Program Structure and Code Conventions (Visual Basic)

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.

• References and the Imports Statement (Visual Basic)
  Discusses how to reference objects in other assemblies.

• Namespaces in Visual Basic
  Describes how namespaces organize objects within assemblies.

• 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 in Visual Basic
  Describes how to compile particular blocks of code selectively while directing the compiler to ignore others.

• How to: Break and Combine Statements in Code (Visual Basic)
  Shows how to divide long statements into multiple lines and combine short statements on one line.

• How to: Collapse and Hide Sections of Code (Visual Basic)
  Shows how to collapse and hide sections of code in the Visual Basic code editor.

• How to: Label Statements (Visual Basic)
  Shows how to mark a line of code to identify it for use with statements such as On Error Goto.

• Special Characters in Code (Visual Basic)
  Shows how and where to use non-numeric and non-alphabetic characters.

• Comments in Code (Visual Basic)
  Discusses how to add descriptive comments to your code.

• Keywords as Element Names in Code (Visual Basic)
  Describes how to use brackets ([]) to delimit variable names that are also Visual Basic keywords.

• Me, My, MyBase, and MyClass in Visual Basic
  Describes various ways to refer to elements of a Visual Basic program.

• Visual Basic Limitations
  Discusses the removal of known coding limits within Visual Basic.

Related Sections

• Typographic and Code Conventions (Visual Basic)
  Provides standard coding conventions for Visual Basic.

• Editing Text, Code, and Markup
  Provides an overview of the Visual Studio Code Editor.