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.

The Visual Basic Version of Hello World!

Provides a step-by-step recreation of the classic program "Hello World," redone in Visual Basic .NET.

Visual Basic Naming Conventions

Includes general guidelines for naming procedures, constants, variables, arguments, and objects.

Breaking and Combining Statements in Code

Shows how to divide long statements into multiple lines and combine short statements on one line.

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.

Conditional Compilation

Provides links to topics about how to compile particular blocks of code selectively while directing the compiler to ignore others.

Related Sections

Typographic and Code Conventions

Provides standard coding conventions for Visual Basic .NET.

Coding Techniques and Programming Practices

Provides an overview of coding techniques throughout Visual Studio .NET.

Editing Code, HTML, and Text

Provides an overview of the Visual Studio .NET Code Editor.