Customer Reviews

Murach's Visual Basic 2008

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been using the Murach books for a number of years, and have
never been disappointed. I also read many other computer programming
books, but Murach books constantly prove superior.

The one best thing that sets the Murach books apart is the complete
application given at the end of the chapter. It's difficult to learn
a new language by just working with snippets of code. Murach puts
together an entire business application to demonstrate the concepts of
the chapter, and this more than anything else will help the programmer
on the job.

Another good thing about the Murach approach is that the applications
are business-related, which is what most programming is all about
today. Other books have silly applications with animals and games. I have nothing against animals and games, but do not want to see this in a
computer application.

Finally, I have found with other computer books that their code is
often not tested properly. When I try to use their code, the
programs often don't work correctly and are riddled with errors.
These books have many errata on their web sites. But why couldn't
they get it right in the first place. To me this is just sloppy,
sloppy work. On the other hand, with Murach, the code works properly
the first time. Murach took the time to do it the right way.

I completed reading and working with the programs of nearly all the
25 chapters in this book.

My Rating: 5 stars out of five.

Thank you Mike Murach and Anne Boehm for getting it right!

I like Murach's books more than the programming series of most other publishers, because of their hands-on style. Other books contain verbose texts, many of which have an uncanny similarity to Microsoft help texts, which tend to be written in a rather lawyerly style, followed by clunky examples, which bury a selected language feature within 50 or 100 lines of other code. Murach's books provide a healthy proportion of down-to-earth explanations combined with simple, short examples showing the correct syntax. Text on the left page, code examples on the right page.
But Murach's Visual Basic 2010 is a disappointment. I have not read earlier editions like "Murach's Visual Basic 2008" or 2005, but to me, it looks as if most of the book has not been updated to include many of the new features that have been introduced with VS/VB2008, to say nothing of VS/VB2010.
2010 features that are not touched by the author:
parallel programming (in my opinion, THE new feature for an IT world that increasingly relies on multicore systems), surprisingly not even the older VB2005/2008 feature of Threads is covered; no multiline lambda expressions and lambdas in general, covariance+contravariance. Nothing on delegates, Regex string manipulation, COM. LINQ, XML (VB2008) and the With collection initializers are covered, though.
The book is still very useful as an introduction and reference for the VB language features known since VB2005, but in order to make it clear that its 800 pages will hardly provide new insights to non-novice VB developers, a more appropriate title or at least subtitle might have been: "Beginner's Visual Basic 2005 plus selected VB2008 features such as LINQ". As such, I'd recommend it to every VB novice.
Is my view biased? 800 pages are not enough to include arcane language features like Parallel.For and parallel Tasks? Maybe - but Microsoft considered their addition relevant enough to sell them as their new VS2010 edition, thus a VB2010 book title should perhaps not omit so many of these edition-defining new features.

This book is easy to read and follow and doesn't induce sleep even after lunch. One way this is possible is the unique layout of the book: facing pages contain narrative on the left and examples on the right. This makes it easy to glance back and forth between the text explaining some subject on the left page and the example illustrating it on the right. I was a bit suspect of this layout at first, but before the 1st chapter was out I found myself liking it a lot. Another layout difference that I appreciated is the physical size of the book. At 8 inches wide by 10 inches tall, it's a bit bigger than most technical books. This helps get the examples on the page without squeezing the font down to unreadable sizes.

Beginning programmers will find the first two sections (the first 12 chapters) ready for immediate consumption. These chapters begin with an overview of the IDE, move on to basic Windows Forms concepts and then cover VB language basics. More advanced programmers can either skip or skim these chapters: the engaging writing-style (almost tutorial without talking down to the reader) and unique layout (the facing-pages) will hold your attention. You might even learn something you didn't already know.

Later chapters cover Database programming (including bound controls, data sources and datat sets, and ADO.Net), Object Oriented Programming (with copious examples of VB syntax), File IO, XML, and a brief explanation of LINQ.

Note that this book DOES NOT cover asp.net web programming using VB.Net. That topic is covered in other books by Murach books (Murach's ASP.NET 2.0 Web Programming with VB 2005 for one). This is probably a good thing, since - at 797 pages - this book is long (and heavy) enough.

Overall, I really liked this book. It was easy to read, easy to understand and held my attention through its explanations and examples.

