Hardcore Visual Basic [Paperback]

Bruce McKinney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 1997

Unleash the power of Microsoft Visual Basic with Hardcore Visual Basic! Software development for Windows can be easy with Visual Basic, yet few developers and aspiring programmers know how to tap the under-the-hood power of the Windows API to give their programs sought-after performance. Visual Basic wizard Bruce McKinney shows how to blast through the so-called limits of Visual Basic to reach the powerful object-oriented development tool that lurks within. The result is applications with better performance and more functionality. Hardcore Visual Basic provides developers with the coding techniques and finesse to take control of Windows - calling the Windows API, understanding C in Basic, and mastering messages and processes; program objects, Basic style - classes and objects, the form class, collecting objects, and creating new controls by delegating to classes; paint pictures - the Basic way of drawing, painting, and animating; create reusable code - modular packages for sorting, shuffling, searching, and parsing; reusable search, replace, about, and color select forms; classes for editing, animating, managing the keyboard, handling menus, and sharing memory between programs; write portable code - port old 16-bit programs to the 32-bit environment; write new programs that port easily; and push the limits of 32-bit code - break the barriers in Visual Basic to exploit Windows 95 to the fullest. If you want to push Visual Basic to the max, Hardcore Visual Basic is your guide - it's essential for any serious Visual Basic programmer's library.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Bruce McKinney's Hardcore Visual Basic is a revised edition of his guide to advanced programming in VB. Updated for Visual Basic 5.0, this book is best at outlining some of the new language features in Visual Basic 5.0, especially its improved support for type libraries and object-oriented programming. The heart of this book is dedicated to ways of accessing the Win32 API from within Visual Basic, which is presented in expert detail with a library of add-on functions. Sample DLL's, with libraries of VB extensions are included. The author also presents ways in which Visual Basic does and does not conform to an object-oriented programming model. Sample ActiveX controls, which use classes and the new ActiveX capabilities of VB5, are also presented. The last section, with a mix of tips and tricks for extending Visual Basic code, is also rather hit-or-miss. So is the author's humor--sometimes verging on sarcasm--which some readers will sometimes find irritating. (Once an employee of Microsoft, McKinney bravely expresses his dissatisfaction with the direction that his former company has taken with VB5.) Though this book completely ignores VB5's new enterprise features, database and Internet support, which are surely some of its most appealing enhancements, Hardcore Visual Basic does have a lot to say about developing in one of the most popular RAD tools developers have today. It can definitely ease the transition into object-oriented programming for VB developers used to the older programming style.

From the Back Cover

Unleash the power of Microsoft Visual Basic with Hardcore Visual Basic! Software development for Windows can be easy with Visual Basic, yet few developers and aspiring programmers know how to tap the under-the-hood power of the Windows API to give their programs sought-after performance. Visual Basic wizard Bruce McKinney shows how to blast through the so-called limits of Visual Basic to reach the powerful object-oriented development tool that lurks within. The result is applications with better performance and more functionality. Hardcore Visual Basic provides developers with the coding techniques and finesse to take control of Windows - calling the Windows API, understanding C in Basic, and mastering messages and processes; program objects, Basic style - classes and objects, the form class, collecting objects, and creating new controls by delegating to classes; paint pictures - the Basic way of drawing, painting, and animating; create reusable code - modular packages for sorting, shuffling, searching, and parsing; reusable search, replace, about, and color select forms; classes for editing, animating, managing the keyboard, handling menus, and sharing memory between programs; write portable code - port old 16-bit programs to the 32-bit environment; write new programs that port easily; and push the limits of 32-bit code - break the barriers in Visual Basic to exploit Windows 95 to the fullest. If you want to push Visual Basic to the max, Hardcore Visual Basic is your guide - it's essential for any serious Visual Basic programmer's library.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 700 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; 2 Sub edition (July 7, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572314222
• ISBN-13: 978-1572314221
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #575,914 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A shame it is out of print..., May 31, 2000

By 

Christopher Palmer "CMPalmer" (Huntsville, AL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hardcore Visual Basic (Paperback)

I've been a VB programmer ever since VB 1.0 and a C/C++ programmer before that. With all of the "Teach Yourself xxx in 7 Days" books for beginners and the regurgitated help files with 80% of a 1000 page book taken up with code samples, Hardcore Visual Basic is hands down the best book ever written about programming with Visual Basic. Yes, it doesn't cover specific targets in depth (e.g., database programming, Internet programming, etc.), but it gives you the tools and the knowledge to really utilize the language and environment to its full potential. I haven't released a commercial or internal product without the VbCore.DLL and the Win.TLB support since I bought the book. If you don't have this book yet, be sure and get it while copies are still available. It is a true shame that it is going out of print...

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hardcore VB useful when developing niche app front-ends, January 17, 2000

By 

Caroline Allen (Los Angeles, California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hardcore Visual Basic (Paperback)

I have been using VB off and on for 5+ years to develop very application-specific front-ends for embedded systems. These front-ends have typically been developed for a small group of users, under severe time constraints. I've found VB to be an efficient tool for this kind of development, and I've found this book to be one of the most useful for figuring out how to do things with VB that are unusual or unexpected. Several other programmers I work with, using VB to build non-business, "unorthodox" front-ends have had the same experience. The book is not a substitute for a comprehensive VB reference, nor was it intended to be, as far as I can tell.

The author has been criticized for complaining too much about what he perceives as deficiencies in VB. In my opinion, this is one of the things that makes the book valuable. All tools have limits -- it's nice to have a sense of what they are, before one embarks on a coding project, let alone making time estimates for a manager. Software development is about the tradeoff between development time and application specificity. VB is a something of a general-purpose tool and it's good to be warned about the things that are hard to do with it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book about VB, August 5, 2001

By 

Dennis Djenfer (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hardcore Visual Basic (Paperback)

Even though this book is out of print, I would like to review it. Better late than sorry. This is the best book about VB I have ever read, and a tremendously inspiring book about programming. Even though VB is not my preferred programing language, this book really gave me a kick and I started to appreciate VB in a way that I had never done before.

Bruce McKinney does not only reveal all those sneaky details about VB that you whish you had known long before, but also teaches you a lot of useful stuff about the windows API, type libraries and COM. It is not a book for beginners, but should be read as soon as possible after passing the beginners level. Read it carefully from cover to cover, because it will reveal important details about windows and programming that you don't find in other books about advanced VB.

Unfortunately, this book is about VB 5.0, which means that it has lost its relevance in the ever changing world of Microsoft Visual Basic. It's a shame that Bruce McKinney did not write a programming book about a more stable programming language. With his knowledge, passion and inspiring writing style I'm sure it would have been a classic book about programming.