Cool VB.NET Features I Wish I Knew on Day One

Introduction to a series on cool VB.NET features that newbies might easily overlook.

My programming career has come full circle.  The first programming language I used was BASIC on the TRS-80 around 1978 and I’ve spent a lot of hours over the last 6 years writing code in VB.NET.  It’s hard to believe I’ve been writing code for almost 40 years!

Over those 6 years of writing in VB.NET, I’ve had quite a few moments where I said, “Darn! I wish I had known that when I started.”  I’m writing this multi-part series with the hope of helping out at least one VB.NET newbie.  I’m not going to give you a full class on these features–just an introduction to them to pique your interest enough to further investigate them and possibly add them to your programming toolbox.

Some of the features I’m going to talk about are:

• Nullable Type
• Extension Methods
• With
• List Of(t)

My initial plan was to write just one article, but as I started writing about nullable types, I realized that I should probably devote an entire article to each of the features.  I’m sure as I start writing these articles, I will start to have more ideas, so this list may grow.

My focus in these articles will follow one of my core programming beliefs–less lines of code are better as long as clarity and maintainability don’t suffer.  I promise I won’t be like a co-worker of mine from 25 years ago who used to see how he could take 10 lines of C and turn them into a line or two.