[Just Do It Challenge] Study Program v1.0 in vb.net is done!

Tasmainia300 · March 20, 2016, 3:54am

Hi everybody! I wanted to make the first post about my submission for the Just Do It Challenge.

I decided to make something using my newly acquired vb.net skills. I am taking an Introduction to Programming class, and we're using Visual Basic 2012. We haven't gotten very far yet (next week we take a look at functions and subs), and so my program is going to be very.... we'll say deliberate.

Since I'm not yet versed in methods to condense tedious actions (I can accomplish it with super simple stuff though) my code is quite deliberate.

My program is meant to help me study for tech certifications. I've taken college classes for A+, Net+ and Sec+, but a shallow wallet and paranoia over losing $300 has caused me to neglect taking any of the exams yet. I'm currently catching up on A+ and will probably take that exam in May.

The easiest starting functionality I could think of was a port number quiz. Essentially the program gives you a choice of subjects (the only current one being Port Numbers), and then you can choose to study port numbers or quiz yourself on them.
The study option lets you click on a port number to see what protocols/services use that port. I included relevant ports for the Network+ and Security+ exams... which by extension includes ports for the A+ exam as well.

Here is a short video showcasing the functionality of the program:

The port quiz has 27 questions as of now, and when you answer all of them correctly, you get a message that lets you know you've passed. On the other hand, if you answer incorrectly 10 times, you are told you need to study more, and the quiz is reset to the first question.

That is it for the major functionality as of now.

You can download the program from here:

In addition, I wanted to make this "open source" so you can view the code here:

pastebin.com

http://pastebin.com/edv4n9d3

Public Class frmStudy
  'Name :Zach Griffin
  'Forum Handle :Tasmainia300
  'Date started :3/7/2016
  'Purpose :Submission for the TekSyndicate community Just Do It Challenge
  'Functionality :This program is designed to help you study for a CompTIA Certification. First iterations will likely include limited functionality such as -
  'a flash-card-style port number quiz. Possible future iterations may enable you to customize functionality and input the information you want to study.
  'Source :Thanks to blogs.getcertifiedgetahead.com for acting as my source of port number information
  'Version :1.0
  'Build :1

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Feel free to download the program and screw around with it, or try to break it and let me know if you manage to do so xD
Also feel free to take a look through my probably painful code. I welcome any feedback, suggestions, criticism, or straight up insults... Just keep in mind I've only been learning VB.net for 2 months...

Since April 4th is still a couple weeks away, I will keep working on this and attempt to have at least 2 subjects finished by the final submission.

Atomic_Charge · March 20, 2016, 4:08am

Wow. That sure did take a lot of time. Thanks, I appreciate your contribution a lot!

Tasmainia300 · March 20, 2016, 4:15am

@Atomic_Charge
I only have spent ~10 hours on the thing, but it has taken this long because March has been very busy for me. Half of that time is repeating code with different strings (thinking back, I probably could have used variables, it would have been tedious but not as annoying to replicate... oh well, I'll wait to learn about a function or sub that's more efficient before revising it) as well as experimenting with more complex methods that I haven't learned about yet, all of which failed miserably because trying to adapt context of code from a simple forum post on stackoverflow.com can only go so well xD.

Atomic_Charge · March 20, 2016, 4:19am

Don't worry about your code being repetitive at this point. You have done more than most who take on programming. So good luck. I bet you will add and improve to your code in more than one way.

Tasmainia300 · March 20, 2016, 4:24am

Thanks! I definitely plan to continue this thing beyond the Just Do It Challenge. I'm finding programming to be very exciting and easy to sink time into so I will keep revising the code and adding to the program until it's something people can look at and say "Wow, you made that??"