We've avoided any talk about Namespaces, however they serve an important role in the .NET Framework Class Library as well as in our custom class libraries we may choose to create. We explain how Namespaces allow us to disambiguate classes that may share the same name. Additionally, we explain how the .NET Framework Class Library is so large that including all it's classes in every application you write is a waste of system resources. To mitigate that need, the FCL is split into multiple assemblies (.dll files) that must be included (or rather, referenced) by your project to be utilized in your applications. We discuss how certain project templates include those references to the typical assemblies required by a given type of application (such as a web application versus a Windows form application). We demonstrate this by referencing a custom assembly I created to parse the HTML from a web page for display in a Console window.
Full course outline:
- Mod 01: Series Introduction
- Mod 02: Installing Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop
- Mod 03: Creating Your First Visual Basic Program
- Mod 04: Dissecting the First Visual Basic Program You Created
- Mod 05: Quick Overview of the Visual Basic Express Edition IDE
- Mod 06: Declaring Variables and Assigning Values
- Mod 07: Branching with the If..Then..Else Decision Statement
- Mod 08: Operators, Expressions and Statements
- Mod 09: For..Next Iterations
- Mod 10: Creating Arrays of Values
- Mod 11: Creating and Calling Simple Overloaded Helper Methods
- Mod 12: While Iterations and Reading Data from a Text File
- Mod 13: Working with Strings
- Mod 14: Working with Dates
- Mod 15: Understanding and Creating Classes
- Mod 16: More about Classes and Methods
- Mod 17: Working with Classes and Inheritances in the .NET Framework Class Library
- Mod 18: Understanding Namespaces and Adding References to Assemblies
- Mod 19: Understanding Modules, Scope and Utilizing Accessibility Modifiers
- Mod 20: Enumerations and the switch Decision Statement
- Mod 21: Gracefully Handling Exceptions
- Mod 22: Working with Collections
- Mod 23: Filtering and Managing Data in Collections using LINQ
- Mod 24: Understanding Event Driven Programming
- Mod 25: Getting Familiar with the My Namespace
- Mod 26: Where To Go From Here
