VBA you will be ready to move on to real VB and also some ASP.

PS hey here is a forum also
http://www.visualbasicforum.com/

[Borgster]

hey thanks a bunch. i hope i catch on to vb pretty quick, i heard its the best language to learn for beginners. i have done a little bit of qbasic, but this is not the same thing its more up to date. when you say you can't make distributed software using microsoft's office vb editor i cant make an executable for other people to install on there computers? i will do some research on google for beginners guide's to visual basic. im trying to think of something simple to do for my first project. anyone got some suggestions?

[aqlo]

To start off with, you never really compile an .exe with any VB even though I know it says that's what you do. See it's a B language (Basic) meaning that the script you write is then interpreted by the language components themself. In the case of VB it's that wretched vbrunxx.dll that really does the work, your .exe that you make is really just your script encoded like a resource into a generic dll-interface image. With me so far?

So VBA expects for whatever Office functions you use to still be available wherever it goes, but not everybody has Excel or Word or whatever so if you were to take your code you made in VBA "as is" and compile it with the real VB6, it still wouldn't be easily distributable. Follow me?

One of my friends is telling me that his edition of VBA6 from Office does allow him to "compile" but not to .exe files. Apparently he is making .dll files that function as plug-ins for Office. But in order to even come close to producing real software, i e an installable .exe in a little package with the vbrun and any data files included, you will need real VB. Good luck!

[Borgster]

thanks a bunch for the information. i got every bit of that. follow me :P i heard that my brother does the same thing with office (he has the same version as i do), he makes add ons for ms office to go with his job.

is there any other languages i should look into besides vb for beginners? what about visual c? is that a little harder than visual basic? i think the c language may be a little more robust than visual basic, since i have seen programs be ported, and coded under c to windows and linux.

[aqlo]

C languages are really compiled, meaning that whatever functions and libraries you use can be included right in the program, you can also do a heck of a lot more with it faster and using less memory and a million other good things. But it's harder to learn, it's all about punctuation and doing things in the shortest workable way.

If you do study C itself go with Visual C++ and everything you do with the GUI like dragging a button over or whatever go and view the code to see what you have really made. You should be doing the same thing with your VBA already, record a macro or make a form or whatever and then go into the editor and view the actual code. It seems like a chore but it will help you to learn how things have to be done, this will help later when you are writing your own functions or procedures or whatever.

If you don't know html and javascript and asp and java go on over to webmonkey and start teaching yourself, you can be a hireable programmer in mere minutes.