Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 24 Hours

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Many books seen in the market on different subjects claim to be written for "beginners", but one can accurately say that this book HAS been. If you're just starting programming in Visual Basic 6, then this is definately the book for you. It is filled with step-by-step instructions and helpful hints that will get you started on the right path. Plus, it teaches the lessons in easy to understand descriptions, so it doesn't take too long to learn. This book was my starting point, and it did me a lot of good, so I'm suggesting this book to anyone interested in the profitable programming business. I'd also like to recommend Dan Appleman's book on the Windows 32-bit API, which will further your knowledge in more difficult application coding.

I bought this book having done no programming in nearly 10 years (since a couple Pascal classes in college). I learned the BASIC language on an Apple IIe well before that. I chose this particular text because it came with a working model of VB6 which most of the other books I looked at did not do.

Anyway, the material presented is very easy to understand. The lessons are easy to complete in an hour each. Once you've completed all 24 lessons, you'll have a good grasp on many facets of the VB6 language and environment.

However...there are problems.

First, the book gives examples and suggestions to the reader who is using Visual Studio Professional. That's all well and good but the book DOESN'T COME WITH THAT. The book should assume all you've got is the Working Model version that came with it and that's it.

Second, some of the structure of the lessons make no sense. For example, in the middle of the lesson on message boxes and input boxes, there's a detour to cover remarks. Huh?

Third, some of the lessons require knowledge of later chapters to complete their assignments. One of the assignments in Chapter 10 requires knowledge from Chapter 11 to be completed.

Fourth, as others have mentioned, there are some typos and mistakes in the text. For example, in Chapter 17 on menus, the author has you step by step create a menu system with items for New, Open, Close & Exit in the menu. However, the text completely skips over Close and does Exit twice, the first time referencing the Close option that was never done!

Finally, this book does nothing to tie everything together. There's no overall application developed during the course of the book, there's nothing here on developing anything more than very, very short procedures and examples. This would the book's biggest flaw IMO. When I stepped up to a more difficult text ("Teach Yourself Game Programming With Visual Basic 6") after completing this one, I found myself lacking skills and knowledge in a number of areas that I should have known about.

To sum up, I'd recommend this book to a beginner as an intro. Just be aware that you'll likely need another "beginner" book after this one to broaden your knowledge. "24 Hours" gets your feet wet in an easy-to-read, gentle fashion that will prepare you for other, drier, texts.

Being completely new to VB, I bought this book to get me up and running, and it has done that. I agree with some of the other reviews about how it's kind of long winded in some parts, and light in others. Definitely not a definitive book, but to get you going quickly, it gets the job done!

My only beef with it is that the instructions given in Lesson 19 on how to create a toolbar don't work, and when you install the code from the CD it fails to load. Every other lesson was great though, especially if you're one who can learn from examples.

I'd reccomend it as a step into VB programming, just be prepared to continue with other books when you're done with this one.

There's another version of this that comes w/ a developing version of VB6 - w/ the exception that you can't compile your programs.

Still, it's good enough to work along w/ the book as you're reading it. I bought VB1 a LONG time ago, and upgraded to VB3 years later. Back then, VB was still a little difficult to work w/ but I managed to get a few very helpful applications written for myself.

Now, searching like a madman for a freeware/shareware version of something that would meet my specific needs, I'd given up and decided to write it myself.

The question I had to ask myself was, "Is VB6 worth the upgrade?" To just write a few small applications and the hastle of learning another version?

The answer is a resolute - YES! This book just touches the surface of what VB6 is capable of doing, but it's enough to get you started. Once you've mastered the small apps here, you can go to online resources for more in depth help. I'd buy this book, as well as a more in-depth book that's filled w/ examples. You have to start somewhere!

I have had good luck with this book, ONLY because I have had other programming languages. It does get into actual coding, but does little to explain how it works.

The authors experiments in the CD are quite lame. The ones that DO work off the CD offer no usefulness.

