Customer Reviews

Beginning Objects with Visual Basic 5

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

He non-chalantly covers what has been a very stick y subject.

His style is friendly ... a little wordy.

But when he puts nuts and bolts together .. the guy has quite a philosophy ...

I've been a VB programmer since v3. VB3 and VB4 didn't do objects .. so I went to Java.

Even though I am familiar with OO programming ... he was NOT boring ... and spelled things out simple stupid 123.

If you are Einstein or Forest Gump .. .you will get something out of this book .. if you do what he says .. and punch the keyboard through his examples.

He should (but probably won't) .. get a commission on my next programming project !!

Being an experienced VB programmer, I like the way Peter laid out the way he explained it all. Before reading this book, I really didn't have much understanding of objects/classes....just that they were there and it had some code I could use elsewhere in my project. When I actually had a chance to work on it, I just felt so knowledgeable!!

One thing I thought was interesting.....most of the time when there is source code with the book, the examples are fully coded and functional. He tricked me this time and had a project with many classes and no code. (BTW, I downloaded it from the Wrox site). He leaves this open for you to work on it and get it right. I think that's the best way to learn.

Good Job Peter!!!

I bought this book because I knew nothing of OOP or Active X components and was faced with the task of being responsible for enhancing an application written using those techniques. Furthermore, the developer that wrote the application was long gone and there was very little documentation. After reading the book and coding some of the examples I was able to figure out the application and how to effectively change it. Not only did this book help me to do my current job, but learning the OOP techniques has made me a better programmer. Needless to say, the skills I have learned from this $40 investment will benefit me in future earnings far and above. I also appreciated Peter Wrights "this is no big deal" humor throughout.

This book starts with the basics of OOP and progresses at a rapid pace into all areas of object-oriented development. The book assumes some basic knowledge of VB so you won't find an explanation of the basics of how to use VB or the IDE. If are familiar with the basics of VB and want to learn object oriented programming and are comfortable with a fast paced book this book is a good choice. I've read previous books by this author and like the way he writes but be warned the pace is fast. There are a couple of small projects throughout the book that you can try out and then a large final project building a complete OOP database project for a fictitious company. OOP is not really a subject that most beginner's will deal with but it is 'the way' that programming is moving and it has a lot of benefits for the serious programmer. So what do I recommend? Well if you are writing small games and utilities for your kid brother you might not need this book. If you are or plan on being involved in any 'real' programming projects you'll need to look into OOP at some point and this book provides good coverage of what you'll need to know.

I am quite a fan of Peter Wright's first Visual Basic 5 Book. This one, if anything, is better. There is a logical progression of topics and many code examples that are short and directly on topic. The book has a nice balance of hands on examples and theory. At first, I was a bit put off by the brievity of the book (less than 300 pages before the appendicies start), and that is probably why I didn't give it a 10. The text does, however, carry very well from the first page to the last and never bogs down. The size of the book may be in part a subliminal point that Mr Wright was trying to make about all this object and Active X stuff really not being all that overwhelming. It may also be partly due to the interesting times he has had over interval since his previous book came out which he hints at in the Acknowledgements.

Beginning Visual Basic 5.0 by Peter Wright was the first book on Visual Basic that I read. Peter Wright's easy to follow style and use of understandable real world examples made my transition from ACCESS database development to Visual Basic development a breeze. Recently I began to explore the world of Objects. I found that most of the texts used abstract, hard to follow language. Once again Peter Wright has produced a book that offers great coverage of the basics of his topic. Since reading this book, I have been able to go back to the other more advanced texts with no trouble. Well done Mr. Wright.

The actual information and teaching in this book could have been easily compressed into 200 pages. The other 449 pages are mostly comprised of Peter Wright boasting about how wonderful and robust a language vb5 is, and constantly making snide comments about how difficult, slow, and inadequate, C/C++ are. I found that insulting to my intelligence. Someone trying to learn Visual Basic does not need to be told that C/C++ are horrible languages. If they ever want to move beyond writing slow and inefficient VB database programs, they're going to need to learn C or C++ sooner or later. Nothing against Visual Basic, it's a great language for what it's meant to do. But I (and nobody else) needs to be told that it's the end all be all wonderful super language when it really isn't..

Aside from that I found that the book goes through creating interfaces fairly well, and actually discusses program structure and bites into code efficiency a bit. The main thing it doesn't do is tea! ch you how to write code, which is absolutely essential unless you're designing a database in Access, and even then you really should know how to code if you want to make anything good. I would steer clear of this book unless you want to pay $25 for a migraine headache.