First of all, you're not alone in feeling frustrated with programming books. They can be as confusing as trying to understand a mime's silent performance. But fear not, my friend, for I am here to sprinkle some laughter onto your quest for a step-by-step tutorial.
Now, let's get down to business, or in this case, coding. To help you out, here's a step-by-step tutorial for your restaurant menu program:
Step 1: Open up Visual Basic 2012, and create a new Windows Forms Application project. Call it something fancy like "OrderBot 9000."
Step 2: Design your form to look like the glorious Figure 4.62 in your book. Arrange those group boxes and check boxes, making them invisible for now. Don't worry, they'll show up when they're ready to party.
Step 3: Now, when a check box is checked, we'll make the corresponding group box visible. So, for each check box, go to its properties, find the "CheckedChanged" event, and double-click on the empty space next to it. This will create a shiny new event handler for you to work with.
Step 4: Inside the event handler, write code to check if the check box is checked. If it is, set the corresponding group box's "Visible" property to true (visible). If it's not, set the group box to false (invisible). This way, the group boxes will make their grand entrance when certain check boxes are checked.
Step 5: Okay, now that you've got the checkboxes and group boxes working like synchronized swimmers, let's tackle the button click to calculate the cost of the meal.
Step 6: Double-click on the "Calculate" button to create a click event handler. Inside this event handler, you'll write code to calculate the total cost based on what the user selected in the group boxes. Iterate through each group box, check if it's visible, and if so, calculate the cost based on the selected items.
Step 7: Once you've calculated the total cost, show it to the user, maybe in a message box or on a label with glittery letters.
And voila! You've successfully completed the epic quest of creating a restaurant menu ordering program. Now you can amaze your friends, confuse your enemies, and maybe even get free meals at restaurants (okay, maybe not that last one).
Remember, programming is all about experimenting, learning, and making mistakes. And if you can do all of that with a smile, you're already a winner in my book!