I am a self taught VB developer. I learned basic programming concepts in high school in the 70's and learned Fortran in college in the early 80's. I recommend this series of video tutorials if you are interested: http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Visual-Basic-Development-for-Absolute-Beginners[^] Very easy to follow and they are geared toward VB express so you can get the IDE at home. Hope this helps!

0bx wrote:

"a < b" is the same as "b >= a" and "not a >=b ";
 
I personally don't like the "<" or ">", because it leads to oversights imo.
Other people seem to disagree; but well.
 
I find inequalities mighty confusing; it's like by brain isn't made to handle them, especially when the complexity ramps up, you start to get lost pretty easily.

I disagree that a < b gives the same result as b >= a. Here is a truth table:

a b a < b b > a b>=a not(a>=b)
10 20 T T T T
20 10 F F F F
10 10 F F T F

Based on the results of the truth table, in my interpretation, a < b is the same as b > a so testing them both is pointless. Also, since b >= a is not the same as a < b the risk (as others have pointed out) is that you may not have assumed the correct resutl for a = b. Am I missing something?

Not a professional programmer, just an amateur, so correct me if I'm out of line. I guess I'd have less problems understanding this if the following were done: 1) Add comments to the code. Would clear up a world of problems. 2) Why do you need to do all of these?

If _start > _end Then
If _end < _start Then
If Not _start < _end Then
If Not _end > _start Then

Aren't they all the exact same statement? 3) Assuming that being equal has the same meaning as one of the less than statments (there is no third option for the value of c) there should only be the need to write less than statements. 4) Wouldn't a Select Case (or Switch) block work based on the result of _start < _end (slightly more verbose than c = _start < _end, so maybe a little clearer)

Select Case _start < _end 'check that start is less than end
Case True
c = True 'OK to continue
Case False
c = False 'Not OK to continue
End Select