Brendan M. Funnell said
This book seems to be word-for-word the same as Sams Teach Youself Visual C# 2008 in 24 Hours, with VB code substituted in the right places - although in that manual Basic appears instead of C# in at least one place.
I am not sure if this is a good thing or not - I wanted to learn something about VB and more about Visual Studio and .NET code in general, not merely how to create the same forms and apps I just created in 24 hours of C#!
Brendan E. Casey said
This is a very good book for learning Visual Basic. This is the third book I've tried on this subject, and it is the only one that has worked for me. The author starts out with the basics and builds his way up. He points out pitfalls, and even points out areas that are beyond the scope of the book. The other two books I tried had buggy examples and excercises, No solutions available for the problems recomended. One author even tried to belittle the reader. Not this book, in this book the author starts with the basics and builds up your confidence to tackle more. I come to this with extensive experience in old school program languages such as Borland Turbo Pascal and others, and this book was oriented in a logical step by step that kept me reading even if I thought I already understood it, and also rewarded me with insights into the language and programming techniques that I had not been exposed to before.
In the process you learn a lot about the .Net Framework, Visual Studio, and programming windows applications. Nothing is assumed already known, and there are no buggy or blank spots to get caught in.
Great book recommend it for getting your feet under you for Visual Basic programming.
E. Cedano said
Well.... To start I must say that whoever write a negative comment about this book is either jealous or really dumb and has not read this book page-by-page entirelly.
I used to program in the old Basic, GWBasic, DBase, Informix, Dataflex days and had been now trying to write some programs for my own use. I had purchased many books to kick me in like: Visual Basic.Net for Dummies, Idiot's Visual Basic.Net, etc and none of them had trully make me understand VB.NET concept.
This book has open my interest to learn VB.NET with its easy way. I must say that while others complaint about some initial manual form designs, I thing this is a great way to make users understand the programming concept explained later on.
Most books are either boring or too complex to understand. This one IS Great!. Thanks to James Foxall for it. (Do not give up man... You have a fan here).
I must add that if you are really interested on this subject you might take way more time that what others take to fully read this book, but at the end it will all be worthy.
MKS said
I took programming back in 1982-1986 (basic, pascal, fortran, C, logo, assembly) but got out of programming after college. I looked at this book and picked it up. i have never tried object orieted programming as True Basic is more of what I was used to. The first 220 pages is just about creating menues. Ni programming at all. there is a template and that's it. There are about 3 chapter of code, but not really showing you how it's done. The rest of th book is more of the same.
Most books or schools start out with a hello world or similar program. Not here. He spends the first 100 pages getting into complex ideas that nobody but a programmer would under stand. I barely did even though he says the book is for beginners. it is not.
He doesn't even tell you how to make a executable file until the end of the book. If you want to learn basic, this is not the book. It is just on creating menues. Visual basic does that for you. It creates the code. I keep thinking, where is the if then statement, where are the loops, where are the arrays, wher are the sections on code? How do i sort data in a vector list. Not 1 topic that i learned about programming is in this book. I don't know why anyone would give this a good rating unless it's his family doing so.
I'd pass on this book. Maybe after you have learned basic it might be a good second book on how to creat menues.
D. Seholm said
This book is more on windows forms than it is on VB, there are 5 chapters on the language in this book... and one on debugging. There is a whole chapter on docking windows and changing fonts and font colors etc. If you are a programmer that wants to learn VB or even windows forms this book is like pulling teeth. This book should be titled windows forms with visual basic for dummies.
Unfortunately this is the best book on VB I have come across yet, and when it comes to microshaft front ends VB is just the better language. C# is a good but lacking at the same time, visual c++ makes people want to punch bill gates in the face, and J# is based off of java which means it should not exist. So for GUI's you are stuck with VB and this ridiculous mislabeled book.
I come from the c/c++ systems programming world and have extensible back ground in C# as well, hopefully that puts a perspective on weather this book is going to be a root canal for you as well.
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