Customer Reviews

Programming With Microsoft Visual Basic .Net

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

 

 

I was forced to buy this book for my App Dev course. Im a begginner so im happy that there are plenty of easy to follow tutorials but im not so happy that there is no reference section. The index is really really really poor. You would think that because of the thousands of instructions in VB that half the book would be an easy to find reference. But no!..Diane makes you trudge through the tutorials step by step slowly building your knowledge. Its frustrating! One plus about this book is the included version of VB.net on 6 cds. I guess i saved money in that respect.

Like every book I use, or read, I don't judge it by the cover, but content speaks loudly. While one reviewer puts users in extremes, I am at niether. I am no novice, but also, while I have built my own machine, I'm not interested in knowing every in and out of the project on which I'm working. ...

I was required to buy this for a class and have to say that the book may walk you through the tutorials in an okay manner, but it falls far short of what any true technophile might want in that that the author just spouts out information and how to perform certain tasks without giving full explanations and there isn't even a glossary. So much for reference...about as good as [a software company's] help files...

So, for the techies, I'm not buying this is the best reference. For those not so interested in the fine mechanics, but definitely in learning the program solidly with at least some minute understanding, it falls short here also. It is not only as dull as your tongue covered in chalk, but doesn't explain very well why the reader is doing certain tasks or what the base purpose of these simple tasks really is. I'm already looking for other reference materials and we're only five weeks into a fifteen week class...

...bummer. If you're able, shop around and read the reviews carefully.

If you are like me and got stuck buying this book for a programming class at school, you probably have a number of welts on your forehead from how often you fell asleep while reading only to have banged your head against a wall or some other dangerous object that caught your face as you drifted into slumberland.

Hey, some teachers really should think before forcing students to buy books like this. Times are hard folks and money should be spent properly. Let's face it... the average student taking a computer class falls into one of two groups:

The first group has never seen the inside of a computer, would never know a memory chip if it slapped them in the face, thinks Microsoft Works is the same as Microsoft Office, and for some reason gets mad at a computer manufacturer when there dinosaur, 233 MGHz processor, 32 MB RAM, 2 GB hard drive (with 1.5 GB already clogged by multiple AOL installs) will not install their bootlegged copy of Windows XP.

The second group loves to sit at a computer for hours trying to make a program work instead of using a working program. This group is not satisfied with being told that a textbox is an object, but instead wants to understand what an object is and fully explore all facets of the object. For this group, being given a fish or a fishing pole is just not enough... instead, making their own fishing pole is what this group wants.

For those students that fall into the first group, this book is for you. It is like training wheels on a bicycle.

For the student in the second group, curse the day you signed up for class with that teacher and make a trip to a good bookstore and buy a book that boldly goes where no one in group one has gone before.

This was my first exposure to Visual Basic. I found Zak's treatment of the material a straightforward progression-- covering the essential building blocks required to begin to develop applications. The "tutorial" format with accompanying Questions, Exercises, Discovery and Debugging sections greatly assists the assimilation of the material.

I am taking VB.NET for the first time and don't have any previous programming experience. I find this book GREAT. It provides step-by-step instructions that are easy to follow and understand. Applications used in this book are wonderful and I even use one for my daughter's Math practice!

This book is best when used not as a reference by the experienced programmer, but as a guide by beginner. Highly recommend this book if you are a beginner. :-)

I'm an engineer who's dabbled in Visual Basic and other languages on and off for several years, self taught. I received this book as part of a class I'm taking on VB.net to enhance my skills and have found it to be pretty disappointing. The tutorials are fine for illustrating certain simple concepts that the author is trying to illustrate, but what's completely missing is any elaboration on the concepts and other ways to apply them. I found this to be particularly true in her presentation of object variables, among other things. The author could have really enhanced the book by including more discovery exercises, carefully constructed to lead the student to apply the concepts discussed in the tutorial, but for whatever reason she didn't. Also, as others have mentioned, it's an utterly lousy reference source. It's virtually impossible to go back and find things once you've read through them - no appendices with functions, etc, or references back to the text. It just has the index, which isn't terribly complete. If you're a complete programming novice (never seen a Do Loop in your life), then this book might be OK. If you're like me and have just the slightest programming experience, this book won't do it for you and you'll be back back at Amazon looking for a better book on VB.net.

I'm simply amazed about what people think about a book for school. It is very expensive, like most other college textbooks, which is my biggest gripe to the authors (nothing says a college textbook can't be written for the general population so there is a broader appeal for the book).

The book is specifically designed for learning in a classroom. It walks you through the basics at a very low level which is good for people that never worked within the Visual Studio environment.

This isn't a reference book, it doesn't say it is a reference book. People should quit complaining about the book being something it wasn't meant to be.

If you are a programmer or have programming background this book will probably seem too simplified.

I purchased this book for a course at community college on VB .Net. This is pretty good book and would be an excellent resource for anyone that wants to learn vb .Net. Currently it is a little out of date but I looked it over a few weeks ago as I was giving it to a friend that wants to learn VB.
As great as this book is as a learning resource it has no value as a reference and no value to an experienced VB programmer.

After trying to learn VB.NET using many books highly recommended in Amazon without much success, a coworker showed me Diane Zak book. WOW. This is the book that I was looking. The book is incredible; every detail is explained with the novice in mind. Each chapter is composed of a project divided in 3 tutorials. As you work in the project, she also sidesteps the instruction to give examples about other similar/related cases. The examples are plentiful and they are very well selected.
In most of the other VB.Net books, you follow the examples in the book but they miss a critical component about learning--you need to do things by yourself.
In Diane Zak's book, each chapter tutorial has a large set of problems to apply and reinforce what was learned during the lesson. Also the problems include a "Discovery" section where you solve a problem with material not yet covered in the book.

I purchased this because it was the required text book for a class. I am not at all impressed with it and told the teacher to find a different one for next year. I find her style hard to follow and learn from.