Customer Reviews

Ready-to-Run Visual Basic(r) Algorithms, 2nd Edition

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

 

 

Even if you have been programming in VB for several years, or have taken college-level computer science data structures courses, you need this book.

This book goes way beyond simply providing code snippets that you can paste into your VB apps. The author begins by explaining such fundamental algorithm concepts as time and space complexity analysis and the trade-offs between the two. He really focuses on providing an understanding of the "Whys" in addition to the "Hows".

Simply put, if you are or aspire to be a serious VB programmer, there are 4 books that you must have by your side at all times: this book, Dan Appleman's "VB Programmer's Guide to the WIN32-API", Bruce McKinney's "Hardcore Visual Basic", and Microsoft's "Visual Basic Programmer's Guide".

Stacks, queues, linked lists, sparse arrays, balanced trees, numerous sorting algorithms, and much more. If you are now an intermediate level VB programmer, and then you read and understand this book from cover to cover, you will have raised your level of expertise by at least one level. Great stuff in this book - highly recommended.

It was the first book I took from Rod Stephens and I bought all his other one starting then so it gives you an idea.

It might be one of the only one doing algorithms with Visual Basic, but it's well written and you've got them all like all those C books.

A must at any point in any serious programming.

The real strength of this book is it takes you back to thinking about data structures and common computing algorithms - an issue often raised at university but rarely in a Visual Basic course. Linked lists, arrays, trees, search algorithms etc etc are all key computer science concepts - and it is great to see VB being using to implement them, as Rod does in this book. Nonetheless, there are weaknesses. I was particularly looking forward to his section on Singletons (in chapter 13), but Rod gave a very basic (and inaccurate) solution, failing to take into account the implications of using such a solution when deploying ActiveX components. But apart from that - a great read, much recommended.

"Back to (Visual) Basics" is what this book should be called. It presents those basic ideas of programming - dynamic structures - using VB's classes and objects. It teaches the structures as well as objects as used in VB. Thanks Rod!

Hats off to Rod Stephens. Finally, there is someone who is more concerned with presenting efficient, crisp, clever algorithms than teaching by-rote procedures. Clear examples are provided on CD-ROM, using the latest OOP techniques available in VB. Even if you never intend to write a B+Tree database or a QuickSort algorithm, this book is a recommended read. It will satisfy your curiosity and introduce you to some seminal algorithms, developed over the years by great thinkers in the fields of computing and mathematics. If this book engages you as it has me, then it will make you a better programmer.

if you are looking for the implementation of the most common used algorithms in computer science / operational research, this is a nice book to read.

This is a required reference where I work. The book is very accessible to those of us who taught ourselves programming and lack the formal computer science education.

As noted by other reviewers, you do need to have some skill with VB to get through the material; I would suggest that, as a minimum skill level, the reader be just about to "qualify" as an intermediate VB programmer.

Coverage includes sorting algorithms, queues, hashes, binary trees, linked lists, spanning trees, and much more.

Very good reference: fine examples, good clean code. Some bugs in the combinatorial optimization section (branch and bound, etc.) need to be cleaned up (the best isn't always picked). Still, it's a very useful book.

There aren't many good Advanced VB textbooks out there and most don't bother to teach this stuff, but most Professors or Instructors expect their students to understand sorting algorithms, queues, hashes, binary trees, linked lists, spanning trees, etc. This book was very helpful towards that end. The sample programs are great! Stephens spends more time than usual in explaining the general fundamentals of algorithms and their benefits. He really speaks to the reader. This is not an Advanced VB textbook or reference book. It does a very good job of covering Visual Basic Algorithms.