Customer Reviews

Programming Microsoft Windows with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (Core Reference) (Pro-Developer)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Not really a review, just a caveat to potential buyers. This is the SAME book as Petzold's Programming Microsoft Windows with C#. Only the sample code is changed (and that's available for free online).

Buy either one, but don't buy both!

People browsing reviews of this book may be puzzled by the variation in star ratings. Firstly, this book is about programming Windows applications. It starts from the ground up talking about, in great detail, drawing text, handling mouse and keyboard events etc. It is not about enterprise programming, ASP.Net, multiple tier applications etc. Mr Petzold wants the reader to understand what is going on underneath the hood, behind all of the code that VB.Net generates automatically. The graphical aspects of the IDE are hardly mentioned in the book. In a way, this defeats the purpose of VB.Net - rapid forms development - and indeed this book is more or less a translation of Mr Petzold's book on C#. Mr Petzold tells his story well however, and introduces aspects of object oriented programming along the way in a very readable style, despite the high level of detail. I certainly have a much better understanding of Windows programming after reading this even a few chapters of this book. It is not a definitive guide to VB.Net but it doesn't pretend to be. It is called `Programming Microsoft Windows with VB.Net'. Mr Belana's more wide ranging book is titled `Programming Microsoft VB.Net', but does not go into as much detail about Windows programming. I hope this clarifies the situation.

I have two books on user interfaces in .NET. This one and "User Interfaces in VB .NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls" by
Mathew Macdonald's from Apress. Both are great books and I recommend both highly.

Comparing this book to the one by Macdonald: Macdonald's book is much more manageable than Petzold but still seemed to contain everything I wanted to know about Windows forms. It however skipped over lots of wonderful "side roads" that I found very enjoyable (as I did Petzold's great style-he's one of the best writers in the business).

Still, Petzold is more than twice as long as Macdonald and thus not likely to be a book you will read from cover to cover as I think you might with Macdonald.

If you can afford it by all means get both books, if you only want one, then for a more condensed "what you need to know" book get Macdonald, if you want just one book that will then serve also as a reference, get Petzold...

This is the one book I recommend for all VB.NET developer's coming from a VB6 background! Why? Consider it a first step in walking down a true developer's path. Throw away your Visual Studio .NET crutch, and you might begin to visualize the way Java and C++ programmers tackle real world problems.

Be warned though, this is a book most VB developer's will not fully understand the value of! To prove this theory, make note of the mixed review scores for this book. Now, browse over to the C# version of this book and you will find only high review scores. Why would this be true? Because C# is, for the most part, being tackled by the Java and C++ communities, so you are dealing with two different levels of developers.

I think you will find "Beziers and Other Splines" one of the most fascinating chapters in the book. Petzold explains these drawing tools exceptionally well! Another chapter worth noting, "Taming the Mouse" explains mouse capture/loss and how to deal with it. You might even learn a thing or two about utilizing an interface if you pay close attention.

Once you read this book, you might find yourself shunning the visual designer all together (I prefer to code everything by hand myself), and this is a positive thing. You should know how to write every control outside the designer. This is actually a prerequisite for anyone interested in getting involved in enterprise level development (assuming you are working with a good program manager/senior developer).

I also recommend purchasing "Applied .NET Framework Programming" by Richter. Together these books are a valuable addition to any professional developer's library, and should be read from beginning to end!

Want to code bit mapped circles and arcs? Want to re-invent "pong?" This is your book. Want to code business aplications - this book is a waste. There is more attention paid by the author to "Fun With Fonts" than to things that have been significantly improved in .NET like TreeView.
I get the sense Petzold wrote the original content for this book back in the 80's and has re-cycled it one time too many.
The title of the book inferred a little bit of help in using VB.NET to tap into the new Window's .NET Framework. It does - but it sticks to the things you could do in the Windows API several years ago. IMHO, in 2004 we are way beyond lines, curves, brushes, pens, images and bitmaps.
This is another author going through the motions and updating old content.

This title has a wealth of information on a whole bunch of irrelevant topics such as brushes as some already mentioned. Another thing about it is that it doesn't show how to program Visual Basic.NET with Visual Studio.NET. Instead, it assumes you will use a notepad like editor and the command line compiler. If you are interested in getting into the raw side of the language, this might be the book for you. If you want a book that takes advantage of the drag and drop features of VS.NET, however, look elsewhere.

