Designed as a beginner's tutorial to the latest version of Visual Basic, this informative guide discusses the most important features of the language and teaches how to use the .NET Framework. Written with clarity and readability in mind, it introduces important programming concepts and explains the process of building real-world applications, both desktop and web-based. With the most comprehensive coverage possible in a book for beginners, it includes such topics as VB language syntax, object-oriented programming, working with numbers and dates, error handling, input output, generics, annotations, database access, security, and application deployment.