Storage

[CodyCoder]

CPU, Memory, Hard Disk, Registry etc...

All these things I hear about you can store stuff in and access and do different functions accordingly. I have no idea what these are, if someone could be so kind to tell me what these are, and how they are used?

Thanks,

Cody.

[jmcilhinney]

Are you genuinely saying that you don't know what a hard drive is?

[AceInfinity]

These are some pretty basic terms too, if you did even a one word search through most search engines you would find lots of information. I don't really see the point in asking others to explain them here, as there's probably much more information already out there and in more detail than most people would give to you in a post response here. If you have a specific question, then it might be a little more appropriate.

This is not to say that people aren't willing to help around here, but there's just no point in this case in my opinion. What would you expect others to provide you in response? There's no need to re-write any of the good articles out there that explain these things in lots of depth, unless you're expecting people to take and entirely re-write them for you to read here?

Do a search first and see where you get from there.

[Joacim Andersson]

I think you need to clarify your question a bit. Are you really saying that you don't know what a hard disk is or are you asking how to let your application store information on the disk?

[CodyCoder]

Listen I did not want to google this because I wanted a vb.net programmers opinion; so they might be able to help me understand it a bit more. Also I think it's important to be active in your forum community if you have one, so like school others get to know you, and what you know, so they can help you later in the future.


Also I do know what a Hard drive is, and registry. But how to access them using vb, and store the most simplistic file as an example of course, or even form data? like a users entry on the form or a saved piece of data? that would be cool to.

Thanks in advance,

Cody

[Shaggy Hiker]

Actually, .NET is probably a bit high level to even care. You can do pretty nearly anything in .NET without knowing what a CPU, HD, or Memory (whether RAM, ROM, HD, or removable) is. That's always been a goal of higher level languages: The code will work regardless of the physical hardware it is running on. That goal hasn't been fully achieved, but it has come fairly close. For example, if you look into streams, you will see that there are file streams, memory streams, and other types. The goal there was to have a single way of working with an object without caring whether the object was writing to memory, a disk, or anything else. Since there is a filestream and a memory stream, the two have not converged fully, but it's certainly a lot more abstract than all the memory allocation and low level disk access that would be needed in a lower level language. Furthermore, you do work with the streams the same way whether they are filestreams or memory streams, so they have converged a fair amount.

As for the CPU, you generally need neither know nor care how that is managed unless you get into multi-threaded work, and even then the details are often obscured. After all, you can't really have a program that requires a certain architecture to be able to run, or else you'd be tied to very specific hardware. The same is mostly true of memory, though you can get into the difference between the stack and the heap fairly early on if you want to. You don't have to know the difference, though, and knowing the difference generally doesn't matter in .NET. You aren't managing it yourself, anyways.

So, knowing the hardware and how it works and interacts is generally not important when it comes to writing .NET programs. It isn't related to file storage in any significant way, either. There are so many different ways to deal with files that I can't keep them all straight myself. There isn't a real need to know ALL the different ways, either, as many of them, such as the old VB6 techniques that are still available, have no real advantage over something like a filereader and filewriter.

[AceInfinity]

Accessing a hard drive (or the filesystem) in .NET is usually done through the System.IO namespace. In VB.net there's multiple ways to read and write to the filesystem though, and even the registry through the My namespace. In C#, I usually use Microsoft.Win32 for the Registry and System.IO for the filesystem though (IO based operations). Is this what you're asking?