There are tons of programming languages around. Visual Basic is one of the easiest languages to learn for someone with no computer background. We guarantee than after the completion of our course and enough time spent at home students will have enough knowledge to understand and participate in writing programs in Visual Basic.

VB exists inside of many other programs, e.g. Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint (which are the parts of very popular MS Office suite of applications). This sort of Visual Basic is called Visual basic for Applications (VBA). A programmer who knows VB also knows VBA, thus having valuable skills in automating every-day office-type tasks in MS Office applications.

Microsoft Corporation, the company behind VB, has a near monopoly in operating systems (various versions of Windows are running on some 80% of all PCs in the world) is in extremely good shape. The history proves that Microsoft products slowly but surely win market share (examples are Excel, Word, Internet Explorer, SQL Server, Visual Basic, almost every Microsoft product). Bill Gates, the founder and CEO of Microsoft, created BASIC as a programming language when he started his company. Today VB has pretty high priority in Microsoft strategy, serving as a glue between applications, so it is highly unlikely that Microsoft will abandon Visual Basic.

Why to learn databases?

New York is the financial capital of the world with tons on information. Databases allow to reliably input, process, retrieve the data. Lots of information is stored in mainframe computers, however, mainframe computing is old technology, not being developed now, and face a serious challenge with year 2000 bug, when old mainframe programs would mistake year 2000 from year 1900. One of the solutions is to get away from mainframes at all and transfer data to personal computer systems, in databases like SQL Server, Oracle, others.

So, why to learn databases? Because it directly affects your compansation, that is why. If you don't have database skills, you'll make less than the average VB programmer. Microsoft Access skills? A must for sharp, professional programmers. Microsoft SQL Server? You'd better learn it. Want to make even more? Specialize in other high-end databases:

SQL Server is a flagship database of the Microsoft. With this product Microsoft is trying to get into corporate world, which needs a tool to manage tons of information. Currently the market leader in databases is Oracle, with Microsoft on the second place and gaining market share. Our computer school teaches both SQL Server and Oracle in the same course, giving our students competitive advantage over other programmers.

Why not to start with other languages?

What other languages are on the market today? In the nutshell, that is why:

• Mainframe languages - old technology, no new development, only maintenance of old applications;
  
• Visual C++ - very good language, allows to create very fast professional applications. However, it is rather complex and hard to learn for a beginner.
  
• Powerbuilder - very strong database oriented language. The problem with it is that Sybase, the company behind Powerbuilder, is experiencing financial problems and other companies are afraid of put their future on the product that mayh soon disappear.
  
• Delphi - very similar situation as with Powerbuilder. Borland International, who produces Delphi (previously knows as Pascal), is not doing very well and this is the reason Delphi has relatively low market share.
  
• Java - Internet oriented language, very young and with very good perspectives. However, so far it failed to substitude conventional programming languages used for creating desktop application. Also, it is rather complex and hard to learn for a beginner (similar to C++).
  

Back to start