Customer Reviews

Mastering Microsoft Visual Basic 2005

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I agree with other reviewers that this is an excellant book on the Express version of VB 2005. Since I installed the FREE Express version of VB 2005, I bought this book to help me finally transition from VB6 to VB.net. Having purchased the author's VB6 book, I found this VB 2005 Express book to be of similar quality. And I would highly recommend it to anyone using VB 2005 Express.

The only reason I did not give the book 5 stars is because there are numerous errors in the book. On the Sybex website, the Errata page for this book is BLANK. I personally have submitted over a dozen errata (and I am not talking about grammatical errors, these are programmatical errors) to Sybex for this book. According the Sybex these errata submittals have been passed along to the author, but the author apparently never responded. IMHO this is simply inconsiderate. I have tried to contact the author directly to his "supposed" email address, published in the book, but again NO RESPONSE.

If I wrote a book that would be the foundation for future editions and if people, like myself, were reporting errors in my book for FREE, I would be very grateful and I would send each one of them a personal "Thank You". I hope the author is listening.

The truth is that I have probably learned a lot simply by reading this book carefully enough to uncover these errors and then taking the time to go to my PC and verify that indeed that these were errors.

This is an excellent introduction to Visual Basic 2005 and the .Net Framework. It covers all the important topics. The pace is just right (at least for me, an experienced VB6 programmer new to .Net). The author gives you a good foundation, without confusing you with esoterica. The code samples are well-designed, practical applications, many of which could serve as templates for on-the-job tasks. Kudos to the author for a job well done!

My only complaint, and the reason I gave the book 4 stars only, is the quantity of errors. While one expects errors in technical books, which are written under deadline pressure, this one seems to contain more than most. There are the inevitable typos, most of which are fairly obvious. There are also many coding errors. I suggest that anyone using this book recreate and run the source code listings. You will be surprised at what you encounter! Some of the code will not compile; that which will sometimes will generate output you didn't expect. I found it added to the learning experience to correct the bugs. However, I don't think the author or the publisher had this in mind.

Another vexation was the source code on the website. Most of it would not compile on my machine. The reason for this (according to the author, who was kind enough to respond to my email) is that the source code was compiled using a beta version of the software. I found that creating a new project and adding the forms from the sample solved the problem in most cases.

The book is excellent, however, the downloaded program files used in the examples rarely work. That's what keeps me from giving this book 5 stars.

This book isn't for the absolute beginner, but it's one of the best VB 2005 books yet. It covers a lot of topics and in much more depth than most relevant books. I'm new to .NET, but not a beginner programmer and this book helped me get quickly through the basics of the language and learn some of the more advanced features. It contains many comprehensive tutorials and examples, some of them quite interesting. Also, a lot of advanced techniques, and valuable comments on designing practical Windows interfaces (how to minimize the use of the mouse and make the most of the Enter key, and how to use the TreeView and ListView controls in practical UIs beyond directory listings). The chapter on cryptography is the most comprehensive reading on data encryption, from simple encryption to public key encryption and digital signatures. The examples in this chapter are awesome. Very satisfied with the book.

I purchased this book to learn programming in a visual environment. I have not programmed since I took some courses back in college programming on a main frame. There are many typos in this book and the code Does not work in many of sections. I am trying to learn by following along with the code in the book and get hit with many errors. When you look at the code from the web site it is completely different from what he has in the book which is taking huge amounts of time to figure out what he has done. I would not refer this book to anyone trying to learn the language.

This book is the best book I have found on VB.NET hands down. One of the reasons I bought this book, was the fact that it covers printing and graphics which other books just skim over.

The book is filled with examples of bad Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). This is one of the reasons VB developers were given a bad name - their (our) Interfaces look like they are in pain and were put together by a novice. Here, all controls have odd sizes; they are not aligned; captions are rather unfriendly; fonts and text sizes are all over the place, and even the most common prefix for the Command Button control, "cmd", has been forgotten in favor of "bttn". You will NOT learn to build user-friendly applications here.

Moreover, just the first 40 pages were full of randomly-placed double quotes (") that will prevent the code from compiling, e.g.

" End Sub

Additionally, the author states, as he did in the last book, that in VB.NET you must "first design the interface, then implement the internal logic of the application". WRONG. This is what gave VB developers a very bad name (again)! You should first design the logic, then build the GUI that will WORK WITH THAT LOGIC. Not the other way around. Don't drop 20 controls on the form, then decide what code will go behind them. This leads to code that is not easy to extend because you simply "fill out" event handlers rather than write modules, procedures, and then wire them to the event handlers.

Overall, this is a good introduction to the language and covers a LOT, but not so good for learning software design methodologies or GUI design. 3.7 stars.

I used this book right away because it was one of the first VB 2005 books (though not the first out there). It had information on things I usually do which I found extremely helpful, such as details on search/replace in the RTF control and many others.

I emailed the author and told him that he forgot the code in the replace feature in the RTF control (which I figured out anyway), but he graciously responded promptly and said he would send me the update which I thought was nice of him.

Excellent beginner/intermediate book and does have some advanced feature material discussed. This book along with "Programming Visual Basic 2005: The Language" by Balena are books that should be on every VB.net programmers shelf.

If you are looking for a VB 2005 book that has it all (all levels of programming) - you've found it.

What impressed me was its writing style - plain, highly informative and instantly accessible (a joy to read). Most programming books (whatever language) are written by programmers that are NOT good at translating programming concepts into plain language - good programmers, but VERY poor teachers.

This is where Petroutsos excels. He writes in a plain and clear style, yet the information is detailed and easily understood. This book will serve not only to teach you VB 2005 but also as a good reference for the future (very detailed index).

Conclusion: Very good book, very good value, this book is a WINNER, enjoy!

While I bought this book for reference it appears to be a very good book.

If you do buy the book...check for pages 963-994. My copy has excluded these pages and were only found while attempting to use it as a reference.

I've contacted the publisher and at this point it does not look good for correction since my purchase is over 90 days. My purchase was 6 months ago and I've sent them the receipt.