68 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
How much VB do you need?, May 25, 2000
This review is from: Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (Paperback)
Maybe my first review was too technical, so I'm trying again.
It is clear from the positive reviews that this book is a success for an audience of fairly advanced VB programmers. Those of us that are less advanced (I'm a beginner) might question whether the book will suit our needs, or if we are going to have the " two-star review" experience.
An example might help you decide. On p. 178 the author describes an example of an "array of arrays" using an appointment calendar with appointments stored in the array of arrays named "apps(day)". As part of the code, the statement appears:
If IsEmpty(apps(day)) Then
According to the on-line help, the IsEmpty function will always evaluate as false unless apps(day) is an empty variant. (Do you know this? If not, you won't understand how the If-statement works. The author doesn't explain, so you'll have to figure it out.) But apps(day) is an array of arrays; can it be an empty variant? The above If-statement works if:
apps(day) = Empty
which you might deduce as what the author is thinking, but if instead the reader imagines that
apps(day) = Array(Empty)
then the "IsEmpty" line must be changed to
If IsEmpty(apps(day)(0)) Then
(What do you know about array notation? The author mentions it, but not in the context of this code.) The author never spells out the constituent elements of apps(day), so the specifics are the reader's guess.
What does all this have to do with evaluating the book? The above example is not unusual. If you are happy to read at an abstract level, the gist of the examples is interesting and clear. However, if you want to implement the author's ideas using his code, his elliptical approach has gaps and ambiguities. He doesn't dwell on VB details. Depending on your background in VB, this fill-in and clarification can require a lot of head-scratching.
Bottom line: as a stimulus to imagination, definitely go ahead. As practical coding advice, be prepared to fuss.
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36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best advanced overview of Visual Basic I've found., June 20, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (Paperback)
I anticipated this book being an excellent resource for advanced study of Visual Basic programming techniques because of Mr. Balena's frequent high-quality articles in Visual Basic Programmer's Journal. He seems to me one of the very few writers who can really communicate the theory, structure, and problem-solving techniques required to use VB's object-oriented, ActiveX, and Web related functionality ... with enthusiasm and great source code examples that are immediately useful.
Studying this book and using and learning from the source code examples, libraries, and classes included on the cd-rom is, for me, like a one-on-one with an ideal mentor. I like his tone, his frequent use of sidebar notes and special explanations. He is, I think, by nature an envelope-pushing kind of a programmer and his solutions to many of the ... odd ... lacunae in VB are immediately useful in real-world problem solving. And they are delivered without diatribes against Microsoft or agenda-ranting.
For example, his coverage of the TreeView control, gave me some valuable ideas that I could use right away to solve a problem I was working with in implementing drag and drop.
I've found, to my delight, that this is really about six books in one.
As an introduction and overview of Visual Basic as a programming language it's excellent and I'd recommend it for any programmer who wishes to evaluate Visual Basic's facilities and structure.
As a tutorial on the Object/Class aspects of VB, etc. I found it to be the most lucid writing I've encountered ... and he addresses, with source code examples, polymorphism and inheritance ... areas in VB that have been problematic because VB does not offer true inheritance.
I have only begun to skim and study the detailed section on ADO, but I noticed that his explanation of hierarchical recordsets seemed immediately understandable to me in a way that various articles and white papers I've read have not.
Book number 4 ... I found Balena's approach to explaining ActiveX and COM, dll's, etc. lucid and clear and very helpful. I personally am not at the level where I can grok Dan Appleman's books, and I felt that Balena's focus ... and the gradated source code examples ... are exactly what I need to increase my competence in this area.
And, Book 5 ... I really like Francesco's approach to the new Web features of VB6; there's just enought html content to warm me up to the content on DHTML and he includes his own tools (with source !) for exploring DHTML.
Book 6 ... Distributed applications, ASP, IIS Applications. I hope I can get there, eventually.
What you have in this book is a kind of a "core dump" by an enthusiastic and innovative programmer who wants you to learn what he knows.
Of course, no book is perfect. There are some things on the cd-rom that are mysterious and do not execute as they are obviously designed to do. There is some deficiency in the indexing of the book.
The "heroic" scope of the book does leave you wishing for even more detailed coverage of certain areas like the Windows Common Controls, sub-classing, API call-backs, etc.
The frequent use of re-dimensioning arrays as a solution to problems of the "sparse matrix" type will raise some questions for programmers hell-bent on memory-conservation.
I'm going to be studying and using and having fun with this book and its source code examples for a long, long time. 1250+ pages, 2 megabytes+ of source code : this book has more content than ten of the typical rehashed VB5 books popping out like mangy prairie dogs with VB6 stamped on their foreheads.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Every page is useful., July 8, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (Paperback)
When my boss told me that he needed an application developed using Visual Basic, I went hunting for a book that would tell me what I needed to know. Am I ever glad that I found this one! I've had plenty of experience with languages such as C, C++, Java, Perl etc ... so for me, most books are usually too basic or very general. This book is an amazing blend of basic concepts and advanced techniques. Never before have I seen an author give so many useful and insightful tips and guidelines. There is so much contained in this book that you may never figure out on your own, even with years of experience. One of the VB developers in my office continually asks to borrow my copy of this book, and he's been using VB since version 1.0!! The greatest thing about it would have to be that it is not simply another book that tells you everything you could find in the help files. It also makes a wonderful refercence. Don't expect to get rid of this book once you finish it. You will find that you are referring to it again and again, I know I do. Seriously, I'm not one to tell people to waste money on a book that teaches them what they could very well learn somewhere else for free ... but if you plan an doing any Visual Basic development at all, you absolutely must own this book. My only advice to you is to hang on to the CD in the back cover. The actual book may not last as long as your need for the information in its pages.
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