If you are good with programming already, this book will be useful if you are new to VB, cause you can figure out how to make bigger better projects. But most of what you do in VB will be of your own experimentation. Don't count on this book offering any real programs. It merely gives you the puzzle pieces, and it is up to you what you do with them.

I had been working for my company as an administrative assistant for about 6 months. I am now transitioning into becoming a visual basic programmer.

This book got me on my feet quickly! This is the best book I purchased for this endeavor. I came in with no knowledge of the Visual Basic environment. The only experience I had was with BASIC as a kid and with PASCAL in high school. Now, I find it rather easy and can whip out a program in very little time.

This book definitely helped me to get where I am and I now make much more money than I did before. And is spending this amount for this book worth it? DEFINITELY! I went from making just over $20k to making almost $36k. This is worth that investment!

I hope this has been helpful. Have a great day!

This book will not have you cranking out VB apps in 24hrs. I expected a series of hands on exersizes walking you through creating applications. THIS BOOK WILL NOT DO THAT FOR YOU! If you know nothing about VB stay away from this book. What it is a long-winded explanation of VB and how different aspects of it work. This is not for the novice and will not teach you to build apps. There are no projects that will produce running VB apps in this book.

If you want hands on practice and step-by-step instructions for building apps then get SAMS "Teach Yourself Visual Basic is 21 days". "VB in 21 days" is 21 hands on lessons in building VB apps and writing code and is excellent for beginners. The lessons start out easy and get progessively more difficult as the lessons progress until at the end you are writing fairly complex apps.

There is no doubt in my mind that this will be the best computer programming book that I will read this year, unless maybe I read one of my own ;-). I was joking of course, but seriously Teach Yourself Visual Basic in 24 Hours is excellent.

First of all, the chapters are broken into realistic parts. There is just enough content in each chapter to fill about an hour. That means you can sit down at your computer and have time to grasp a task without needing to put the book down due to some other distraction. Also, the authors don't waste too much time going over irrelevant theoretical concepts, although they do cover some necessities in the early chapters.

Second, you CAN complete this book in 24 one hour sessions. I think it took me about two weeks to get through this book, and I didn't even push myself. In general I think that the chapters take about an hour to work/read through, but inevitably you will spend more time on the exercises than you need to.

Last, I think that the examples make a great deal of sense. The authors teach real world needs, in other words, you won't waste much time learning things you'll never use. The examples are also fun; because they are short/constructive exercises, you will find your self feeling rewarded once you complete each chapter. This is a book you will enjoy learning from.

In all, I give this book a BIG 5 stars. The authors do an outstanding job moving the reader at a deliberate, yet productive pace. I recommend highly to those that have and don't have experience with VB or other programming languages/tools.

First, I started looking at some tutorials online on visual basics, because i got interested in programming. And as most of you already know, it is hard reading off of the computer scren for hours. SO I went to the bookstore, and after looking at the selection of books, the title "Learn in 24 hours" caught my attention. I eagerly went home and started reading. The first few sections of the book take the easy topic way to slow. taking 4 sections on just the interface is NOT good. Then when it gets to the programming, it lost me when it started introducing the boleans and string types, and all this useless junk by just THROWING the stuff one one big chart at me, instead of going over each datatype..I eventually understood what it meant, with a help of a friend, and went on....the next few chapters were OKAY, but then when it got into modular programming and such, around hour 14, it COMPLETELY lost me. I think this is a poorly written book! I think tutorials that are online written by other kids are even better than this nonesense.

Well I first became interested in VB after seeing what could be done in a short amount of time as compared to other languages such as C/C++ (which I have studied for about 2 years). The book starts off like any other book, however it gets worse as it goes on. The first couple chapters (1-8) are decent, showing you code, explaining things, and having you actually do some of the projects. In chapter 9 however things start to change. Errors in his code start to become annoying and your projects won't compile. Later in chapter 11 he begins talking about subjects such as the Timer Control and provides no code to show you how to interact with it. After chapter 11 the author just seemed to loose his esteem and eventually lost mine too. I also wouldn't recommend buying the Teach your VB in 21 Days book either as it is written by the same author.