Programming VB .NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers [Paperback]

Gary Cornell (Author), Jonathan Morrison (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1893115992 | ISBN-13: 978-1893115996 | Publication Date: October 15, 2001 | Edition: 1

In their book, "Programming VB.NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers", Gary Cornell and Jonathan Morrison carefully explain the features of what is, for all practical purposes, a new language. This careful treatment of language features, patterned on Cornell's best-selling "Core Java Volume 1" is necessary because although VB.NET looks like BASIC, it is really a language in the Java/C# family from a "semantic" point of view. This means all features of the language will need explaining to the programming coming from a previous version of VB. This book carefully explains all the new features of VB.NET, including Inheritance, Interfaces, Object Construction and Destruction, Streams, Multi-Threading Programming, and much more. When readers finish this book, they will have a firm grasp on the exciting VB.NET language and will be ready to move on to application-building strategies and concepts. Author Information: Gary Cornell is one of today's best-selling computer authors and winner of a "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal" Award for best introductory Visual Basic book. He is also the editor of Pinnacle Publishing Company's ".NET Newsletter" that has more than 15,000 subscribers. He is also the co-founder of Apress. Jonathan Morrison is the author of Apress' extremely well-received "C++ For Visual Basic Programmers" and currently works for Microsoft Corporation. He previously worked as a consultant for numerous high technology companies on VB development for the Enterprise.

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the reviews:

"Gary Cornell and Jonathan Morrison carefully explain the exciting new features of Visual Basic .NET. Since VB .NET is, for all practical purposes, a whole new language even for the most experienced Visual Basic programmers, developers need to think differently about many familiar topics. Cornell and Morrison are there to help you with careful discussions of each topic." (HardCopy, Issue February-March, 2002)

About the Author

Jonathan Morrison has written several books on C++ and Visual Basic programming, and has over seven years of experience developing applications in Visual Basic, C++, and Java. He has consulted for Racal Datacom, The Maxim Group, and Cyberguard, and has held lead development positions at AIG, Autonation USA, and Digitalbond Inc. He currently works for Microsoft's Solution Integration Engineering Team, where he helps Microsoft's enterprise customers design, develop, and debug their large-scale applications.

Gary Cornell has been writing and teaching programming professionals for more than 20 years and is the co-founder of Apress, the fastest growing publisher for IT professionals in the world. He has written numerous best selling books for programming professionals and was a co-finalists for a Jolt Award and won the Readers' Choice Award from Visual Basic Magazine. He has a Ph.D. from Brown University. He has also been a professor of mathematics, a visiting scientist at IBM's Watson Labs, a program director at the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the director of modern visual computing at the University of Connecticut's Center for Professional Development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (October 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893115992
• ISBN-13: 978-1893115996
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #828,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely the best book to learn VB .NET so far, October 14, 2001

By 

"asquare_from_flatland" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Programming VB .NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers (Paperback)

Cornell has always been one of my favorite writers on programming topics and this book doesn't dissapoint. (Interestingly enough, Jesse Liberty my other favorite writer on programming, has written a great C# book.) There is no question in my mind that this book currently is by far the best place to learn VB .NET if you have any programming experience at all.

Note however that Cornell's book isn't comprehensive and it doesn't cover nearly as many topics as Wrox's "Professional VB .NET." so you might want to get a copy of that book for now.

But what Cornell covers he generally covers in a far better manner and in much more detail than the Wrox book. (As I said in a previous review I found the Wrox book too variable from chapter to chapter to be ideal.) In particular, Cornell's chapters on OOP (especially the Inheritance and Interface chapter) are among the best I have ever seen on these topics. This is also the first book on VB .NET that I have seen that really covers multi-threading in any depth and I was happy to see that the chapter on Windows Forms covers basic printing! (A pet peeve of mine...).

However, the downside to Corenll's book is that the chapters on ADO .NET and ASP .NET are only brief surveys and you pretty much have to (but you should anyway) turn to the excellent books "Teach Yourself ASP .NET in 21 Days" (Payne, Sams) and "Database Programming with VB NET" (Thomsen, Apress) for more information on these topics.

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars OOP in VB.NET: This is the book !, November 24, 2001

By 

M. Jose "sleepless reader" (WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Programming VB .NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers (Paperback)

The 3 chapters on OOP (Classes and Objects, Inheritance and Interfaces, and Event Handling and Delegates) are by far the clearest I have read on the subject. That goes for both text and example code, which are working! If only for these 3 chapters, which cover 40% of the 422 usable pages, it's worth the price of the book.

Gary Cornell does state that these 3 chapters form the core of the book, and after reading this book and Dan Appleman's "Moving to VB.NET", I totally agree that developers "will find it extremely hard to take advantage of VB.NET's new powers" if they don't utilize OOP in VB.NET. Knowing, and being comfortable with, OOP makes it so much easier to develop solutions using VB.NET, and the .NET framework in general.

I thought the 2 intro chapters on VB.NET IDE and "vocabulary" were informative and not boring, and that goes for the chapter on Multithreading.

I would have liked to see a longer and more detailed treatment of Error Handling, and some "real" examples for the Windows Forms chapter.

In "About This Book", the author set 3 objectives: a complete treatment of OOP in VB.NET, fundamentals of VB.NET techniques, and differences between VB.NET and earlier versions. He has succeeded in these 3 objectives!

I will disagree though with the note on not assuming any knowledge of earlier versions of VB. Experienced VB5/6 programmers WITH some real C++ (OOP) experience will benefit the most from this book.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Does exactly what it's title says, December 26, 2001

By 

bigjimleo "JML" (CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Programming VB .NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers (Paperback)

This book is a GUIDE for people with programming experience to using VB.NET. If you are an experienced VB developer, this book will be of GREAT use to you in converting. If you are a programming novice, the high speed approach used in this book will probably leave you unable to do much in terms of real programming. The explanations are so clear, that it may still be useful for a novice though. For people who are using other languages, and want to try their hand at VB, this is also probably very useful, especially if you know Java.

Please note that this is NOT a complete how-to, nor do the authors attempt to infer that it is. It is just a rational explanation of the core bits of VB.NET and how the language has changed from VB5/VB6. In particular, their breakdown of the new totally OOP approach of VB is very good, although it may bore you a bit if you have a solid understanding of Java. In an hour with this book, I knew more about the new features/changes in VB than I did with two days of studying the docs from Microsoft.