Customer Reviews

Learning VBScript

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

 

 

Don't buy this book in the yera 2000... buy VBScript Programmer's Reference instead, by Wrox Press. It covers the latest and greatest, VBScript 5.0, instead of Lomax's rinky-dink 1.0 and a bit of 2.0 coverage. I gave this book 3 stars, though, because the quality of Lomax's "lessons" and explanations are great if you are new to VB or a scripting language. Indeed, Lomax demonstrates how VBScript is much easier to learn than JavaScript.

Overall, it is better to buy a book that is more updated. This is a dinosaur in today's lightning-speed techno market, and it needs to be put in the museum (c'mon, 1997? )

I was given this book to read for a course I am taking in an educational institution. I found the book a big pain to read. The author wants to write for beginners and at the same time appeal to those with programming experience. If you are a virtual beginner like me, this book will confuse you. Chapters 1 and 2 are enlightening to the beginner, but beyond that, the author's attempts to pander to those who are experienced in VB programming leaves a beginner confused. Without any prior warning, the author suddenly introduces new programming techniques, with the assumption that the reader was familiar with the subject. Then the author, with the same suddenness, remembers the beginner reader and then attempts to please him/her too. Sometimes, it is the reverse: the authors starts out by addressing the beginner, and suddenly off he goes addressing the experienced programmer. This makes the book disorganized and verbose and difficult to read. I have read books on introduction to other programming languages and I found Chapter 3 of this book the worst I have read so far on variables, declaration of variables, constants, etc. This book is certainly not the best for a beginner or those who, in addition to learning a programming language, would want the aesthetic pleasure of a well organized and succint book. Sometimes I wished I could 'cut and re-paste' the paragraphs or simply 'cut!'

This book is NOT for complete novices like me! Terms like "OCX", "32-bit", and "server-side includes" are used but not explained at all. With some help from other books, some of the material made sense. That said, there is a lot of good content in this book. I'd recommend a more introductory book (is there one?) for true rookies.

This was the first book I bought on VBScript and since then I have read and seen many books on VBScript, this is by far the very best there is, O'Reilly style quality comes out of every page, this isn't an idiots guide or a teach you in 10 minutes tutorial, it's serious stuff - but at a fast enough pace. So if I've already got a copy why am I here? well I just bought ten copies for my developers, I saw the comment below and I felt compelled to write here... perhaps our friend from Silicon Valley has a downer on VB/VBS/AnythingMicrosoft? OK the MSIE object model is showing its age but you'll not find a better introduction to the language anywhere.

This book is a good start for learning VBScript if you are still back in the dark ages, or using IE3.0. I was hoping for a book that would teach many of the updated code tricks for use with IE4.0, but this isn't the book I should have bought.

I won't be long and all i will say is that I knew almost nothing about vbscript before I read this book and by the time I finished it I had enough knowledge and tools to program rather complicated codes! The only bad point is that the book is quite old and covers only versions 1.0 and 2.0 and requires some updating from the msn web site. But in the end of the day Paul Lomax is realy amazing and the book is really really good.

I had been developing strictly with perl for Unix, when I needed to do some work on an NT platform I ordered this book. I used it coupled with O'Reilly's ASP in a nutshell and finished the job quickly. It is a great reference for migrating from other scripting languages.

This is the best VBScript book and I've never felt the need to get another one. It's accessible to a novice (which I was when I first bought it) but has enough depth and richness of information to still be used as a reference guide now that I have over 5 years of experience. I can look up all the functions in it quickly (easy to forget syntax when you're programming in VBScript and client-side JavaScript at the same time), since I've marked the pages with post-it tabs, and it's well organized so that I can find things quickly even if I haven't marked them. Sure, it doesn't describe some of the newer language features that came out after it was published, but still it will work 95% of the time. I notice the same author worked on the O'Reilly VBScript in a Nutshell book, so I might check that out, but generally I don't like the Nutshell books as much because they don't have code samples.

Usually the O'Reilly books are simply reference books. Books for the High Priests of Computer Technology to check back their theological notes to remind themselves of the brilliance that they once embodied.

This book actually teaches you VBScript. My only major criticism is that the material is not up to date. Great Book once it is revised!

This is a very helpful book for those who are new to scripting and/or need a review of basic programming practices. The examples are good, and the CD-ROM added a lot to my learning experience. I wish the author had explored more complicated programming problems, however, after he covered the basics. I would also like to see the ASP section expanded.