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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good book to start with VB but don't expect anything more !, November 21, 2003
This review is from: Programming Visual Basic .NET, 2nd Edition (Paperback)
This book is BOTH good and bad ! This is DEFINITELY NOT for those people who are learning to program and need a VB.Net book that starts with explaining what the CPU and RAM are ! WHY GOOD - It is a great introduction to VB.Net for experienced programmers (experienced with VB6 or other programming language). The fundamentals of the language cosntruct (like the usual If clause, While loop etc.) are nicely condensed into one single chapter (Ch 3). Every chapter in Part-1 of the book explains one or more related language concepts in an easy to understand manner. Until the end of Part-1, all the code examples can be done using Notepad and compiled with the Visual Basic command line compiler (You do NOT even need Visual Studio.Net !). This is very good since it focuses on learning the language concepts rather than forcing you to get familiar with a strange IDE if you have not used Visual Studio before. Though there are some obvious errors in the code samples in Arrays and Strings chapter, they are no showstoppers in understanding the underlying concepts. Overall the part-1 of this book helps you to get upto speed on VB.Net very quickly. I did not read Part-3 yet, but I expect the treatment to be similar to Part-1, since Part-3 also deals with more theoritical aspects like Part-1. WHY BAD - I read every page of this book until Part-1 but Part-2, where each chapter deals with things like Window forms/Ado.Net/Web forms (which themselves are separate books on the market), can be very intimidating as the author tries to cover a lot of ground in a very short space. For example, the code example in Chapter-13 for Windows forms, is gargantuan for a first time Winform program to be developed in Visual Studio.Net. Moreover, the code download from the author's website is also not of much use since the author had hidden some code to save space in the book and uploaded the same thing in his website also ! Overall, a good starting point to get into VB.Net but don't expect to learn everything about .Net with this book alone ! If you are already into VB.Net and looking to learn more about ADO.Net or Web forms, then this book is definitely NOT for you !
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
C# programmer learns by code sample, November 15, 2003
This review is from: Programming Visual Basic .NET, 2nd Edition (Paperback)
Probably the best way to learn how to code in any language is to program with the examples in the book. I'm an experienced programmer in C#, but needed to get up to speed on VB.NET quick for some consulting work. I won a copy of Programming Visual Basic .NET 2nd ed. at a "WeProgram.NET" .NET user group meeting, and started reading it immediately. I skipped reading most of the explanations and went straight to the code (serious coders will understand this urge!). Even without reading much of the text, the code examples, while unimaginative, were selected well enough for me to pick up on the language, including its idiosyncrasies. I also like the fact that, for the text I did read, he explains why he is doing things a certain way. This would be really helpful for someone just learning to program or making the transition to .NET. The only problem I really have with the examples is that it did not make clear what code was part of VisualBasic interop. Since I am now coding in two .NET languages, I don't want to have to remember CInt for one language and Convert.ToInt32 for another. I know this book is geared toward experienced VB6 programmers, but let's start doing things the .NET way. That's why it's here.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally! A great primer for VB6 programmers, October 7, 2003
This review is from: Programming Visual Basic .NET, 2nd Edition (Paperback)
Finally an author has created a great introduction to VB.NET programming for VB6 programmers. While I'm sure this book is good for other programmers as well (even novices!) this book is aimed squarely at the VB6 programmer making the jump to .NET. The author's examples are simple, clear and well designed. His understanding of .NET is excellent and his understanding of VB6 is very strong; put this together and you have a dynamite book that gets you up and running on VB.NET quickly and painlessly. Liberty also supports his book on his web site (source code, faq, etc.) and he has his own private support discussion center, where he personally answers questions about his book. The O'Reilly quality shines through; this is a well edited, well written book, and it should be on everyone's must have list. I highly recommend this book and when you finish reading it, take a look at his Programming ASP.NET book which is also terrific and which has exercises both in C# and VB.NET.
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