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Bruce
McKinney says farewell to Visual Basic, but not before he has one last
fling with a few flames, apologies, bug fixes, advice, and some bits of
technical information
Saying Goodbye to
Hardcore Visual Basic
by Bruce McKinney
In two well-received
editions of Hardcore Visual Basic (Microsoft Press, 1997, ISBN:
1-57231-422-2), Bruce McKinney has penetrated, mastered, and explained the
details of Visual Basic to developers. When he began the preparation for a
third edition based on VB6, however, he reevaluated his relationship with
the language. In this article he updates the second edition of his book,
explains why there won't be a third edition, and tells his audience why he
and Visual Basic must part company.
Contents
A
Hardcore Declaration of Independence
How a visit to Delphi
confirmed my preference for and disappointment in Visual Basic
Why I became weary of my favorite language
How I was
seduced into a third edition despite reservations
How and why I selected a co-author
My foolish plan for minor enhancements
How the
Third Edition died a horrible death amid flames of incompatibility
Why Visual Basic rejected
my type library with extreme prejudice
How I fixed the type library to no avail
How compatibility died a mysterious death, but
was resurrected
How a component almost fell victim to the Dialog
Box From Hell
Why GDI API calls meet their match in AutoRedraw
forms
How build bugs bedeviled but could not block
sample compilation
How one last bug stopped the final build
The
decline and fall of documenation
Bug
Fixes, Corrections, and Additions
How to get the sample
programs
Installation for VB6
Installation for VB5
Directory organization
It's not my fault
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Author Bio
Other Code
and Type Library Fixes
Appendix
A. The Dictionary Class
Not Just a Better
Collection
Associative Arrays and Dictionaries
Arrays, Strings, and Variants
Appendix
B. VB Strings and Pointer Arithmetic
How String Data is Stored
Toggling Case
Programming With B - -
Make It Right Before You Make It Fast
Do It Faster with the API
A First Try With ANSI APIs
Working On Byte Arrays Rather Than Strings
Forget the String, Just Use the Byte Array
What About the Algorithm?
Using the SHLWAPI Library
Searching Strings
Backward
Back To Code Review
Split Sucks
Hacking for Portability
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