Customer Reviews

Mastering Visual Basic 6

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I am relatively new to VB programming. I purchased this book because of the great reviews. What a mistake. The author glosses over topics, which I feel, should be covered in more depth, especially for the beginner. I wracked my brain trying to figure out the bad code examples used in this book. I try to purchase books from Amazon with at least 4.5 to 5 stars, and for the most part, I have been very satisfied. The author must have had his friends write the good reviews for this one. Save a tree, don't buy this book.

Finished "Teach Yourself VB 5.0 in 21 days" last year, it was a fantastic book for beginners, and I was ready to step further, then I bought this book for my reference. Boy, this book is very confusing! Go to Chapter 17, for example (page 923), and do the data entry project. I spent hours trying to figure out, why the code just wouldn't work and I always got error messages for undefined variables! Finally, I use the CD to view the codes, and I found out that there were MANY procedures that weren't not on the book at all! NO WONDER! Thanks a lot! The author jumps around different topics, does not even bother to finish the darn project!

If you want to learn VB, go for Teach yourself VB 5.0 in 21 days, and buy something else when you're done, DON'T TOUCH THIS BOOK! I don't understand why others gave 5 stars, did you guys even try the codes? You will change your ratings if you did.

I rate this book highly because I think the book is easy to use and the examples are great. I am a mainframe programmer and I find his way of explaining things to be very good. I was recently certified in VB 5.0. And this book helped a lot. The author is very consistent in quality in every chapter. I have read this book twice. I recommend it to everyone. After you read this book then you might look for others, but I would start here. I am glad he did not spend a lot of time on ADO and database information - you can find that in other books. I think that the material he DID cover was appropriate for a book such as this.

It sure is hard to find ONE good book on VB. If you can work your way through all of the coding and description errors in this book, you'll at least learn some things. Unfortunately, though, Petroutsos doesn't provide enough examples for one to become very comfortable with important concepts like arrays, functions, procedures, and arguments. After I bought this book I found out that it was written based on a beta version of VB6. At least Sybex, the publisher, provides some code fixes on their Web site. I don't believe that this book will make you a master, but it will give you some good ideas if you place its information beside information from other sources.

I picked up this book because an initial scan through the contents gave it the appearance that it covered more material than others and would be good as a beginner book and also as a reference book later. Unfortunately, there are just so many errors (in the code samples and the text) that I think a beginner programmer would get completely lost. If you are already an adept programmer, than this may be an ok book (well, maybe not for its price), but I think that there are plenty of better books out there. But if you can't recognize an error such as "the size of an array indexed from 0 to 49 is 49", then DON'T BUY THIS BOOK; go with one of the Sam's Teaching VB books.

This is yet another great book from Sybex. ive purchased most of the visual basic books that sybex put out, and i have yet to buy one i didnt get something - correction - A LOT from. this is not the sort of book a beginner should be looking at, "Visual Basic 6 Complete" (also from Sybex) might be more appropriate there, and "Visual Basic 6 Professional Step By Step" from Microsoft Press would definatly be a good choice. Mastering visual basic 6 provides examples and explanations of graphics processing code, and ActiveX control development, along with dozens of other topics, and for its price (as with all Sybex books), it cant be beat.

I first started learning vb about a year ago and this was the very first book I purchased (going off of friends recommendations). At first I felt a little disappointed with the book and I felt somewhat lost in it. Now that I have more overall knowledge of vb this books seems to become clearer and clearer. I would spend quite a bit of time learning how to make small apps that don't do a whole lot but teach you the basics before getting into this book. The first few chapters are fairly straight forward and aimmed directly towards newbies but before continuing through the book I would pick up a little more experience.

No matter what your Visual Basic learning level is, from needing a beginner's introduction to wanting to move up to a more advanced level, this is the book for you. Don't let the 1285 pages scare you. The read is neither dry nor boring, and each page hands-on teaches you something you can take with you. Topics cover the Visual Studio environment, the intrinsic toolbox tools for VB, plus expands into additional components and references, making this a one-stop learning reference. You can not go wrong with this title.

I am SQL Server DBA, but many times I referenced this book to help me write front-end applications for our end-users. Anytime that I needed a quick reliable answer, I've gone to this book. I have used many others, but this book is clear and concise. It goes straight to the point and solves issues quickly. Many of my co-workers (vb application developers) come by my desk to lookup things in this book on a regular basis. Although, the book is large by volume, it is easy to find things and the indepth paragraphs take you step-by-step. Not to mention the price is right from Amazon.com. I recommend it highly.

This book was a huge disappointment to me. I had hoped that since it contained so many pages there would be a lot of information that I could not get anywhere else. Instead, it turned out to be a beginner's book that is about 600 pages too long. My advice - DON'T BUY THIS BOOK. Your money would be better spent on your favorite pizza.