Paul The Programmer

As you saw during Lesson 3, a program looks a lot like (actually just like) this...

Sub AuntMarysBloomers()

MsgBox ("Aunt Mary wears bloomers")

End Sub

The Sub part acts as a nice neat container for the 'to do' list. We always have to contain the list, otherwise it might run off the screen and get married. Sub is a shortened version of Subroutine (code is nearly all about short things, my wife entirely understands short).

A Sub always ends in an End Sub, otherwise it wouldn't know when to stop. I would have just said ?when the code runs out? but apparently Microsoft never thought of it.

There is another container called Function that we'll come to later. Strangely, they didn?t shorten it to Fun, I think that might have been more accurate.

A Sub always needs a name, or it would never know when to do its job. In this case we called it AuntMarysBloomers. The name can be almost anything you like except for words the computer already uses to do other things. Do not panic. If the computer doesn't like your word it will let you know by not running your code.

 The brackets ( () ) are containers too. They can hold information (often known as gibberish) that we can get the code (we tried to write) to work on.

Confused? Me too. Time for a coffee, doughnut and a lie down by now. Just let it sink in slowly, we have a long way to go.