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Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) is an object-oriented, event-driven programming language. If you already program in Java or C#, you know what this means and you can skip this article. If you don't, keep reading.

An object-oriented programming language is one that is based on reusable objects. Object-oriented programming allows you to define an object once and use it in multiple programs. Common Visual Basic objects, such as Forms and controls are good examples of how object-oriented programming can save a lot of work. For example, instead of manually writing the code to draw a drop-down list box on the screen, you can use the Visual Basic ComboBox control each time you need that functionality.

Visual Basic wasn't always an object-oriented language. Versions earlier than VB.NET did not support inheritance. Inheritance is an important tenant of object-oriented programming that allows one object to inherit functionality defined by another object. Let's go back to the example of the ComboBox control. The ComboBox control is defined by the ComboBox class (a class is like a template that defines the behavior of an object). The ComboBox class inherits from the ListControl class, which in turn inherits from the Control class. This means that instead of writing code to implement every single feature the ComboBox needs to do, the developer could allow it to use the implementation provided by either the ListControl or the Control class. In turn, you could create a control that inherited from the ComboBox class. You would only need to write code to provide the functionality unique to your control. Any functionality implemented by the parent classes would automatically be there.

An event-driven programming language is one in which objects "listen" for events. An event can be something a user does, like clicking on a button, or it can be sent by the operating system, for example loading an object into memory. Event-driven programming allows users to interact with a program's features in any order. The programmer simply associates code with a specific event.

Another concept you will heard mentioned with regards to VB.NET is that it generates "managed code". Managed code is code that is loaded and controlled by the .NET Framework Common Language Runtime (CLR). With managed code, the programmer does not need to worry about cleaning up objects and removing them from memory because the CLR takes care of those details for you.

These are the basic concepts to get you started using VB.NET. However, there are many more important concepts you will need to learn as you begin to write Visual Basic applications.

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