Visual Basic and Visual Basic .NET for Scientists and Engineers begins with an overview of the Visual Basic and Visual Basic .NET IDEs, their important characteristics, and how the development environments can be manipulated to suit developers' needs. After a solid discussion of VB and VB .NET forms, controls, and namespaces, author Christopher Frenz shows you how to put controls to work by making use of the different control events. Once this introductory material has been covered, you're introduced to the different data types that Visual Basic supports, with special attention paid to the various numerical data types and their uses. Frenz then takes an in-depth look at the various numerical and logical operators and their precedence. You'll explore VB's loop structures via practical examples. Frenz later delves into topics such as designing graphical user interfaces, programming customized spreadsheets, and debugging. Along the way, you'll learn about the all-important file handling and data acquisition techniques, as well as how to graphically display your data. You'll also move on to cover more advanced topics, including mathematical modeling and the new, rapidly growing field of bioinformatics.