Calculate cost of several items with tax and a discount - vb.net

Question

Can anyone help with this school task I have
The task is to ask the user for items and the cost of the items until they chose to stop. Then combine all the costs and take 20% VAT and 10% off from 2 randomly selected items.
Here is the code I have so far (I have 2 buttons and a listbox)
Public Class Form1
Dim CurrentA As Integer
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Dim Items(CurrentA) As String
Dim Coins(CurrentA) As Single
Dim Stay As String
CurrentA = 0
Do Until CurrentA = 20
Items(CurrentA) = InputBox("Please Enter The Item")
Coins(CurrentA) = InputBox("Please Enter The Cost Of The Item")
Stay = InputBox("Type Yes If More Items or Type No if no More")
Stay = Stay.ToLower
If Stay = "yes" Then
End If
If Stay = "no" Then
Exit Do
End If
ListBox1.Items.Add(Items(CurrentA) & " " & Coins(CurrentA))
CurrentA += 1
Loop
End Sub
End Class

Answer 1

First, a few comments on the code you presented.
Dim CurrentA As Integer
'An Integers default value is zero, I don't see why this is a class level variable
'always declare variables with as narrow a scope as possible
Private Sub Button3_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button3.Click
Dim Items(CurrentA) As String 'Declares an Array of Type String with an Upper Bound of 0
'Upper Bound is the highest index in the array
'Arrays start with index 0
'So your array will have 1 element at index 0
Dim Coins(CurrentA) As Single
Dim Stay As String
CurrentA = 0 'unnecessary because the default of CurrentA is already 0, but OK for clarity because it could have been changed elsewhere
'This is behaving like a console application with the code repeating in a loop.
'In Windows Forms it would be more likely to do this in a button click event (btnAddItem)
Do Until CurrentA = 20
'On the first iteration CurrentA = 0
'On the second iteration CurrentA = 1 - this exceeds the size of your array
'and will cause an index out of range error
Items(CurrentA) = InputBox("Please Enter The Item")
'With Option Strict on you must change the input to a Single
Coins(CurrentA) = CSng(InputBox("Please Enter The Cost Of The Item"))
Stay = InputBox("Type Yes If More Items or Type No if no More")
Stay = Stay.ToLower 'Good! The user might no follow directions exactly
If Stay = "yes" Then
'This is kind of silly because it does nothing
End If
'Lets say I say no on the first iteration
'This avoids the index out of range error but
'nothing is added to the list because you Exit the loop
'before adding the item to the ListBox
If Stay = "no" Then
Exit Do
End If
ListBox2.Items.Add(Items(CurrentA) & " " & Coins(CurrentA))
CurrentA += 1
Loop
End Sub
We could use arrays but not knowing how many items will be added means either making the array bigger than needed or using Redim Preserve on every addition. A much better choice is a List(Of T). They work a bit like arrays but we can just add items without the ReDim stuff.
Private lstCost As New List(Of Single)
Private Sub Button4_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button4.Click
'Pretend this button is called btnAdd, and you have 2 test boxes
lstCost.Add(CSng(TextBox2.Text))
'The $ introduces an interpolated string. It is a step up form String.Format
ListBox2.Items.Add($"{TextBox1.Text} - {CSng(TextBox2.Text):C}") 'The C stands for currency
TextBox1.Clear()
TextBox2.Clear()
End Sub
Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
'Pretend this button is called btnTotal
'Dim total As Single = (From cost In lstCost
' Select cost).Sum
Dim total As Single = lstCost.Sum
Label1.Text = total.ToString("C") 'C for Currency
End Sub