Product Description

Providing programmers and developers of all skill levels with a comprehensive tutorial and reference to Visual Basic (VB) 2008, Microsoft MVP Rod Stephens presents a broad, solid understanding of essential topics on the latest version of VB. He explains the forms, controls, and other objects that VB furnishes for building applications in a modern windows environment. Plus, he examines the powerful development environment that makes VB such a productive language, and he delves into the VB language itself to show you how to use it to perform an array of important development tasks.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14348 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1248 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780470182628
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"This is certainly a tome for programmers and of course developers." GadgetSpeak.com Sunday 1 June 2008

From the Back Cover
Visual Basic 2008

Providing programmers and developers of all skill levels with a comprehensive tutorial and reference to Visual Basic (VB) 2008, Microsoft MVP Rod Stephenspresents a broad, solid understanding of essential topics on the latest version of VB. He explains the forms, controls, and other objects that VB furnishes for building applications in a modern windows environment. Plus, he examines the powerful development environment that makes VB such a productive language, and he delves into the VB language itself to show you how to use it to perform an array of important development tasks.

New examples and extensively revised and retested code that complies with the 2008 release help you obtain a firm understanding of VB 2008. Extensive appendixes prove to be particularly useful to help you translate from the languages you already know into the corresponding VB syntax. Ultimately, you'll find coverage of the technologies you need in order to build sophisticated applications with VB 2008.

What you will learn from this book

• Extension methods for adding new features to existing classes

• How to select and use Windows Forms Controls for a specific purpose

• Tips for using subroutines and functions to break a program into manageable pieces

• Techniques for error handling and debugging

• Various important classes and objects to use when building an application

• How to use the graphics device interface routines to draw images in VB

• Ways an application interacts with its environment

Who this book is for
This book is for programmers who are looking to explore the latest features of the new release of Visual Basic. No prior experience with earlier versions of Visual Basic is necessary.

Wrox Professional guides are designed to give the experienced developer straight facts on a new technology, without hype or unnecessary explanations.  They deliver hard information with plenty of practical examples to help you apply new tools to your development projects today.

About the Author
Rod Stephens started out as a mathematician, but while studying at MIT, discovered the joys of programming and has been programming professionally ever since. During his career, he has worked on an eclectic assortment of applications in such fields as telephone switching, billing, repair dispatching, tax processing, wastewater treatment, concert ticket sales, cartography, and training for professional football players.
Rod is a Microsoft Visual Basic Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and ITT adjunct instructor. He has written 18 books that have been translated into half a dozen different languages, and more than 200 magazine articles covering Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications, Delphi, and Java. He is currently a regular contributor to DevX ( www.DevX.com ).
Rod ’ s popular VB Helper web site www.vb-helper.com receives several million hits per month and contains thousands of pages of tips, tricks, and example code for Visual Basic programmers, as well as example code for this book.

Customer Reviews

Amazing Book!
You might initially think that this is going to be one of those big books with a few examples and a lot of fluff; well, you'd be wrong. This is a big book because it's absolutely packed with really useful examples. Rod takes you through just about every feature of Visual Basic 2008 and he does it with examples. These aren't just the usual academic sort of examples either; you'll be able to use many of them as a source of code for your own applications.

Of course, there are also books on the market that do have good examples, but the explanations stink. Rod takes time to thoroughly explain the examples and the explanations are clear, so you won't have any trouble understanding them. In short, this book has the best of everything.

You probably won't need another book for common business programming needs. That said, some specialty items are missing. You won't find a lot about PInvoke in this book, but then again, most people don't need PInvoke for their business applications. The LINQ coverage is also a tad light, but this technology is only now taking off, so Rod is right in keeping the various coverages in perspective. Overall, this is the book to get if you want to know how to work with Visual Basic!

Nice Overview with Useful Examples
I'm experienced with VB.Net but needed a quick reference book for the new features (esp. LINQ) and that would also provide an overview for features I might not otherwise discover.

My first project with VB 2008 sent me right to the book. I was able to easily adapt code lifted right off the page on the first task. However, different code from the book for a second task was less successful (LINQing on a data set table). The syntax (in the book) for the ORDER BY clause was erroneous and raised a perplexing error. (Perhaps the Wrox web site corrects this; I haven't checked.) Googling brought me to a Microsoft web site with an example with the correct syntax.

I guess you should expect such issues when applying 15th century technology (i.e., printed paper) to a bleeding edge tool.

All in all, however, the book was worth the modest investment. Make use of Amazon's excerpts to evaluate it for your own needs (I did).

By the way, the (first) one I received was damaged (crumpled pages, torn backcover) in packaging, but Amazon redeemed themselves by promptly sending an intact replacement.

Solid examples: a great book for beginners, or seasoned vets.
For the novice user this book will take you by the hand, and guide you through VB.NET from the IDE, to basic principles and concepts of OO programing, and into concrete examples, covering a vast amount of information. There is an incredible 200+ page appendix.

Like most other books on the subject, the sections that cover parts of VB that I work with daily (and thus understand well) offered few new insights. The other 75% of the book has proved to be extremely helpful!

If you truly "know" VB.NET '08 inside and out, then you don't need this book (or any others for that matter!), for the rest of us the useful information abounds.