"Facing approach" page its a big asset for this book. On the left you get the explanation and on the right page how form / procedure looks like. You get an inmediate clear idea on how to use it.

They teach you some nice and easy to do approach such as PAG 188 Exercise 6-2, #5 (MouseHover event). I loved it.

Pag 214 - The application with data validation...a complete REAL EXAMPLE ready to use for your own application. I love the fact it shows a generic approach (reusable).

Overall, I can tell you this is easy to read, easy to understand

Its my first Murach's book and certainly won't be the last one.

Tutorial books with step-by-step instructions hand-holding the reader through a complete solution to an example problem, followed up by some gently-guided exercises, are wonderful.

Reference books that present complete just-the-facts information in a well-organized manner are wonderful.

Trying to do both, while adhering fanatically to a pathological style of paired pages (one text, one figure), leads to disaster.

Either goal - tutorial or reference - could have been accomplished magnificently in a book this heavy. Neither was.

I purchased this book for a university course in Visual Basic 2008. The book that came with the course was a bit too basic compared to the projects which the course required. I saw that this book is highly rated so I purchased it for my course. From Chapter 1 to 3 "Introduction to VB Programming", it seems very straight forward and great for beginners. Once it gets into Chapter 5 and on, it seems as if it making reference to coding which the book has not yet covered. It's now as if this reading is for someone with prior programming experience. The book is broken into sections. One section is called "The Visual Basic language Essentials" which covers chapters 2 all the way to Chapter 12. I get the impression that you would have to have read all ten chapters for a full grasp of the complete essentials, you can't just read one chapter and fully understand what that one chapter is saying. You must read all chapters of the section to fully understand it. This isn't really a surprise as most programming books are this same way. When you're in a university course, time is not on your side for all that reading.

As a person who is entirely new to VB.Net, I feel that I need to cover that basic book from front to end before going into this book for an upcoming advanced course in application design. As far the applications the book presents, they are great to learn from because they are based on real world application. Not a bunch of "Hello World" programs. That is a big plus for me when using any programming book, Real World Applications. I will still give the book a five star review because of what information I was able to follow, was very helpful for a beginner. The after chapter exercises are excellent for understanding what you just studied through the chapters. The book's information is superb but again it seems to be for intermediate to advanced users. If I had this book six months prior to the course starting, it would have been perfect.

This is my first Murach book, but it won't be the last. I like the format of the "facing page" approach - the learning content is covered on the left-hand page, and the real-world example (including screen shots, sample code, etc.) is on the right-hand facing page. Also, the end of chapter problems step you through the process of re-creating much of the content covered in the chapter.

I have found the writing to be very clear, and extremely well proof-read. I have WAY too many similar books on my shelf that were riddled with mistakes (either typographical or content). I also had reason to contact Murach's customer service (via e-mail) and received prompt and courteous replies - they went "above and beyond" to address my concern (even though it was not really their problem).

The only reason I didn't give this a five-star rating is that sometimes they use the facing-page format to teach a little bit too much by example, when more detail on the "teaching" page would have worked better. Regardless, I would enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone looking to learn VB 2008.

Murach's Visual Basic 2008 is a nicely paced resource with a ton of well-presented information. My college is using it as the textbook for its VB curriculum, but I'll be certain to keep the book within reach whenever I program in VB. Specific information is easy to find and implement, and while it's a dense cover-to-cover read, it's much more manageable than other programming books of its size and scope. It's an improvement over the 2005 edition, particularly in the introductory database segments which weren't as friendly to novices.

What you will find here is a very well written training book. It gives you information in a series of small, consistent steps. The training all works together, so that when you are working through the more advanced examples, you will notice that they are built on top of the beginning examples, providing a solid structure for learning.

And, as the authors state, the code examples are complete and correct!

So if you are moving to VB.Net, this is a great place to start.

I've used Murach's books -- in particular, this author's -- for several years, through VB.Net, VB'03, VB'05, and now VB2'08. My students applaud its readability and the comprehensive coverage, without mind-numbing detail on how to perform common trivial tasks!

These Murach books provide a thorough guide to using the VB language, using the Visual Studio IDE, and producing a robust, professional product, while they remain accessible to undergraduates within the CIS major and without.