Customer Reviews

Microsoft Visual Basic Professional 6.0 Step by Step (Step by Step (Microsoft))

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Let me state that I have been through many, many books on how to learn Visual Basic 6.0. I've done the Dummies Book, the Sams 21 Day and 24 hour route, and the John Smiley 'By examples' book, and lastly the Peter Norton VB book. I've spent some serious money on books and Im still a rookie programmer (ok, so Im modest...).

Since I started with the Dummies book, it gave me the basics of how and why VB works. But, what I found it lacking was any real examples to play with. The Sams books were redundant of the dummies guides. And the Peter Norton book was just pathetic. It would bore a Vulcan to sleep. I can't tell you how many times I caught myself reading the same paragraph over and over to try to capture the meaning. The book by John Smiley was fantastic, but his follow up one, the "By Examples", had a Talk Show tone that left me confused. The book just had too much going on asides VB...and after a chapter or two, I just couldnt take it any longer (the book is now a lovely speaker holder).

Enough on those. To you that have tried a book or two and are thirsty for a book that will bring you across the finish line, this is it. No, this is not an ideal first book for the newbie. But, if you understand a wee bit about VB, this book will pick you up and carry you though. The examples (and there are lots) are the heart of each lesson. Most books are very wordy and defining the process, then an example. Not this one. This guy must have pilot blood in him. You get a heads up of what you are going to do, make an example and try it out, then after you've "landed", the author discusses with you what you just did, the dynamics, and how to go a step beyond. Ok, this is getting really wordy, so let me wrap up here....Im not a good reader...I get distracted too easy. I found myself able to get absorbed into this book and LEARN. Its concise and to the point. So, to those of you that didnt like the book, well...perhaps you like those War & peace sized ones...or like books that read like Latin 101 and put anyone that dares read over your shoulder to sleep. <g> Good book, good examples...I tended to stay away from the Microsoft Press books since they were much more expensive then the other entry-level guides. Not any more...looking forwad to his next book on the next version of VB

Thanks for allowing me to comment

I started programming in BASIC when I was 8 (on an Apple II back in 1978...AppleSoft BASIC written by Bill Gates). I never listened to the naysayers about the spaghetti code, not an OOP language, etc...BASIC and VB are the Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages.

I was in a bookstore and bumped into a colleague and she asked me if I had heard anything about Halvorson's VB6 Step by Step...I hadn't until she showed it to me. I skimmed through the book and found that there was a good base of knowledge for someone new to Window's event driven programming.

I did notice some of the old BASIC naming conventions, which I won't fault the author with. I did get a more thorough look at the book at work, when my friend would come and ask questions about portions of the material written by Halvorson. Take the title as is...Step By Step. Don't let the bad reviews out here sway your decision if you are new to programming...this will take you to an intermediate level and will set you up to tackle other VB challenges if you choose to explore more.

If you want to learn to be a good VB programmer and you are just starting out here is the path to take:
(1) Michael Halvorson's - VB6:Step By Step,
(2) Evangelos Petroutsos' - Mastering VB 6
(3) Deborah Kurata's - Doing Objects in VB6 or Peter Wright's - Beginning VB6 Objects (for chapter on Object Persistence)
(4) Dan Appleman's - VB Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API

Whatever course you take expanding your horizons...good luck.

This book doesn't assume that you know ANYTHING about programming; it's great for people with absolutely no background in C, C++, Java, or any scripting language; however, knowing any of the above is an advantage. The first several chapters of the book deal basically with using the Visual Basic 6.0 programming environment; and that's a lifesaver. I'd have been completely lost without it. I would recommend this book to people with no background in programming -or- Windows, because it assumes you know nothing; which is a logical assumption in a beginner's book. It is a little wordy, and often refers you to online help, which I have found to be difficult to use, but all in all it's a fabulous way to get your feet wet. I'm almost finished with it, and I wish they had a VB Professional Step by Step part II, cos I doubt any other book could hold a candle to this one. It's worth every penny.

The book and CD teach by example. Together, they provide a good introduction to the capabilities of Visual Basic, which is the intention of the book. If you are looking for more in-depth material, this is not the book. But, if you have little/no experience with VB, this is a good start.

I dont know why people keep saying this book is "great for beginners" because it definitly isnt. The author steps you through the techniques but doesnt bother to explain to you what each line of code does. Most of the time hes like "I'll explain more about this later on", but why even bother writing code that you know absolutley nothing about. It's like doing a tune-up on your car and not knowing what it is your doing or trying to accomplish. This book trys to explain WAY TOO MUCH info to you at once. Thats why there are individual books about databases and DHTML and activeX objects. But the author trys to cram it all in. After you read this book and try to create your own program, you'll wish you knew what all those lines of code in the book meant. In general, if you really want a book that explains these type of subjects, go with with a book by John Smiley, his Learn to Program books are great cause he really explains why it is you are doing something. And he tells you about the principles before you just break open the code window and start typing in stuff you have no idea about.

