Episode

Visual Basic Fundamentals for Absolute Beginners: (18) Understanding Namespaces and Adding References to Assemblies

We've avoided any talk about Namespaces, however they serve an important role in the .NET Framework Class Library as well as in our custom class libraries we may choose to create. We explain how Namespaces allow us to disambiguate classes that may share the same name. Additionally, we explain how the .NET Framework Class Library is so large that including all it's classes in every application you write is a waste of system resources. To mitigate that need, the FCL is split into multiple assemblies (.dll files) that must be included (or rather, referenced) by your project to be utilized in your applications. We discuss how certain project templates include those references to the typical assemblies required by a given type of application (such as a web application versus a Windows form application). We demonstrate this by referencing a custom assembly I created to parse the HTML from a web page for display in a Console window.

Full course outline: