Chapter 3. Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming
In this chapter, we present a brief and succinct introduction to object-oriented programming. Since this is not a book on object-oriented programming per se, we will confine our attention to those topics that are important to VB .NET programming.
Why Learn Object-Oriented Techniques?
As you may know, Visual Basic has implemented some features of object-oriented programming since Version 4. However, in terms of object-orientation, the move from Version 6 to VB .NET has been dramatic. Many people did not consider VB 6 (or earlier versions) to be a truly object-oriented programming language. Whatever your thoughts may have been on this matter, it seems clear that VB .NET is an object-oriented programming language by any reasonable definition of the term.
You may be saying to yourself: “I prefer not to use object-oriented techniques in my programming.” This is something you could easily have gotten away with in VB 6. But in VB .NET, the structure of the .NET Framework—specifically the .NET Base Class Library—as well as the documentation, is so object-oriented that you can no longer avoid understanding the basics of object-orientation, even if you decide not to use them in your applications.
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