Question

When I find examples online of VB.NET watch some functions use:

    (Protected / Partial) & (Friend / Shared) & (Sub / Function) exp()
    End (Sub / Function)

My question what is the difference?

Answer 1

These are actually different, somewhat unrelated items.

Public, Protected, Private, and Friend are Access Levels, which determine who can “see” or use your method.

Partial is used to split the declaration of a type across multiple files. See Partial for details.

Sub and Function define procedures. Sub procedures do not return values, where Function procedures return a value.

You’d typically combine one access level with one procedure definition, hence Private Sub or Public Function, etc.