Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2003 Kick Start [Paperback]

Duncan Mackenzie (Author), Andy Baron (Author), Erik Porter (Author), Joel Semeniuk (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0672325497 | ISBN-13: 978-0672325496 | Publication Date: December 1, 2003

Visual Basic .NET Kick Start is a rapid-progression tutorial that presents Visual Basic .NET to working programmers already familiar with another programming language or tool. This book speeds through basic concepts and focuses on practical examples showing the advantages of Visual Basic .NET in ASP programming, application design and creation, and .NET Web Services development. Because previous versions of Visual Basic are so prevalent, this book pays special attention to issues developers face when moving from VB to VB.NET. Although Visual Basic .NET Kick Start assumes no knowledge of the .NET Framework, it skips the handholding and basic programming instruction associated with entry-level tutorials. Full of code examples, tips, and professional insights, this book is about maximum payoff with minimum effort for the working programming who wants to use Visual Basic .NET now.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Visual Basic .NET Kick Start is a rapid-progression tutorial that presents Visual Basic .NET to working programmers already familiar with another programming language or tool. This book speeds through basic concepts and focuses on practical examples showing the advantages of Visual Basic .NET in ASP programming, application design and creation, and .NET Web Services development. Because previous versions of Visual Basic are so prevalent, this book pays special attention to issues developers face when moving from VB to VB.NET. Although Visual Basic .NET Kick Start assumes no knowledge of the .NET Framework, it skips the handholding and basic programming instruction associated with entry-level tutorials. Full of code examples, tips, and professional insights, this book is about maximum payoff with minimum effort for the working programming who wants to use Visual Basic .NET now.

About the Author

Duncan Mackenzie is the Visual Basic Content Strategist for Microsoft's developer Web site, and as such, he chooses topics, acquires content, and writes material for the Visual Basic developer center on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic). Duncan writes the monthly MSDN programming column "Coding 4 Fun" and has authored a variety of other articles on MSDN. He has been the author or co-author of several books on Visual Basic (and related Microsoft technologies), including Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic .NET in 21 Days, Platinum Edition Using Visual Basic 6.0, Word 2000 VBA Programmer's Reference, and more. In addition to writing, Duncan has also been active as a Visual Basic trainer and has taught many courses ranging from intermediate to advanced VB programming.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Sams (December 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672325497
• ISBN-13: 978-0672325496
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,843,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The news about what's new in VB.NET, December 30, 2003

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2003 Kick Start (Paperback)

As someone whose Visual Basic (VB) experience extends back to early in version 4.0 and who is an object-oriented veteran, when I heard the early news about VB.NET I was certainly more intrigued than I was over versions 5 and 6. The announced changes were certainly welcome from my point of view, as it appeared that some of the more treacherous aspects of VB were being eliminated. However, the initial response to VB.NET was more negative than Microsoft expected, leading to the elimination of some of the proposed changes. With this as a background, when searching for material on VB.NET, my interest was in a book that concentrated primarily on the differences between version 6 and VB.NET. This book does exactly that.
Like all upgrades, some of the changes are only slight to cosmetic. Nevertheless, you must learn them, as they could lead to the VB.NET environment rejecting version 6 code. Examples of this are the interpretation of the "Option" statements and the elimination of default object properties. In version 6, if text1 is a textbox, then an assignment of the form

text1="Hello World"

would be a shorthand representation for

text1.text="Hello World"

and acceptable. However, it cannot be done in VB.NET. Most implicit recasting is now disallowed and some data types are no longer supported.
However, the real differences between the versions are the incorporation of object-oriented principles into the language. Exceptions are now the way in which errors are handled and VB.NET also has inheritance, more explicit event handling, interfaces, constructors and overloading. This new way of doing things can be learned and the descriptions in this book are thorough without overloading you with unnecessary verbiage. Independent of whether you already understand the principles of object-oriented programming or not, if you are making the transition to VB.NET, then you will find the descriptions of value.
Unlike some other books that demonstrate once again how to build simple projects in VB.NET, which shows you almost nothing new, the author of this book has made the conscious and wise decision to show you the differences, which for a VB veteran, is all you really need.