On the positive side: The book is oriented towards beginners, and does not assume prior programming knowledge (but does assume that you know your way around Windows). The lessons are fairly clear, and the author provides plenty of coding examples on the CD.

On the negative side: Although Halvorson uses standard naming conventions for objects (with three-character prefixes), he does not use the current standard naming conventions for variables. Instead, he uses the old-fashioned BASIC conventions, so a string variable is named Message$ instead of strMessage. (Microsoft recommends against this practice). And as the reviewer from Nashua pointed out, Halvorson doesn't assign types to his string and integer variables, instead leaving them as the default variant type (a bit sloppy, won't really affect small programs or databases but could be a time/space-waster in large-scale projects).

If it weren't for the less-than-ideal programming practices Halvorson uses in his lessons, I'd recommend this book with more enthusiasm. For absolute beginners, it might be better to start with Smiley's intro to VB, and then go through Halvorson's (while correcting the naming conventions and variable types in the exercises!) for more detail. Bear in mind that both are learning books rather than reference books; you'll need to pick up something like "VB and VBA in a Nutshell" (from everyone's favorite geek publisher O'Reilly & Associates) to have at hand while doing more advanced stuff.

Halvorson's book is a great start to VB6 newcomers. I was able to go from cover to cover within a week of careful studying, and must admit my original VB1 and VBA concepts and coding ability were greatly refreshed.

The last two chapters, Days 13 and 14 could be better explained, but it seemed beyong the book scope.

Recommended as a getting started! Note: If you got the book bundled with Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Deluxe Learning Edition, go straight to the other title (Programmer's Guide) before you venture in serious development. Also, be aware that you CANNOT create distributable applications (*.exe) with the VB6 Learning Edition. You have to upgrade to the VB6 Professional Edition to do so!!)

Cuurently I am a freshman computer science student at Lamar University here in Beaumont. And I always wanted to learn Visual Basic and in high school they didn't teach VB, but in college as computer science student you don't have a choice, in other words you have to take this class I should say 3 or 5 of these classes. So I started my first semister in August 98 and took a VB class, I found VB quite easy to use programming language. DO YOU KNOW WHY I FOUND VB EASY ? because I bought this book at the first day of my class and this book is the only thing you need if you are a beginner. This Book has sample programs and author teaches new stuff by the help of those programs. I found SBSVB6.0 very useful book and I am ready to sugest it to any beginner of VB. and yeah I also bought a visual basic book name VISUAL BASIC 6 HOW-TO and that book didn't help alot. it was just waste of money. BUT I am 100% sure if you realy want to learn Visual Basic and go on Go get Microsoft Visual basic step by step6. I am 100% sure.....
if you want to know more about Visual Basic books you can E-mail me I will be glad to help you out.

Coming from a Delphi applications developer background, I found this book easy to follow for my introduction to VB 6. I didn't realize how easy VB is to learn. This book is packed with information covering many topics including ADO and Active X controls, string handling, internet controls. Of course, the topics covered were just a taste and not indepth at all. It was just enough information to get your feet wet.

Most of the chapters had applications to practice coding. However, there were several chapters that had sample applications but didn't have any practice code to type. He just went through the pre-written code and explained the key statements. It was more of a reference than actual typing and learning. This books isn't for beginning programmers. But it is a good transition book from other languages to Visual Basic. For my first Visual Basic book, I learned a lot.

I am an experienced Windows and C++ programmer, and bought this book based on the rave reviews to just get a handle on the fundamental structure of VB.

The text provides very clear coverage of many of the fundamentals of the language, but spends more time showing you how to do something rather than why you should do it that way. (To be fair, however, this book is a cut above the maddening "Teach yourself X in N days" texts, which don't teach you ANYTHING.) The author also persists in some bad programming habits, such as typing everything as a Variant. The simplicity of the presentation is often excessive, causing the book to give short shrift to more advanced topics. Most (if not all) of the "step by step" examples are so obvious there's no need to follow along using the IDE. Then you get to the more advanced database and DHTML material near the end of the book, and the light coverage makes the examples (and much of the text) useless.

Although I am the first to admit that this text was TOO simple for my background, I am disappointed that some topics were entirely omitted or not explained clearly, such as: Class Modules, why you would use more than one Standard Module, good practices for declaring and using application and module level constants.

So, although you will learn to make a cute VB slot machine and other programs of similar complexity, you won't learn how to produce any VB code that any competent programer would take a second look at.

The best advice is probably to read this book in a week's time to get the fundamentals, then find an advanced book that addresses the topics of real importance. When they say this book is for beginners, think "complete beginners" and know what you're getting.