{"id":413,"date":"2011-10-31T07:27:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T14:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/2011\/10\/31\/halloween-vb-style\/"},"modified":"2024-07-05T12:39:13","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T19:39:13","slug":"halloween-vb-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/halloween-vb-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Halloween: VB Style!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine this. It’s Halloween. You’ve got a costume party to go to at 7 but there’s one small hiccup – you’ve got no costume. As a VB programmer you’re used to coming up with nick-of-time solutions to all manner of complex business problems but all your coding skills won’t help you now. After all, you can’t just code up a costume – or can you?<\/i> Here’s a little number I cooked up two years ago (before I joined the Developer Ghouls division at Microsoft) called the Opensourus Hex costume.<\/p>\n

First, make up a short but interesting VB program and write it out (in carefully color-coded marker) on a white t-shirt like so:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Don’t forget to include your license:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Get yourself a box and throw in some art supplies – string, tape, construction paper, beer cans, whatever – label it “SDK” or “Developer Tools”.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Print off some reference materials:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
And then let all of your friends at the party go nuts interactively creating you a costume (while asking you to explain all the 1337 VBisms written on your chest. It may sound silly but trust me it’s fun (for you AND your fellow party-goers). I actually did this with an old friend of mine two years back and he kept the project going for two years in a row. Take a look at some of the things his friends came up with:<\/p>\n

Opensourus Hex v1.0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Friend (Eric) wearing costume next to then dev lead (Me)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Opensourus several iterations later:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Opensourus v2.0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s the best thing about the Opensourus costume – every year it’s different.<\/p>\n

In my next post I’ll show you how to use VB lambda expressions as a last minute substitute to an undercooked Thanksgiving turkey (or will I?<\/i>).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Happy Halloween and Happy Coding!<\/p>\n

 <\/b><\/p>\n

Anthony D. Green<\/b>
Program Manager
Visual Basic & C# Languages Team<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine this. It’s Halloween. You’ve got a costume party to go to at 7 but there’s one small hiccup – you’ve got no costume. As a VB programmer you’re used to coming up with nick-of-time solutions to all manner of complex business problems but all your coding skills won’t help you now. After all, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":8818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[195],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-basic","tag-anthony-d-green"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Imagine this. It’s Halloween. You’ve got a costume party to go to at 7 but there’s one small hiccup – you’ve got no costume. As a VB programmer you’re used to coming up with nick-of-time solutions to all manner of complex business problems but all your coding skills won’t help you now. After all, you […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}