Depending on how much time you spend on this, it should take you a few months to become a competent programmer. Now work on the more advanced details. In Visual Basic these include things like client/server programming, building ActiveX controls, database programming, the development envirnoment itself (add-ins), the API, etc. Books and sample programs can help.

Monitor news groups and Mailing List. You will learn a lot by reading other peoples' answers. You will also learn about new topics you may not have encountered before. A particularly interesting mailing list is the VISBAS-L LISTSERV group.

When you see questions you can answer, do so. When you see something you think you can figure out, do it. Other people often ask questions you would not think to ask yourself. Tracking down the answers will teach you a lot.

When you have mastered all of these advanced topics, you will be an expert in Visual Basic. This may take one or more years depending on how much time you invest.

To become a true programming guru, you should now learn a new programming language. Delphi, C++, Smalltalk, and Ada are good choices. Java is also easy to obtain so you might give it a try.

As you learn these other languages, keep an open mind. It is amazing how many people enter religious holy wars over which language is best. This is a waste of your valuable time. You can do almost anything reasonable in any language.

All languages have something to offer. They are good at some things and bad at others. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of each language. Compare them to the languages you already know. If one language has a strength that another does not, figure out how to implement the strength in the weaker language using your code. If a language has a weakness another does not, see how the other removes the weakness.

After you learn a few different languages, you will see the common patterns they all offer. You will learn how to adapt one language to provide the features of another. You will know how to steal techniques from one to cover the weaknesses of another. Only then are you truly an expert.

The beginning of this process takes several years and continues until you retire. I have been programming professionally for 14 years and I know C, C++, Fortran, Basic, Visual Basic, Pascal, Delphi, one flavor of assembly language, several graphics languages, a few Web languages, and I've been system manager of 6 different kinds of operating system. Every day I learn about something new that I know nothing about.

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