Customer Reviews

Advanced Programming Using Visual Basic.NET

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book has its pearls here and there but it is definitely NOT worth the price. I wouldn't pay $25 for it.
The examples given are really worthless because all they basically do is drag and drop components and controls (almost anybody can figure that out). I would like to see more code, especially in the Database section. I mean the book is OK if you only paid $20 to $30. (Are they really selling the 60-day trial version of VS.NET?)

This book does not flow or build your knowledge in an orderly fashion. You are left to figure things out. Which defeats the purpose of a book. This is a very hard to read book as far as programming books go. The authors could have spent more time "dividing and concurring" the subject matter than just providing the information in chunks for you to workout. I would prefer that my teacher chose a different book. Sincerely.

This book is the worst programming book I have ever read. I get much more out of the O'Reilly books, SAM's "teach yourself" series, Peachpit Press, etc... There are so many other options than this. Still, professors have a tendency to recommend books that make good "textbooks" not necessarily good learning devices. That's the only reason my professor selected this... that and he knew the authors. I encourage you to look elsewhere unless it is required.

This is a very average quality Text Book. It will not be a book for a beginning programmer to grab and expect to run with. The book has quite a few vaugue examples but most are fairly well documented. But, you better have some VB/VS background. The writers skip the basics here.

This is an expenseive book for what you will be getting. I highly recommend anyone wanting to buy this to spend a little while flipping through to see what you will be getting. Buyer Beware! There are several better books avail on this subject.

However, This is not a terrible book. It is just "Very Average" as Text Books go. For the price, I would recommend finding something more friendly. Or, at least try to wait for a newer revision and see if Bradley & Millspaugh will tick-up the quality when they rewrite for .NET 2005. If they don't, grab something cheaper and better, like WROX Beginning VB.NET Databases. If you're forced to get this for a class, good luck. I hope your prof is a better than this book.

I give it two and half stars for average content. But rounded down to 2 stars for being over priced.

To any professors or students who plan on using this book please be warned. This is the absolute worst textbook I have ever used. Most OOP terminology is skimmed over and there is no walkthrough for the code examples that many students need. Many times during the use of this book I went to look for a reason or to gain an understanding as to why the authors did something. I rarely found it. The first two chapters are basically a hack job. The database section is also worthless. I rarely write reviews but if your professor recommends this book you might want to find a better teacher because they obviously have not looked at this text. Good luck.

This is the worst programming textbook I have yet seen. It requires the student to read each chapter from start to finish, because one cannot just go to a subject of interest and learn it. The writing style is completely in-line. I found I had to re-read sections many times to ascertain what the authors were trying to say, and the code examples were not self-contained. While I am not a programmer by training, I have taken a course in Java and many other courses. This book also focused too much on databases to my taste, but others may find that emphasis useful. Even the teacher who selected it said he made a mistake.

I have to agree with the majority of the reviews concerning this book. It's a very difficult book to read, and grasp the first (or second) time around. The information just does not seem to flow very well, at least to me.

You can learn from it, however the average student is probably going to have a hard time grasping the information the way it's laid out. I hope the newest edition for VB 2008 has been completely redone, and they just didn't copy 90% of this book and throw it into the latest book. Maybe I was spoiled by Diane Zak's books, I don't know.

I really enjoy VB programming in school, and I never view the assignments as homework. But, after this book I found myself even wondering if I could do the work because the book was so vague in many areas.

In fairness to the authors, this book is actually good at teaching on how to do a 3-tier application. The title says "ADVANCED", so the authors are assuming the reader to have a decent knowledge with VB.net. It does not go into detail as to explain the basic programming concepts, but teaches the student straight forward application design and implementation. From the many books I've purchased and read regarding 3-layer designs using VB, this one I consider to be one of the best, following the books on OOP by Dan Clark and Doing Objects in vb 2005 by Deb Kurata. One qualm I don't like about this is the way coloured pages are structured, eye glaring, but totally recommended to programmers who want to have an understanding how to design interface,business and data layer application.

This was used as the primary textbook in a class I had in advanced programming. The book itself has no clear explainations. If you are a programmer this book just might show a way you may compact your code, since this book is nothing more than one long programming example with unclear explaination. [...]

I used this book for an advanced VB.NET course and found it to be the most difficult textbook to follow. Most subjects are skimmed over and the writing style is poor.
As others have said, the writing is in line, so it is hard to link concepts together or figure out why you need to use a certain piece of code. It does a terrible job of explaining how to build a class, so look else where for instruction in this area.
The database section could have been much better, and it did not help that at the time I bought the book, one of the databases was structured incorrectly, making it impossible to finish one of the case studies unless you knew how to change the db schema.
Avoid this book at all costs and if it is required for a course, I would see if there are other instructors in the same subject that use a better book.