Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Visual Basic 5 in 21 Days (Sams Teach Yourself...in 21 Days)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I almost never give 5 stars, but this book is close. The program steps provide details without getting boring. A good book to learn VB, but not a good reference book.

This book reviews most of the introductory topics of VB. The sample programs are simple but illustrative. On the negitive side, the code explainations are too recursive.

Well, I liked this book. I was a stay-at-home Mom, had to give up my pottery hobby when the baby was born because it was too dusty. I took up programming instead, started with an earlier version of this book. It was fun. The exercises were motivating. Fun enough to still be at them at 3am after the middle-of-the night feeding. Sure, maybe not everything was documented perfectly, but that's the norm you're going to have to get used to become a developer. Anyhow, this book started me on being a programmer - after a few years of contracting I now work as a developer at one of the largest software development companies in the Pacific Northwest. So here's to a great book that changed my life.

Working in the customers service end of a software company in central CA, I wanted to understand more of what we were doing. So I borrowed this book and went through chapter by chapter. Sure there were a few typos but when I got to day 16 I was in heaven. My mind was popping with all of the "cool things" I now felt empowered to do with databases. I felt that it was a a great starting point for the programming novice. The one Coveat is to not rely on this text for Direct X. By the time I saw the website everything had changed and was unable to download the programs they instructed me to download. And the example programs were not any help. To understand the concepts they are talking about just play Half-Life and you will see what they are talking about.

This book is much better than Teach Yourself Visual C++ 5 in 21 Days (by the same authors), but is still geared primarily towards the general basics of the language and its environment. The claims on the back of the book and inside the cover are misleading (you DON'T learn DirectX in this book, other than simple usage of an OCX control by TegoSoft, which I'll bet money on is a company owned by the authors -- they pulled the same trick in their VC++ book). If you don't know VB, this is a good place to start, though I'd recommend "Using Visual Basic 5" from QUE over this book.

This (like all of Sam's Net Books) is the best for those just starting out in VB5. When I was just beginning it got me through a bunch of hard times that most other books just beat around with. This book is definitely worth buying, it goes from the simplistics of being able to get a form to load to going into the in depth printing, multiple form handling, and it has GREAT examples that could actually be used to formulate great working programs. Good work to the author of this book and to the Sam's Net Publishing!

I Have often been very skeptical of the "Learn whatever in 21 Days books". However, this book is perfect for the beginner or someone who needs a refresher.

The author guides you through all of the concepts in easy "lesson" formatting complete with questions and exersises to help you learn. It however, is very broad. Not a whole lot of detail in this book. However, you can easily geting the Advanced VB books after reading this one.

I work in VB on and off as projects arrise. I found this book to be great to refresh my memory of relearn concepts I was never quite sure of.

Great work.

I recently began learning programming. I have now read several books on VB 5, to include the MS Programmmers Guide and VB 5 From the Ground UP (A recommended second choice). This book is very well laid out. I typed in every one of the example programs and found NO ERRORS. If you are new to programming and to VB5 and looking for a place to start....THIS BOOK IS IT.

I found this book extremely helpful in teaching vb5. I knew absolutely nothing about vb5 when I started, but the book moves at just the right pace and assumes no previous knowledge. It is very complete, although it can get quite boring at times, hey this is a computer book it's supposed to be. Provides no info on troubleshooting but it's generally not necessary. You may feel discouraged, but don't worry, as the book progresses you will get it.

I used the version of the book for Visual Basic 4 to learn Visual Basic, then reviewed version 5 of the book for my corporate students. They were the best books I have ever read to learn anything, ever! It's a shame the two Guwerich's didn't continue to author future versions.