Visual Basic .NET Class Design Handbook

Since the announcement of Visual Basic .NET, a lot has been made of its powerful new object-oriented features. However, very little discussion has been devoted to the practice of object-oriented programming at its most fundamental level - that is, building classes. The truth is, whatever code you write in Visual Basic .NET, you are writing classes that fall within the class hierarchy of the .NET Framework. Visual Basic .NET Class Design Handbook was conceived as a guide to help you design these classes effectively, by looking at what control we have over our classes, and how Visual Basic .NET turns our class definitions into executable code.

Ask anyone: designing effective classes that you do not have to revisit and revise over and over again is an art. This Handbook, the first in the series, aims to give you a deep and thorough understanding of the implications of all the decisions you can make in designing a class, so you are equipped to develop classes that are robust, flexible and reusable.

Chapter 1: Defining Types, investigates the role of Types in .NET and the different kinds of Types available to you. Chapter 2: Type Members, explains how Visual Basic .NET defines type members. Chapter 3: Methods, explores the fundamental role of methods as containers of program logic. Chapter 4: Constructors and the Object Lifecycle, introduces the role of Constructors and their effective use in addition to Object cleanup and disposal. Chapter 5: Properties, explains when and how to use properties and indexers to encapsulate data. Chapter 6: Events and Delegates, introduces the .NET events system and how it works. Chapter 7: Inheritance and Polymorphism, investigates how to control and exploit inheritance in our Types. Chapter 8: Code Organisation and Metadata, explains how to logically and physically organise code through namespaces and assemblies