PART 5
Selected Topics
There is a saying that in order to ask a question, you must already know 80 percent of the answer.
I don't know if this is true, but I do know that knowledge is a pyramid, that newly learned knowledge must be based on what you already know. This is one of the reasons I prefer to avoid writing "tips and techniques" books. They do have value, but they are no substitute for learning from the fundamentals up. If you learn an advanced technique, you know that technique. If you make the extra effort to learn the technology on which that technique is based, including how and why it works, you will know more than the technique. You will be able to build on it to develop your own solutions. When trouble occurs, you'll be able to figure out why the technique doesn't work and fix the problem. You'll be able to develop and discover new approaches to solving problems on your own. You will be able to derive variations on the technique and take full advantage of them from the earliest design stages of your project.
This book was written with this philosophy in mind. Every chapter was designed as much as possible to build on the knowledge gained in earlier chapters. The entire book was intended from the start to build on the knowledge you already have, both from programming Visual Basic and from reading the Microsoft Visual Basic documentation. Much of the general information presented at the beginning of the book applied to all of the component types discussed in later chapters. This information formed the foundation on which the component-specific chapters were built.
But there is another type of general information. This is information that also applies to every type of component but that requires a good understanding of all of the component types to use effectively. Which brings us to this final part of the book. In the following brief, but important chapters, you'll find selected topics that apply to all of the component types.
Enjoy…
