Customer Reviews

Professional VB.NET, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

As someone who has spent over five years as a professional Visual Basic programmer I don't want to throw away all my knowledge when I move to VB.NET. Fortunately, this (big) book doesn't bother teaching you programming from scratch (you should definitely look elsewhere if you're a complete beginner) but will help you make sense of not only what's changed in the move from VB6 to VB.NET (a lot!) but also what you can take with you from VB6 (a surprisingly large amount actually). This means that you don't have to spend your time working through stuff like "this is a variable", "this is an if statement". Instead the book gets stuck into what makes the .NET Framework and Common Language Runtime tick - and explains how you can relate all of it to VB6.

The first third of the book serves as a reference to the VB.NET language - syntax, error handling, objects, inheritance, interfaces, and the differences between variables and types. While this means that you don't get to create many exciting applications early on it does mean that you have a thorough grounding in the essentials of the language.

Then the rest of the book takes a look at the most important features of .NET in turn: ADO.NET, XML, Windows Forms, Web Services, Data Binding, Remoting, Networking, Threading, Security, Web Forms, etc. You won't be an expert in any of these areas after you've read the book but you will have a much better idea of what VB.NET is capable of and how to get started using the advanced features of the .NET Framework Class Library.

Although there are a lot of authors that wrote on this book, which can spell trouble in my experience, the editors have managed to maintain a consistent voice throughout and there's surprisingly little overlap between chapters. Well worth the money.

This is a huge book (just short of a thousand pages) and it's packed full of really useful information. It covers all the important parts of the .NET Framework Class Library - Win Forms, Web Forms, ADO.NET, XML, Web Services and more - as well as the syntax and new features of Visual Basic .NET.

With so much to cover the book has to keep up a decent pace, which means that the authors assume that you've got experience of working with Visual Basic 6. If you're new to programming then you'll want to look elsewhere.

For VB6 programmers this book is great value.

This 2nd edition works on the final release of .NET and they've played about with the structure a fair bit. Some of the overlap at the beginning is gone and there are 4 new chapters - remoting, data binding, networking, and windows services. An excellent book!

The .Net platform has undoubtedly revolutionized the world of software development, whether web based or traditional windows. Professional VB.Net like other WROX books (pardon my bias) does complete justice to the subject matter, explaining every nuance and subtlety with the typical lucidness that WROX books have been come to be known for. I used this book to pass the 70-305 certification exam. Great book for learning the language and the .Net platform.

I expected something better from a Wrox book. Recently all their books seem to be taking a dive. What I don't like about this book is that I'm already past page 100 and *still* all the coding was for a "Hello World" app. The book goes into topics that could be presented much later, such as the code that is automatically generated when creating a Windows application. I am still reading the book, but tomorrow am going to pick up Deitel's VB.NET book which, from looking at the table of contents, is how a book like this should be organized. Frankly, I can't believe how poor this book is, and I will think twice (or read more carefully in the bookstore) before buying any Wrox book in the future. I definitely do not recommend this book to anyone -- it was a complete waste of my money.

Like many a Wrox book, this one is packed full of information, plenty of examples, and more than just the simple stuff. It's not supposed to be read sequentially (start to finish) but to debrief on selected topics as needed. You can bounce from start of the book, to Threading, to Web Services, and others quite nicely as that feature is needed. For those who program for a living and want to see what VB.net is about, this book is a must buy.

This book has disappointed me one too many times so I'm going to finally write the review I've been wanting to. I keep trying to use this book and it keeps leaving me short. Sometimes in the examples the author tells you to do something obscure but then he doesn't tell you how to do it. The coverage lacks depth and detail.

I am an experienced VB programmer but I got this book to help me convert to .Net. It has been a big disappointment. Some of the topics I needed help with were not covered. Most of the ones that were covered were sketchy.

Fortunately, I picked up a Special Edition of "Using Visual Basic .Net" from Que which typically saves my bacon.

This book is for experienced developers who need to make the transition to VB.NET. It will also help programmers with previous knowledge of VB.NET who want to move up to the professional level.

The book begins with an introduction to the .NET Framework and common language RunTime(CLR). The CLR is responsible for managing the execution of code compiled for the .NET platform. The next few chapters focus on object oriented programming and how to derive classes from base classes using inheritance. Chapter 9 gives a detailed discussion on how error handling works in VB.NET by discussing the CLR exception handler in detail and the new Try...Catch...Finally structure. An entire chapter is devoted to multi-threading. You will learn how threads can be created, and the differences between multitasking and multi-threading. Chapter 16 discusses COM and .NET component interoperability, and the tools provided to help link the two technologies together. Chapter 18 gives detailed coverage of the ADO.NET data access technology. You will learn how to build flexible, fast, and scalable data access objects and applications.

The final chapters discuss building web applications with web forms, creating custom controls for Windows Forms and Web Forms, and finally, creating and consuming Web Services.

If you're an experienced VB developer and would like to make the transition to VB.NET, then this book is a must.

This is not a book for beginners who are new to VB world. This book explains the differences (improvements) from VB6.0 to VB.NET. In addition, it has a few chapters that explain the Object Oriented concept in a well-organized fashion. This book is a good investment for anyone who is looking to move into the VB.NET world.

Wrox has reworked the second edition to now work with the Release of .Net and Vsual Studio v1.0. They have obviously been looking at the feedback from customers and have reorganized and added new material. This is from the Professional series and provides a lot of detail in each chapter, it is not simply a sample. It provides good examples and explanations of each subject covered. Another quality Wrox title!