Maybe there?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/modcore/html/deovrCustomClassesObjects.asp

I found them very easy to read and although MSDN often leaves me scratching my head, in this case everything was clear.

I took the time to write all that because, although the example above shows how to access properties, it does not show how to make a class in the first place! The statement “The name of the class is Card and it has three properties,” is made, yet the Card class itself is never declared!

I’m sure I’ll find the line or two of code I need to complete this, but it always erks me when someone writes a code example but does not include the entire piece of code. There are situations where such a practice is understandable, but I don’t think this is one of them.

After all that complaining I must say I’m glad this site is here; just trying to help make it better! Like I said before, I’ve had a hard time finding pages even similar to this!

Interestingly, when I was first leaning this stuff, I cut my teeth by implementing a card game called Chrononauts (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/815). It never made it to the GUI stage (I would’ve needed Looney Labs’ permission for that – oops!) but I made lots of discoveries just writing the object model i.e. the classes and collection classes with their properties, methods and events. I also discovered that inheritance would’ve com in handy for the Card base object

Jamie.

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Encapsulation – a programming best practice, encapsulation allows you to keep related code in one place making debugging easier and leading to…
Portability – with an encapsulate…

I whole heartedly agree that JW’s control event class is the ultimate example. It’s easy enough that average Joes like me can use it in their code and that really brings home the realization of the power of the class.

I started writing an app for Euchre in Excel. As I was writing it, I thought it would be useful to me to abstract the cards from the logic of the game. That way if I want to write a different card game, I can move my card object hierarchy (Card, Cards, Player, Stack, etc) and all I have to do is work out the logic of the game.

The popular term is ‘code reuse’. I prefer this because, as well as reuse in other projects, it applies equally to code reuse within a project. Whenever I find myself copying and pasting chunks of code, I know what I really need is to encapsulate it in a class.

I’m not being down on you, Dick, but when I was learning I didn’t find it much help to read ‘abstract’ business object descriptions such Chip Pearson’s CEmployee class. I just didn’t get it. I’d think, that’s all very well if you’re dealing with many Employees simultaneously but my apps only ever seemed to have one Employee (or whatever) at a time. I just couldn’t see the incentive of using a class. I didn’t ‘get’ custom objects until I needed them. And when I did, I struck with them.

I think the ultimate example of the use of a class module is the ‘common ActiveX event handler’ (http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/tips/tip44.htm) or perhaps for Excel it’s the ‘Application events handler’ (http://www.cpearson.com/excel/AppEvent.htm). With these, the benefits of using a class are clear. My personal ‘ready rolled’ favorite is Stephen Bullen’s CFormChanger (FormFun.zip from http://www.bmsltd.ie/Excel/Default.htm) because it encapsulates (i.e. hides) highly complex but extremely useful code.

Jamie.

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Still, I’m on holiday now, so if it all goes wrong….

(It’ll be waiting for me when I get back!)