4.5* With this book, you can learn the skills of a professional programmer in just 692 pages. Because of its self-paced approach

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Product Description

With this book, you can learn the skills of a professional programmer in just 692 pages. Because of its self-paced approach in the first 7 chapters, you can do that whether you're new to Visual Basic.NET or you're upgranding from Visual Basic 6.

From that point on, you're ready for rapid progress as you learn how to develop sophisticated GUIs, how to use the .NET classes for a wide variety of purposes, how to work with XML, how to develop database appplications with ADO.NET, and how to develop web applications with ASP.NET.

To insure success, this book includes 18 complete business applications so you can see how the forms, controls, and code of Visual Basic applications work together. Applications like these should be a standard part of all programming books. BUT NO OTHER VB BOOK DOES THIS.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #266419 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 692 pages

From the Publisher
Here are 4 ways that our instructional approach insures your success:

To help you learn how to develop applications at a professional level, this book presents 18 business applications as examples. That way, you can see the relationships between the Visual Basic code, objects, properties, methods, and events that an application requires, which is essential to your understanding. In contrast, most competing books present trivial applications that have little resemblance to applications in the real world, and that limits your learning potential.

To solidify your skills, the exercises at the end of each chapter guide you through the development of some of the book's applications. They also encourage you to experiment and challenge you to apply what you've learned in new ways. To give you a maximum amount of practice in a minimum amount of time, you start many of these exercises from partial applications that you download from our web site.

To help you learn more by reading less, all of the information in this book is presented in "paired pages" with the essential syntax, guidelines, and examples on the righthand page and the perspective and extra explanation on the left. Programmers tell us how much they like this approach because it lets them quickly find what they're looking for. This is particularly useful for a language like Visual Basic because you simply can't remember the hundreds of details that are required for effective programming.

After you read the first section of this book plus chapter 8, you can read the chapters in section 2, 3, 4, or 5. In other words, you don't have to read all 20 chapters in sequence. We refer to this as "modular organization," and it lets you get the training you need when you need it. Yes, there are some contingencies between some of the chapters, but we let you know about them whenever they're critical.

From the Author
When we started this book, our goals were (1) to teach you Visual Basic as quickly and easily as possible; (2) to teach you a set of professional Visual Basic skills that you can use for developing real-world business applications; and (3) to introduce you to all of the major features of Visual Basic .NET so you're prepared to learn more on your own. Now, we sincerely hope that we've succeeded.

So if you have any comments about this book, we would appreciate hearing from you. In particular, we would like to know whether this book has lived up to your expectation

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Customer Reviews

Great book ! Easy read.
The format of the book is unique, left page for explanation and right page for coding. This might be great for programmers who prefer coding than reading, since the explanation is brief and direct to the point. This is very different from the Deitels book that explains things over and over again in many pages - the reason for the bulkiness.

I've read 4 chapters now and excited to write this feedback, since i've learned a lot from the book, unlike any other. The book is not trying to spoon feed the reader but just enough hand holding is done so as not to make the beginning programmer rely solely on the book and not use his own logic. There are quite a number of good vb.net books out there but this one will be sitting right beside my computer for quick learning and easy reference. I plan of supplementing my learning with another good book as suggested by colleagues, the mastering book by petroutsos and the step by step book my halvorson.

Okay; Good by comparison to other books on the subject
All the negative things that have been pointed out in other reviews are true. The writing is bad, the format leaves something to be desired, the explanation of difficult concepts is just not there, etc.

However, this book is much better than other books I have seen on the subject - this includes the SAMS books, the For Dummies Books, and WROX books.

Whereas, the instruction doesn't pour off the page, you can actually learn VB.Net from this book. You may have to reread a page 3 or 4 times -due to the poor explanations, but once you do you can learn from this book.

If anyone knows of a better book on the subject, please let others know.

To summarize, this book is not great, but it is the best book I found on the subject.

Know it for what it is
What this book is, and I think it does a very good job of it, is a book for the absolute beginner. The person how has never coded in a windows environment and needs a place to start. The author introduces a project that grows and as new topics are added or expanded upon the project grows likewise - so you see the code and your thought process develop.

What this book is not, is a reference to help experienced VB6 developers make the leap to .NET If you are an experienced windows developer, trust me this is not for you. I purchased the book several months ago to tackle my fist .NET application. Granted the application I choose to undertake was far too sophisticated for a fist .NET experience, but all the same, even if it was much simpler, I still seriously doubt that the book would have been of any relevant value.

As we all know authors use the word introduction / beginning for more marketing value than to reflect content. In this case the author calls it for what it is - If you are an absolute beginner, this is the right, can't go wrong choice.

Hope this helps,
HabWorks