Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .NET [Paperback]

Anne Prince (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2002

Although this book is designed for people who are new to the .NET Framework, Visual Basic, or even programming, its goals are ambitious. In just 20 chapters, you will learn how to develop graphical user interfaces, how to develop applications that work with databases through ADO.NET, how to develop web applications that use Web services and XML, and much more. It's all there in the unique Murach style that has been training professional programmers for more than 25 years.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Here are 4 ways that our instructional approach insures your success:

To help you learn how to develop applications at a professional level, this book presents 18 business applications as examples. That way, you can see the relationships between the Visual Basic code, objects, properties, methods, and events that an application requires, which is essential to your understanding. In contrast, most competing books present trivial applications that have little resemblance to applications in the real world, and that limits your learning potential.

To solidify your skills, the exercises at the end of each chapter guide you through the development of some of the book’s applications. They also encourage you to experiment and challenge you to apply what you’ve learned in new ways. To give you a maximum amount of practice in a minimum amount of time, you start many of these exercises from partial applications that you download from our web site.

To help you learn more by reading less, all of the information in this book is presented in "paired pages" with the essential syntax, guidelines, and examples on the righthand page and the perspective and extra explanation on the left. Programmers tell us how much they like this approach because it lets them quickly find what they’re looking for. This is particularly useful for a language like Visual Basic because you simply can’t remember the hundreds of details that are required for effective programming.

After you read the first section of this book plus chapter 8, you can read the chapters in section 2, 3, 4, or 5. In other words, you don’t have to read all 20 chapters in sequence. We refer to this as "modular organization," and it lets you get the training you need when you need it. Yes, there are some contingencies between some of the chapters, but we let you know about them whenever they’re critical.

From the Author

When we started this book, our goals were (1) to teach you Visual Basic as quickly and easily as possible; (2) to teach you a set of professional Visual Basic skills that you can use for developing real-world business applications; and (3) to introduce you to all of the major features of Visual Basic .NET so you’re prepared to learn more on your own. Now, we sincerely hope that we’ve succeeded.

So if you have any comments about this book, we would appreciate hearing from you. In particular, we would like to know whether this book has lived up to your expectation

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 692 pages
• Publisher: Mike Murach & Associates; 1st edition (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890774154
• ISBN-13: 978-1890774158
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #45 in Books > Computers & Technology > Microsoft > Development > .NET

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Organized, Comprehensive Classroom in a Book, March 1, 2003

By 

J Bucknoff, PMP (Fort Lee, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .NET (Paperback)

Mike Murach has been publishing tutorials for IT professionals since the mid-1980s. Many mainframe developers learned their COBOL, DB2, VSAM and CICS skills from Mike Murach publications. These books owe their great following to Murach's model of devoting a single book to specific topic and focusing on making it the best introductory book possible on that topic, rather than publishing a confusing array of books on the same topic with much overlap among books. Murach has continued this model with books that cover topics for today's developers: SQLServer 2000, Java 2, Java Servlets & JSP and Visual Basic.NET.

Murach's Beginning Visual Basic.NET is an excellent choice for teaching oneself VB.NET. If you complete all 18 chapters and do the exercises, then you will have mastered enough to go out and get a job as a beginning VB.NET developer. The topics are ordered in a sequence that is very conducive to learning. The book uses Murach's successful "paired page" format with each subtopic presented in 2-page chunks; text on the left hand page with examples and summaries on the right hand page.

One of the strengths of this book is the fact that there are plenty of exercises and projects to do. In order to keep the price of the book down, rather than put all the projects and sample code onto a CD, the sample code as well as 80% of the projects are made available on their website requiring a 2 minute download (20 seconds if you have DSL or cable internet access). Just reading a book or copying sample code from a book is not going to help you remember what you learned. This book gives you projects to do as well as many exercises. This makes you learn the topics covered.

By the end of Chapter 6 you will have covered all of the basics of VB.NET syntax, using the VS.NET IDE and the basics of coding OO applications (advanced OO topics are covered in a later chapter). Since OO is such a cornerstone of .NET development, the fact that it is introduced so early in the book is a plus! By the end of the 18 chapters you will have developed multiple non-trivial VB.NET projects. These are not trivial coding exercises but serious business applications. Each chapter has several hands-on projects. Additional projects are available for download from the publisher's website.

