E. Fortner said
It starts breaking down around the end of the 6th chapter. One of the instructions tell you to perform an action that Visual C# doesn't support. The companion material (which isn't on the disk, you need to download it) has errors. Upon loading one of the "completed" projects a list of errors popped up. Sad, if the writer can't get his own material right how are we newbies going to get it? In a later chapter you are suppose to debug a file but according to Microsoft's website that file isn't "bugged", it works correctly, so they tell you to skip that project. So instead of fixing the companion material they just tell you to skip it. Sweet.
Admittedly I have not finished the book but so far I've learned very little. The author doesn't really explains any of the terminology (methods & such) but later uses the lingo as if you're an old pro.
I wanted to like this book. The layout & pictures are attractive. The idea behind it - "learn while doing" - is fantastic. Unfortunately, true beginners will probably end up frustrated.
Michael John Swezy said
Easy to read and fairly informative about Visual Basic. The programs are free to download from Microsoft.com but having a disc with all them on it that comes with the book is very helpful! :)
Bluegeek said
I bought this book hoping to learn how to write Visual Basic code. After thoroughly reading it, I now realize that it is really more about the Visual Studio Express 2008 environment and has very little to do with writing event-handling code (or any other kind of code, for that matter).
To be fair, it does cover a number of features that will probably be of interest to experienced VB developers. It contains a large number of internet links to other resources for more information. It does a fair job of explaining the basic visual design elements. If my goal had been to build the minimalist custom browser interface the book walks you through building, it would have been okay.
When all is said and done, though, I have little more idea about how to write Visual Basic code than when I started. The book should have contained more "how-to code" information and linked to it less. And I am already well supplied with perfectly good and far more functional browsers, thank you very much.
This book is certainly not well targeted for the beginning audience it claims to have been written for. Frankly, I'm not sure what audience would have really benefitted from it.
I wish I had a recommendation for a better book, but unfortunately all I can do is to recommend that beginning programmers stay away from it.
Keith Sinders said
This is a very simplistic book. The author does a descent job of explaining the features of the program Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition. If you are buying the book for the software, you can get the software for free on the Microsoft website. For those buying the book to learn Visual Basic code, I don't recommend buying the book. I've read through about half of the book and it is very light on VB coding. Other than teaching you how to use the features of Visual Basic 2008, most of what you are taught is normally covered in the first two chapters of other books. It's a good book for learning the features of the program, but other than that the book is a major let down. There are also some errors and contradictions in the book.
At the beginning of the book she tells the user that lines of code HAVE to be on the same line. I read this and was like "WHAT!" Then later on she contradicts herself and says that the line of code can be continued onto a second like with a space and an underscore. I've programmend in VBA for years. She should have stated from the beginning that you can continue lines with a space followed by an underscore.
Another error I saw was in one of the projects where she runs a For...Next loop to display integers in the 2nd textbox. The 2nd textbox is Textbox2, but yet in the code it states Textbox1.
Also some of the comments are placed at bad spots. When I downloaded the program from the disc, the RSS feedlink doesn't work. Then you get a message in the program window stating how you can change or update the link. But you aren't told until a page or two after the fact in the book that you have to expand all of the options so that you can actually see the setting that you need to change so that you can change the link.
The book seems to have a number of simple errors that should have been caught in the editing phase. I'd recommend that they actually work through the book and projects themselves when editing it.
And I wish in some ways that Microsoft Press would have stayed with the simplistic style of instructions like they do in their Plain & Simple series of books for their 2007 Microsoft Office products where there are numbers and arrows. That say, Click here, select this, etc. The author gets wordy and this could have been simplified.
David Snay said
I purchased this book in hopes of making a quick start into Visual Basic Express Edition. Although not inexperienced in programming, it had been a while, and needed to familiarize myself with the new techniques and such. This book was very little help in accomplishing that goal. The book was written in a very dry manner, with the author assuming that the reader had considerably more knowledge on Visual Basic than the supposed target market. In numerous situations, the author just tells you "type this, and look what happens!!", with no explanation of what the syntax or programming code means. The book touches on many subjects, but doesn't follow through with them. I was very diappointed with this book, and could not recommend this book for someone to begin using Visual Basic.
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