Hi

I teach programming and I am teaching a class in VB.NET. Until two weeks ago I was 'playing with VB2008' and we had VB6 at the college where I teach, now they have installed VB.Net 2002. I start teaching next week so must move on FAST.

I have now re-created most of my worked examples and worksheets, notes are 'in progress'.

I have noticed one or two things I do not understand.

Several times I have 'lost work' I am 100% sure I did not delete any of the 'windows generated code'.

I think after completing an example and got it working I started to rename controls from default (form1, textbox1 et al) to naming convention names (to set a good example).
What happened the form view and code view disappeared. So I could correct nothing.
I think my students will do the same trick whatever it was! All renaming was done in the IDE using properties.
How I create my examples.
1. write a small program to demonstrate say how to code a combo box.
2. copy (1) and change foldername from combobox combobox_props an example showing setting up combobox list items using properties.
3. copy (1) and change foldername from combobox combobox_Code and change code / properties to setup the list items in code.
4. copy (1) and change foldername from combobox combobox_run allowing user to change the combo box items at run time.
The problem occurs when I try to take the renaming beyond the folder level and down into the project.

Pat

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Pat

Can you verify that you are working with VB.NET 2002? I ask because the behavior of the code files is different when you jump to 2005 and up.

And I'm curious why 2002 and not 2003, 2005, or 2008? Seems odd for a college to be 6 years behind the curve.

-Peter
peterlanoie.blog

Sorry for delay, I have been very busy.

OK yes the college still uses 2002, I have 2003 and 2008 at home.
The college is small and does not have a lot of money, also I think the management regard IT as a problem area, IT students are noisy and hang around playing with electronic devises; are independent get poor results because they leave for well paid jobs but before the exams, so are deemed to fail.

I have managed not to loose more work, mostly by I think by not having too many changes waiting to be saved. This also means if the worse happens I do not loose too much.

My main worry is why version 2003 so soon after 2002 - makes me think of bugs, not a service pack but a new version! The college have had .Net since the start but it was not installed until this year - I have been asking for it for at least 5 years.


Pat

Pat,

Regarding the money issue, all the major Visual Studio flavors (C#, VB.NET, C++, Web Developer) come in a free version since 2005. These are the Express editions. They lack the types of things that you need and benefit from in a commercial environment such as source control and web project files, but in an educational setting they should be more than adequate for .NET instruction. And you can't beat the price. There is even an express version of SQL Server 2005 and its management studio application. Again, they lack enterprise level functionality but are more than suitable for learning.

-Peter
peterlanoie.blog

I agree with what you say, and will try and get an express version installed.

Now I am more familiar with the interface I am happy I can operate without loss of work.

I was very surprised and happy at first to discover that .net was good at renaming, however it is not perfect, for example rename a form with a database connection, data adapter and dataset controls then there is a need to regenerate the dataset - then one exists but cannot be used as it is connected to the 'old' form name, a new one means a new dataset name.
I cannot now recall exactly what happened, it is possible that at this point I did something wrong to clear compile errors that then occur eg. rename all - or at least too much - dataset-old-name to dataset-new-name.

Pat