How to learn programming without going to college

I'm by no means an expert, I started like you with reading books though, and the best advice I had been given was find an app that you want and make it. Because of that I made an app that sent me an e-mail when the my computers IP address changed. Worked great until I came across DynDSN and began using that...

Reading books and meandering through forums is definitely a step in the right direction.

I'd recommend familiarizing yourself with the terminology and their uses for most of the framework. Such as constructors, destructors, interfaces, attributes, generics, inheritance, and modifiers (i.e.: Friend, Protected), etc. No need to worry about trying to become "efficient" (for lack of a better word) but be able to look through the code and understand what it's doing. When you don't know what's going on (and it's not sloppy code) then look up what's causing the problem.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any VB .Net sources off the top of my head to direct you to, but there are tons of tutorials found through Google.

Hey,just wanna consult any expert,currently i'm studying visual basic.NET myself by using this book "Sybex Mastering Visual Basic 2008",all i wanted to know is i can't find any task or homework to evaluate how well my understanding to it,of course,i'm not like some other people who just read over the book,and copy paste the code,i've try understand it and try to alter something to see the effect,so is there any method to boost my skills?? THANK YOU^^

Hi caramel,

First of all , I would Like to say, that Learning is a life long process... No one is expert... Every1 keeps learning something or other at avery step of life..being it Programming or anything..
You want to increase your Vb.NET skills,
:- just think any real world problem or any other problem suggested in your book..
:- try to modify it as per your need, or just think if someone else cumes to you for some problem in vb.net , what will be his need, his requirements.
:- after considering the problem try to work on it,try programming that you have learned till now..
May be if you will get stuck somewhere...post the problem(with your efforts) here on DANIWEB... and you will surely get the help..

and this way slowly n steadily you will also become an (what u say) Expert... :) :)

Thanks for all the advices,but still a long way for me to finish the book,i just started chapter 2,variables and data types,any advice???THANK YOU

I'm studying infinity and NAN,quite confuse with it =.=.........

Am new to VB.net.so far i've only created one application using the code from the book(sams Teach Yourself VB 2008 in 24 hours written by James Foxall) do you think am on the right track? or what do you have 2 say

I learned VB6 in college (last semester) and then learned vb.net from my knowledge from VB6 but I am by no means an "expert".. I am trying to read a book on how to teach myself C and C++ but for some reasons I cant do the books well.. I feel the books have alotta hoopla that is just filler to fill up pages.. i want a straight to the point, how to whip out code.. But heres programs I did at college in the beggining anyway.. I made a program that has a smiley face and when you click it it becomes a frown face.. and when you click the frown face it becomes a smiley.. Also, you can do programs that help the if then statements and select case and all that other good stuff.. Like for one example, it was calculate the cost of shipping.. And its like to NY its 1.50 dollar per lb.. To NJ its 1 dollar per lb and to anywhere else its 2 dollars per lb.. Stuff like that if you just wanna bs..

Hey,just wanna consult any expert,currently i'm studying visual basic.NET myself by using this book "Sybex Mastering Visual Basic 2008",all i wanted to know is i can't find any task or homework to evaluate how well my understanding to it,of course,i'm not like some other people who just read over the book,and copy paste the code,i've try understand it and try to alter something to see the effect,so is there any method to boost my skills?? THANK YOU^^

Yes there is! start a project and creat a program, if you know how to do it then you undestand the language. Even if you have to copy code it does not means you don't undestand. There are so much to know in these languages even the experts can't have to refer sometimes. as you do programs the lessons stick. hope that help!