Customer Reviews

Beginning Visual Basic 2010 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

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

 

 

This is an excellent guide to learning VB 2010.NET for several reasons.

1) It provides many "try it yourself" exercises which give you ample opportunities to use what you read about.
2) It provides "exercises" at the end of each chapter, where you have the opportunity to write simple programs on your own, rather than simply copying code from the book. Answers are provided in an appendix.
3) The book provides the user exposure to a very large number of classes, properties, etc., while, at the same time, clearly explaining what classes, methods, etc. are - as well as their differences. Examples are also provided and are very clear.
4) This book is a step above the 'Step by Step' books, and if you have gone through the 'Step by Step' book, this is a great next book to go through because it provides so much exposure to the methods, classes, modules, etc. which the 'Step by Step' book introduces, but does not give the user much, if any, practical experience. (Personally, I found the 'Step by Step' book to be very useful simply because I am a complete novice .NET programmer - so I am NOT saying the STEP by STEP book is junk! It is most definitely NOT!).
5) If you have some experience with scientific programming languages like IDL or Matlab, but do not have any experience with a .NET language (which is my specific experience), this is a great book to help 'bridge the gap', so to speak, as the two types of programming are very different and it can be very difficult for a Matlab or IDL user to switch to a .NET language (or vice-versa).
6) If you learn by doing, which is probably most of you, buy this book! You will benefit!!!

ENJOY!!!!

P.S. I never would have thought learning to program could be fun - but it is with this book!

This book is just what I needed to transition from VB6 to VB.net. Its also written in a way that people somewhat new to programming will get plenty out of it. I was a Visual Basic 3-6 programmer for many years and then stopped programming in 2005. I found this book to be the perfect way to get back into it.

It's not just about programming, as you are introduced to the .net framework and its function. You will realize how "cool" this way of doing things is and will tip your hat to Microsoft for putting this together for you. The .net framework comes with your Windows operating system, so its already on your computer. The book creates their projects using Visual Studio 2010 which is not free, but for the most part you dont need it. Just go and download the Visual Basic 2010 Express from Microsoft for free. Admittitedly, I have not fully completed the book yet, but so far I have been able to do eveything without having Visual Studio installed.

This book covers all your standard VB programming basics in addition to programming with objects. You will learn the old-school Arrays in addition to new-school Collections and how to code them properly. VB.net is fully Object Oriented and you should be aware that you could never be a full expert in this area by learning from a book, any book. It takes years of practice. The book does a very good job of introducing you to these topics in a steady fashion as it progresses.

Object Overriding, Object Shadowing, Object Overloading, Object Inheritance....yeh, this books introduces you to these concepts which are new to most VB6 programmers. It will be confusing at first, but keep plugging away at it.

There are also other cool topics covered including XAML, Windows Presentation foundation, web forms and database access. Its also covers debugging, which I bet like me you will want to get over with as soon as possible.

The best way to proceed in my opinion is to briefly gloss over a chapter and then go back and follow it completley, doing all the "try it out" coding steps. There is a huge amount of detail coding you are going to do, so be prepared. This is not some book that glosses over the coding part of Visual Basic. You should take your time and try to understand what it is your doing when you enter the coding that they tell you to. Dont expect to finish off this book in a week. I suggest taking a certain part of each day and follow the instructions on each page until your mind gets a little tired, then stop for the day and reflect on what you learned.

I made the slow crawl to chapter 6 before I finally surrendered. It's been a long time since I've let a book get the best of me, but with this author's terribly illogical way of approaching the subject I could waste my time no longer. Chalked it up as a loss and made sure I wrote this review to deter any other VB beginners from making the same mistake I made.
It's laughable how the author thanks god for "the many talents that he has blessed me with" in the Acknowledgments. Well, Mr. Willis I can assure you god didn't bless you with the ability to teach.

Yuk. This book is really terrible for anyone who wants to learn VB programming. Too little explanation, and a really horrible excuse for an index.
If you want something far better that will also serve as a reference for future use, try Murach's Visual Basic 2010.

In this book you will be able to find all the necessary tools on learning the VB 2010 language, very different from that of Visual Basic 6 editions. The author is much better dedicated on delivering a more sound methods on teaching this new Visual Basic 2010, he is sincere on talking that "Visual basic 2010 is a kind of version of Java", "more than 3 million people use it" (because of easiest way to programming applications). In my opinion Visual Basic would never disappear because of their fundamentals on teaching how to program to build the easiest and more powerful applications, ever to be created in a Windows environment. This book makes a good approach on teaching code, that lacked earlier versions on the "Wrox Book Publishing". The only thing I think this book lacks much is about teaching about graphics, WPF and XAML. Although Visual Basic 2010 is not basically a good graphics developing environment, I think It can benefit from most of the applications with graphics made for the Windows OS. Excellent book for starters, like me.

I am an experienced program in main frames with no knowledge in VB. This book was my first on the subject and it is a good guide. After a few weeks, and with the help of MS MSDM, I can create windows and write procedures to handle them.
This book is very useful for a beginner, but only for a start, if you want to expand your skills in VB or you have some a previous experience this book is not for you.

This Book is a good starting point for someone new to .NET programming that has had programming before.

It seems that all of these 'how to program' books are lacking when it comes to the printer. Aside from sending "Hello World" to the printer the book says 'see microsoft's web site for more detailed examples'. I guess only MicroSoft knows how to make nice looking useful printouts on the printer. My gripe is that the printout is what the end result is. If you can do everything except print you're wasting time.

If you need help on pulling data from a data base this book is pretty good.