The focus of this book is on coding. Other than covering .NET classes, the book does not cover the details of .NET Framework development such as deployment, assemblies, interoperability with legacy COM components, conversion from VB6, threading, .NET architecture (CLR, CTS, and MSIL) and managed code. Once the reader has used this book to master the basics of designing, coding and debugging VB.NET programs, then he or she can move on to the clinical details of what goes on under the hood as well as thinking about the issues of enterprise development and application deployment. There are plenty of books that cover those topics. You have to learn to walk before you run. This book will have you walking in no time at all.

Developers who put in the effort to master the topics in this book can move onto the next book from Murach, VB.NET Programming with ADO.NET (co-authored by Anne Prince along with veteran Mike Murach & Associates author, Doug Lowe).

The 18 chapters are broken down into five sections:
1. The "essence" of VB.NET, including language essentials, data validation, exception handling, using the IDE, OO development (1 of 2 chapters on this topic) and debugging.
2. Windows forms, controls and multi-document interfaces.
3. NET classes, XML, advanced OO development, arrays and collections.
4. Database Access and ADO.
5. Web programming, ASP.NET and web services.

If you cannot get to a class or you just want a very well organized hands-on tutorial that is comprehensive, yet completely understandable, then this is the book for you.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't cover every single thing about VB.NET, March 10, 2003

By 

dan (Internet Cafe in the NY City Metro Area) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .NET (Paperback)

This introductory text doesn't cover every single thing there is to know about VB.NET and the .NET Framework -- and that is where its strength is.

You can go out and buy one of the more comprehensive books (for example: Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (Core Reference) by Francesco Balena). While such a book would be very important to an established VB.NET developer, other than as supplementary reference, these comprehensive books are of limited use to someone who does not know the language yet and wants to learn it.

If, on the other hand, you are looking to teach yourself VB.NET and do not have the time or the cash to take a formal class, then the Murach book is the one for you -- whether you are new to programming or you are someone who is familiar with a legacy language like C, Perl or VB6. This book doesn't ask you to bite off more than you can chew. Once you complete the material in this book you will have a very strong foundation for learning the more advanced topics of VB.NET.

The author put a great deal of thought into the organization of this book. She selected the right topics, put them in the right order, and explained each topic well (with good examples).

Another strength is the availability of programming exercises. It's not enough to just follow along with the code in a book (especially if you are beginner). You need to write some original code on your own. Hands-on practice is the only way to really learn and this book provides plenty of it.

This book is very thoughtful and well laid out. Rather than use a lot of color and razzle-dazzle (which both distracts attention from the content as well as adds to the cost of other books), the author gets right to the point with the subjects you need to learn to obtain the minimum knowledge to start coding in VB.NET at a professional (that is, salaried) level.

Feel free to buy additional books for reference purposes. But if you want to LEARN VB.NET on your own, this book provides sufficiently comprehensive introduction. It's the best introductory tutorial for the price.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The BEST for starting VB.Net!, December 16, 2002

By 

Bob Kaplan, Jr. (Louisville, KY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .NET (Paperback)

Murach's Beginning Visual Basic.NET by Anne Prince is by far the best book on the market for us beginners! Had I bought this book first, I would have saved myself lots of dollars and several months time. This is a job well done!

Anne has selected a terrific range of material and presented it in a sequence and method that is perfectly suited for beginners. Starting with the basics of the Visual Studio development environment right on thru the coding of windows and web-based database applications, you'll learn how to produce real-world solutions.

She starts each topic from the beginning, with code samples and their clear and concise explanations written on the same, or facing page. Thus this book is easier to learn from than any other programming book I have worked with.

Each new topic requires only previous topics to understand. You don't have to jump chapters ahead to search for references on the current topic. Such a logical progression builds the reader's confidence, avoids frustration, and saves time.

Solutions to the end-of-chapter exercises require both a review of the topic lessons and some user creativity; just the right mixture of confidence building and mental challenge. And the additional downloadable problems offer more mental workout.

Whenever I emailed Anne for help, she quickly responded with articulate solutions to my inquiries.

I've read plenty of programming books..............cursed at, and wondered why I bought many of them! This is the only one that I feel so good about that I'm willing to take the time to write a signed review.