Question

I am very new to VB.NET, and I come from an Objective-C background.

In Objective-C, I could create an NSMutableDictionary which could hold any types of values.

Here with VB.NET, I managed to make a Dictionary, but when I initialized an instance of it, I am asked for a specific value type. How can I enable any value types within one single dictionary?

Answer 1

You can write a dictionary to hold objects like this:

Dim myDictionary As New Dictionary(Of String, Object)

And then to supply it:

myDictionary.Add("keyA", New Button)
myDictionary.Add("keyB", "Test")

This is probably not considered best programming practice. It’s better to take advantage of generics and have a dictionary hold a common class or interface of items.

Having multiple dictionaries for each class or interface of items would be more efficient and easier to maintain.