Program Structure and Code Conventions
This section introduces the typical Visual Basic program structure, provides a simple Visual Basic program, "Hello, World", and discusses Visual Basic code conventions. Code conventions are suggestions that focus not on a program's logic but on its physical structure and appearance. Following them makes your code easier to read, understand, and maintain. Code conventions can include, among others:
Standardized formats for labeling and commenting code.
Guidelines for spacing, formatting, and indenting code.
Naming conventions for objects, variables, and procedures.
The following topics present a set of programming guidelines for Visual Basic programs, along with examples of good usage.
In This Section
- Structure of a Visual Basic Program
Provides an overview of the elements that make up a Visual Basic program.
- Visual Basic Version of Hello, World
Provides a step-by-step recreation of the classic program "Hello World," redone in Visual Basic.
- Main Procedure in Visual Basic
Discusses the procedure that serves as the starting point and overall control for your application.
- Visual Basic Naming Conventions
Includes general guidelines for naming procedures, constants, variables, arguments, and objects.
- Visual Basic Coding Conventions
Reviews the guidelines used in developing the samples in this documentation.
- Conditional Compilation (Visual Basic)
Provides links to topics about how to compile particular blocks of code selectively while directing the compiler to ignore others.
- How to: Break and Combine Statements in Code
Shows how to divide long statements into multiple lines and combine short statements on one line.
- How to: Label Statements
Shows how to mark a line of code to identify it for use with statements such as On Error Goto.
- Special Characters in Code
Shows how and where to use non-numeric and non-alphabetic characters.
- Comments in Code
Discusses how to add descriptive comments to your code.
- Visual Basic Limitations
Discusses the removal of known coding limits within Visual Basic.
Related Sections
- Typographic and Code Conventions
Provides standard coding conventions for Visual Basic.
- Editing Text, Code, and Markup
Provides an overview of the Visual Studio Code Editor.