Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Visual Studio .NET 2003 in 21 Days

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I just purchased Teach yourself Visual Studio .NET 2003 in 21 days from Amazon. In the introduction the book advertises itself as a book for novices: "nothing is taken for granted in any of the days"... this is clearly misleading as upon reading the book I have found that the content of the book is quite obviously targeted to experienced VB programmers who have previously built windows forms apps. As a professional teacher I am appalled at this ruse and at the instructional design of this book. I think it is misleading (read dishonest) to positionf this book as something for beginners. The lessons do not progress from simple to advanced as should be the case... but jump from beginner to advanced to intermediate in random order. For example.. object lifecycle is an intermediate concept that should be dealt with after a learner has mastered more basic ideas and yet it is covered on day three. This concept is covered at a MUCH later time in all the other tutorial materials I have purchased and seen. There are too many other examples of this haphazard approach to instruction to mention...



Instructional design flaws aside, I have found glaring errata. For example..Figure 3.14 shows a web form instead of "Multiple MDIchildren open in an MDIparent form". Most of the code samples imple don't work. Did anyone actually proofread this book before it went to press?



I have to say I was surprised to be disappointed this way. Sams usually provides much better books than this.



At any rate, I have resigned myself to simply using this book as a pointer, or introduction to things that can be done in Visual Studio. To this end I needed the code samples which were also advertised in the book.



I had hoped to gain access to the code samples and errata on the web site advertised by the author in the introduction: www.vbasp.net



This address routes to a 403 error... I cannot go to the site. From looking at other reviews I see that many others have had the same problem.

Mr. Beres purports to be a .NET evangelist... he does a disservice to the .NET community by producing such misleading and flawed material and targetting it to beginners.

Bottom line... if you are an experienced programmer you'll find the flawed code samples frustrating and unprofessional. If you are a beginner you'll wish you hadn't wasted your money.

I bought this book because I wanted to learn how to use the new IDE in Visual Studio.Net. I had just purchased ... VB.Net programming books and decided to purchase, "programming VB.NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers" to come up to speed on Visual Basic syntax. So far I haven't been impressed with Gary Cornell's book. I can't put my finger on what's wrong with it but I wished I had spent more time broswing in the bookstore and less time being impulsive and believing all the glowing reviews. This book, "Visual Studio.NET 2003" however had been sitting on my shelf for weeks because I didn't believe it held the pertinent information I needed to get started with Visual Basic.NET, WRONG!

It has everything necessary to get an experienced programmer focused on what the capabilities of the .NET framework has to offer and how to use them; and as an added surprise side by side comparisons of VB.NET and C#.NET. Examples are given in both languages and you can decide for yourself which language is most appropriate for you. It wasn't written to teach you programming however it does give the core syntax for VB, C#, ASP, and ADO.NET.

It's very lucid and has a very good blend of graphics, prose and code examples. Simply stated, it's like going to a seminar to get targeted premium information without the associated costs of long winded boring presenters and high tuition, etc.

I recommend this book to anyone uncertain about which .NET language to use, and people who are new to the Visual Studio.NET IDE. I wouldn't recommend it for for Beginners, however it is an easy read for people who understand proggraming and have already written a program for general use.

Unfortunately, the code examples in this book are fraught with careless errors. What's the point of picking up a book to learn VS .Net if the code examples don't work? Moreover, the author's claim (p.3) of a website featuring code samples, fixes, and other helpful materials to supplement the book is simply untrue. That website (http://www.vbasp.net) exists, but has nothing uploaded. I wasted many hours trying to get code examples to work before learning through Amazon.com Reviews that others have had the same problem. How disappointing.

This might be the book for you, if:

- you need a crash course in VS.Net,
- you're pretty well-versed in Visual Basic 6.0
- you're pretty good at filtering out irrelevant praise for the product
- you are willing to skim through examples, getting the jist of things without actually trying to make them work
- you can't find a more carefully-written crash-course book covering the same ground

Then again, if you're that good to begin with, you can probably learn VS.Net without a crash-course book.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this book has a lot of mistakes in it. How sloppy does an author/publisher have to be to put out a beginner's book where many of the examples don't work? It's a lot easier and more effective to learn this material by using the documentation that comes with Visual Studio.

Could be good... but WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY too many typos that will make you spend hours trying to figure out if you've done something wrong or if it's just another typo in the book text.

The layout and content of the book are excellent, but the utility to someone trying to "Teach Yourself Visual Studio" is severely hampered by excessive errors in the text and samples. Publishing this book in its current state is the equivalent of implementing an application as soon as it successfully compiles. Both are not a good idea.

Far too many errors, typo's and omissions for
a self-help book. While it's an OK walk thru of
.Net IDE features, the sample code is buggy and
it's hard to get any speed when you have to
figure out what the author left out.

I thought I would be spending 21 days learning Visual Studio .NET, instead I have been spending much of the time working around bugs in the code examples. All of the code listings are suppose to have both VB.NET and C# listings. In one case there was no C# listing and converting the VB.NET code to C# was not easy. In another case an error in both the VB.NET and C# listing resulted in a form that had bogus data displayed and this form was shown in the book! This book is not for the beginner. It assumes you have a basic knowledge of SQL Server and XML. It lacks organization. Very poorly proofread.

The author claims in this book's introduction that "My own web site will have the code samples, fixes, errors and omissions, additional stuff I forgot about, and other goodies for this book... As of April 9, 2003 that web site appears to have never been online. If you need the code samples, you may want to wait until that website is online before you consider buying this book.

May 15, 2003 update: Jason Beres reports that the code samples are available on the Publisher's site... Apparently the related "fixes, errors, omissions, and additional stuff" were a casualty of a crashed server and are being redeveloped.

The book is definitely helpful. I recommend it.