Customer Reviews

Learn to Program with Visual Basic 2010 Express

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

 

 

Keeping it simple: this has been a great book for me. I tried learning various languages in the past, never could completely grasp everything. A lot of things being discussed in this book make sense now, I suspect due to the way the book was written: as though you are in a college classroom.

The book doesn't go far enough for me though, but I'm also looking at more advanced concepts within VB and programming in general. I suspect that this book is a great first jump into the world of programming. If you've already got programming experience, this is probably not the book for you.

I give it a solid 5 stars, although there is some minor errata throughout the book. None of it affect the overall knowledge learned.

I recommend reading some of the one-star reviews for Learn to program with Visual Basic 6.0 by the same author. It seems to be basically the same book only based on VB 6. The so-called "real-world program" you are going to work on, is something that might have been considered top-notch in 1990 when Windows 3.0 was standard. You will create a program where data records are updated by text file! As the title says 2010, I was hoping to learn something more current. Given that most programs these days have to work with databases, I am more than surprised not to find anything about DAO in this book, not to mention the more current ADO (ActiveX Data Objects). The fact that the book is written like a novel (including blow-by-blow conversation, i.e. "Please, call me Joe"), has a slightly childish style (Bullina china shop...honestly!!!), and seems to be addressing thoroughly non-technical people (Mr. Bullina does not know what Microsoft Access is, thinks a custom computer program can be had for $500, and the only program Midge, the sales clerk (who is the computer wiz-kid in the china shop), knows, is Notepad. NOTEPAD!!!). Unfortunately I purchased this on Kindle and will not be able to return it now that I have read 8% of the book already.