Question Code repository and "mini applications"?

[gbalcom]

Hi everyone,
I'm new to this forum. I'm trying to learn VB.NET and visual studio. I've programmed for years in VBA within Access, as a Power user. But stepping up to VB.net as my first "real" programming language. I have a few questions below, just to point me in the right direction. I'm walking through a book now trying to learn.


What is GitHub or a Code repository? I'm thinking this would allow me to code at home, or at work without missing a beat?


It seems projects can be "mini applications" that can be used inside one or several solutions? So, you can work on a block of functionality, then utilize it in several applications?


I noticed the sticky on samples, I'll download that and peruse the code when I can.


Moderator: I tried to find a "Newbies" type of forum, but couldn't. Please move if necessary.

 

[jmcilhinney]

What is GitHub or a Code repository? I'm thinking this would allow me to code at home, or at work without missing a beat?

What do you not understand about the information provided about GitHub on, for example, Wikipedia? Always look for existing information first, rather than asking people to repeat what can already found with a web search. If there's something specific that you then don't understand, ask about that specifically.

It seems projects can be "mini applications" that can be used inside one or several solutions? So, you can work on a block of functionality, then utilize it in several applications?

There's no "mini applications". Each project builds into an output. That output is most often an EXE, which is an application, or a DLL, which is a library. Reusable functionality is generally built into libraries and you can then reference those libraries in other projects to use that functionality. For instance, the .NET Framework includes the System.Windows.Forms.dll library, which encapsulates all the functionality required to build Windows Forms applications. Whenever you create a WinForms application project, that library will be referenced in order to get the Control class and all the derived control classes, e.g. Form.

Note that the WinForms DLL itself makes use of other libraries for more fundamental functionality. If you were, for instance, to create a custom control that you wanted to use in multiple projects, you would build a DLL that referenced the WinForms DLL and then your other projects would reference your DLL.

What I've mentioned above involves referencing compiled output in a project. It is more unusual but you can also add a project to multiple solutions and then edit it in more than one place. For instance, let's say that you're building two separate applications at the same time and also a common library whose functionality will grow as you build the applications. You might create two solutions - one for each application - and add a new library project to one of them, then add that existing library project to the other solution. That means that you can now edit your library project when working on either application. There's only one copy of the library project on disk though, so any changes made in one solution will be reflected in the other too.

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

Hi everyone,
I'm new to this forum. I'm trying to learn VB.NET and visual studio. I've programmed for years in VBA within Access, as a Power user. But stepping up to VB.net as my first "real" programming language. I have a few questions below, just to point me in the right direction. I'm walking through a book now trying to learn.


What is GitHub or a Code repository? I'm thinking this would allow me to code at home, or at work without missing a beat?


It seems projects can be "mini applications" that can be used inside one or several solutions? So, you can work on a block of functionality, then utilize it in several applications?


I noticed the sticky on samples, I'll download that and peruse the code when I can.


Moderator: I tried to find a "Newbies" type of forum, but couldn't. Please move if necessary.

GitHub is a code repository and a code repository is a system where you check in your code as it's developed. It allows multiple developers (though it's good tool even for a single developer to use too) but it also offers other features like change tracking (you can pull out all of the code from a certain revision or date) and because most simply use a type of url to access you can usually set it up to be available from anywhere, so long as you know the url and your login credentials. One of the nice things about GitHub is that it's a free service, the downside of GitHub is that your repository is public to everyone (at least read access is public, checking code in might be more restricted).