Blue Tyson said
This is almost a programming book. Inasmuch as it is aimed at someone who doesn't know anything at all being able to start making and putting together very simple programs to let them do bits and pieces. Maybe useful as a very quick look at the interface for those unfamiliar with gui programming or the language.

Anonymous said
Please, if you want to learn Visual Basic, buy this with an advanced book. If you have little or no programming experience, this book is ideal. If you do, you will go through it quite quickly having learned all the grounding in a very enjoyable way. He is a talented teacher, and although this particular book is verbose to cater for absolute beginners, it would be interesting to see how he would write an advanced book.

Pankaj M Dubey said
I was scared of .net,liked QBASIC and wanted to learn Visual Basic. I actually picked this book more because of the free software but found the concepts very clearly explained and with a detailed explanation of basics that would keep the beginner interested and induce thinking ahead of the pace of the book.

frostydisco said
If you decided that just the sound of the word 'programming' sounds fun and you want to see what it's all about, or if you are just completely new to programming, this book may not be the right one.

When I first read this book, I had no previous programming experience whatsoever. At first, the author amused me a bit and convinced me to read on and that it's a piece of cake.

One problem with this book, although this is only an introduction, is that it does not provide any exercises to drill the basics into your head. It merely demonstrates the code with several examples, and after that the chapter is over. Even though some examples may be explicit, there is still not enough there to facilitate your remembering of previous chapters. I found myself constantly flipping back when I did not recognize certain code.

The other major problem is that the examples that are provided are too complex. Even when he breaks the it down piece by piece, the concept of the code is still hard to grasp. I frequently struggled trying to understand what was happening in the code itself, even after it was explained.

I strongly recommend beginners to purchase another book. After you have learned all the basics of the langauge, this book is very helpful for re-enforcing what you already know and finding more advanced ways to approach certain problems.

Anthony Defex said
This is a great book for beginners as well as programmers with some experience. The book is easy to understand, contains almost no typos and the code examples are very reliable in terms of not containing errors. More knowledgeable programmers can spice up the sample code with more functionality, and even beginners can too as they progress through out the book. Since the code examples are unrealistically easy, juicing up the code helps one mirror more real world situations to some extent. One small draw back, and an example of juicing up the code, is that the book does not cover the With/ End With construct, which comes in handy in many of the examples. After reading this book the programmer can move on to more advanced books. Happy Visual Basic 6 programming!