VB.NET object programming with classes
The .NET Framework Class Library is an object-oriented library consisting of thousands of system and application types (classes, structures, interfaces, delegates, and enumerations) organized in namespaces. The namespaces and types of the .NET FCL offer a wide range of functionality, from wrappers to classic Win32 API functions to diagnostics and debugging to input/output to data access, Windows forms programming, and web application and web service development. In fact, most of the "intrinsic" functions and procedures that are part of the VB.NET language are implemented as members of classes in the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace.
Read Section 1.9 of VB.NET Language Pocket Reference from O'Reilly Media for an overview of object programming in VB.NET.
Classes in .NET contain all kinds of declarative information that describes how the class works. Modifiers like Public, Private, and Friend describe the accessibility of a class, field, or method. Attributes like MustInherit, NotInheritable, and Overrides describe the inheritance- and polymorphic-related behaviors that a class exhibits. Also, data can be declared as a specific type.
To learn more about classes in VB.NET, read Section 7.4 of Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET from O'Reilly Media.
