Declaring Variables and Assigning Values - 05

Disclosure: I know absolutely NOTHING about programming . . . which is why I'm watching these videos, which I'm really enjoying - so far! That said, I don't understand why one would use the CInt thingy (technical term) in line 34 instead of just changing the value of "y" in line 27 to "5" . . . which we ended up doing anyway. It seems like the whole CInt step was unnecessary in the long run. Did I miss something?

Again, I'm loving these videos; just want to be sure I'm connecting all the dots!

Thanks, again.

@ejo74:  Sorry it took me a few days to reply!  You *could* just rely on Visual Basic to "do as it sees fit" when it comes to coercing your data types from strings to integers, or any similar type of coercion.  In fact, years ago, you would often read about "visual basic's evil type coercion" ... clearly some people have strong opinions about this!  Most developers come to the conclusion that it is a best practice to be deliberate, expressive and "take control" of data conversion / coercion.  First, it forces YOU to understand what you're doing because your using CInt (etc.) intentionally.  Second, it is a first line of defense against a variable that contains a value ("Bob") that cannot be converted to a number, for example.  You catch that issue AT THE POINT OF CONVERSION, instead much deeper in your code where it would be difficult to ascertain exactly where the problem originated.  It's a small nuance, to be sure, but a good practice nonetheless to get into -- that being: always be intentional in your coding and don't rely on short cuts.  Some people go as far as to invoke something called "Option Strict" in their code -- to FORCE themselves to not rely on these sorts of things.

The following page has a great treatment of this issue:

Option Strict Statement

Hope that helps!  Best wishes to you -- you are exactly the person Microsoft had in mind when asking me to create this series, so I'm hopeful you stick with it!

Hey Bob i am tiring to find some help on making a simple customers program so i can keep track of complaints and the resolutions done. I do have the database created in VB 2010 express your vidios are helpfull. But i need help on adding data to my database and saving it. can you sugest some code i can use or a place i can find it. I have tried different things and the code i am using is not saving it you can see it when it adds it to the grid but i cant get it to save.

@jpg60: I apologize for my completely underwhelming answer to your question ... outside of specific books and videos (like those on my own website) to help you learn how to work with data bases in your applications, I don't know of a free series of videos that you can check out, however I KNOW THEY EXIST ... I might start with MSDN's help to learn more about ADO.NET 4.x or specifically the Entity Framework.  Perhaps one day Microsoft will ask me to create a series encompassing that content, however they've not asked yet.