Charles Petzold has been writing Windows programming books since the year one. He knows his subject and how to get it across to his readers. This is not intended to be another in an already long series of books on VB data base programming for the enterprise. Rather it is a clear exposition of VB.NET Windows programming with an emphasis on the inner workings of Windows. It will prepare its readers to create their own structures from the building blocks offered by the .NET Framework. It has excellent sections which explain how Windows paints and draws objects and others on how to use the built-in graphics functionality of Windows in your own projects. It is probably not for rank beginners. A useful complement, in a different style, is Francesco Balena's "Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET".

This is the one book I recommend for all VB.NET developer's coming from a VB6 background! Why? Consider it a first step in walking down a true developer's path. Throw away your Visual Studio .NET crutch, and you might begin to visualize the way Java and C++ programmers tackle real world problems.

Be warned though, this is a book most VB developer's will not fully understand the value of! To prove this theory, make note of the mixed review scores for this book. Now, browse over to the C# version of this book and you will find only high review scores. Why would this be true? Because C# is, for the most part, being tackled by the Java and C++ communities, so you are dealing with two different levels of developers.

I think you will find "Beziers and Other Splines" one of the most fascinating chapters in the book. Petzold explains these drawing tools exceptionally well! Another chapter worth noting, "Taming the Mouse" explains mouse capture/loss and how to deal with it. You might even learn a thing or two about utilizing an interface if you pay close attention.

Once you read this book, you might find yourself shunning the visual designer all together (I prefer to code everything by hand myself), and this is a positive thing. You should know how to write every control outside the designer. This is actually a prerequisite for anyone interested in getting involved in enterprise level development (assuming you are working with a good program manager/senior developer).

I also recommend purchasing "Applied .NET Framework Programming" by Richter. Together these books are a valuable addition to any professional developer's library, and should be read from beginning to end!

CAVEAT: This is not a book for Visual Studio spoon-fed types. Guess what? there are many other IDEs besides VS out there. (IDE - Integrated Development Environment). So if you're addicted to using VS and you're opposed to some mental gymnastics, this is probably not the book for you.
I like and use VS but Petzold's IDE neutral approach forced me to figure out many things about VS and Windows that I didn't know before. And to delineate between them.
Visual Studio issue aside, Petzold's writing style and code examples are so very well thought out and insightful. The focus is on applying graphics functions to Windows forms. This is a way to explore "under the hood" of windows programming without delving into DB, data IO and user interface issues. Since I have an interest in graphics programming anyway, I was totally pleased with the topic emphasis.
Excellent discussion of and application of Object Oriented Design. Petzold is just plain fun to read. Yes, the previous statement reveals that I am a total programming geek.
If you read both C# and VB, choose the VB version. Petzold says in the forward that he refined the conceptual content as he was rewriting the original C# book for VB.NET.

This is the one book I recommend for all VB.NET developer's coming from a VB6 background! Why? Consider it a first step in walking down a true developer's path. Throw away your Visual Studio .NET crutch, and you might begin to visualize the way Java and C++ programmers tackle real world problems.

Be warned though, this is a book most VB developer's will not fully understand the value of! To prove this theory, make note of the mixed review scores for this book. Now, browse over to the C# version of this book and you will find only high review scores. Why would this be true? Because C# is, for the most part, being tackled by the Java and C++ communities, so you are dealing with two different levels of developers.

I think you will find "Beziers and Other Splines" one of the most fascinating chapters in the book. Petzold explains these drawing tools exceptionally well! Another chapter worth noting, "Taming the Mouse" explains mouse capture/loss and how to deal with it. You might even learn a thing or two about utilizing an interface if you pay close attention.

Once you read this book, you might find yourself shunning the visual designer all together (I prefer to code everything by hand myself), and this is a positive thing. You should know how to write every control outside the designer. This is actually a prerequisite for anyone interested in getting involved in enterprise level development (assuming you are working with a good program manager/senior developer).

I also recommend purchasing "Applied .NET Framework Programming" by Richter. Together these books are a valuable addition to any professional developer's library, and should be read from beginning to end!