A short description of Basic

Read the text, try to understand it.

BASIC is a general-purpose high-level programming language, originally designed to develop programs in conversational mode. The name BASIC stands for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. This language is found on most microcomputers because it is user-friendly and easy to learn.

BASIC consists of two main parts: the source language statements – the instructions which form the program – and the system commands which allows us to control and edit a program.

BASIC enables the user to interact with the program while it is being executed which means that data can be input while the program is running. Each instruction is given a line number which defines the logical sequence of statements within the program. Some well-known system commands in BASIC are: RUN, which executes a program held in a BASIC file; LIST, which prints a listing of a program on the screen; and DELETE, which removes a program from a file.

A large number of PC manufacturers adopted BASIC. At present, however, there are so many versions and extensions that programs written for one type of PC are not directly portable to another.

Visual Basic

A short description of Basic - student2.ru If you are new to Visual Basic, or even new to programming, this is the place! Visual Basic from the very ground up will be explained. The first thing you need to know about programming is that it is not magic. The TV and movie plots where the computer is scheming, thinking, entity are completely wrong. If a computer doesn’t have instructions to do something, it will not do anything. Your task as a programmer is to provide those instructions. The flip side if this is that if it is not doing what you intend, then it is because the instructions that it was given were wrong.

The main flaw in this is that you do not give the computer all of the instructions. It gets a lot of them from other programmers at other times in the form of software like the compiler (the program that turns a ‘programming language’ like Visual Basic into instructions that the computer can actually understand), the operating system (the program that turns things like your keystrokes into instructions that the computer can actually understand), and software objects (little packages of self contained program code that do things that a lot of people need).

Think of creating a Visual Basic program like baking a cake: you mix ingredients together, bake them, and pull a cake out of the oven. Similarly, you put forms, modules, and controls together, compile them, and get a Visual Basic application.

What is a Visual Basic Project?

A project is the thing you use to create an application, such as a «traditional» program, a dynamic link library, or an ActiveX control.

In Visual Basic, a project is the group of all the files that make up your program. These might include forms, modules (blocks of code not attached to a form), graphics, and ActiveX controls.

The first thing to keep in mind about a project is that as you create your program, each form, module, graphic, and ActiveX control is saved as an individual file (see a Table).

Common file types in a Visual Basic 6 project

File Type Description

FRM Form

BAS Module

FRX Automatically generated file for every graphic in your project

OCX ActiveX control

CLS Class module

VBP Visual Basic project

Detailed information about all your program’s files is stored in the project file. The project file lists all the files your program uses. Project files have the extension VBP.

You can keep track of all the files in your project with the Project Explorer. The Project Explorer provides a method to organize your project’s files and allows you to access them individually in form or code view.

Every time you run Visual Basic, you will see the New Project dialog. From this window, you can simply select the type of project you want to create. It is also possible to start a new project while Visual Basic is already running.

When you save your project, you actually save each individual part of your project as an individual file, and save the project file itself. When you save your project for the first time, Visual Basic automatically suggests a name for each file. This filename will be the same as the name of the form, with an appropriate extension for the type of file you are saving (refer to the Table). Thus, a module named modStart would be named modStart.bas because modules have the extension.bas.

Often, your programs will require more than one form or module. You can add new files to your project in two ways: by selecting the file type (such as form or module) that you want to add from the Project menu, or by adding files from the Project Explorer.

Visual Basic 6 allows you to work more than one project at a time. As you might imagine, working with multiple forms and modules that are used in different projects can get pretty confusing. To keep track of everything, you can use the Project Explorer and a project group, which is a collection of projects. Project groups can be saved as a file, just like a form, module, or project.

The words to the text:

conversational – разговорный

to consist of – состоять из

to allow – позволять, разрешать

to edit – редактировать

to enable – позволять, давать возможность

to define – определять

screen – экран

extension – расширение, распространение

portable – переносной, передвижной

to scheme – замышлять, планировать

entity – реальное существование,
реальность, сущность