Basic Language Concepts
      Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 is a rich programming language that uses the entire spectrum of object-oriented programming (OOP) features plus many extensions peculiar to the Microsoft .NET environment. The problem in writing a book about this language is that all these features are tightly related to one another, so it’s virtually impossible to examine each feature one at a time without also describing the others. For example, even though I won’t discuss classes and inheritance until later in the book, in this chapter I need to provide at least an overview of how they work.
      The code samples in this chapter assume that you have created a Console project and will take their input from and display their result in the command-line window (the black window where you can enter commands for the operating system). You can create a Console project by choosing New Project on the File menu and selecting Console Application in the New Project dialog box. I use a console window
       [cmp1]rather than a regular form[cmp2], which surely makes my demos less appealing but enables me to focus on the code rather than the user interface, which isn’t the topic of this chapter.
