VB .NET in 60 Minutes a Day [Paperback]

Bruce Barstow (Author), Tony Martin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0471425486 | ISBN-13: 978-0471425489 | Edition: 1

• Professional Visual Basic .NET skills are in heavy demand since it's often the easiest and fastest way to connect the many components that are required in an enterprise-level application
• Includes thirty one-hour lessons that recreate a typical week-long introductory seminar
• Covers the critical information that every VB .NET developer should know
• The author has written more than thirty courses in application development, messaging, and network development and is currently training for AutoDesk
• Companion Web site features an online presentation by the author that follows along with each chapter and includes an audio-only option for readers with dial-up Internet connection

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Explore the most exciting and empowering development platform around–Visual Basic .NET!

Do you want to master programming basics and harness the new tools and techniques that .NET brings to Visual Basic? Within this book and online seminar, you’ll get in-depth technology overviews, tips, and step-by-step labs. Integrated question and answer sessions that contain questions from actual Visual Basic .NET students and the classroom-style approach provide a level playing field for people of varying backgrounds and experience.

• Build a learning foundation with a helpful introduction to the world of .NET development
• Discover how .NET incorporates the best features of C++, Visual Basic®, and Java™
• Explore the capabilities offered by a true object oriented development environment
• See the ease of integrating business systems through the use of SOAP and XML Web services
• Examine interoperability, distribution, migration, localization, and deployment with step-by-step procedures for performing each task

Join Bruce Barstow on the companion Web site in a training session. Follow along as he walks you through the online presentation for each chapter provided in streaming video or audio only. Source code is also available for download.

About the Author

BRUCE BARSTOW provides technical training and consulting services in a wide range of technologies spanning programming, network engineering, Internet/Intranet, and messaging solutions worldwide. He has authored more than thirty courses in application development, messaging, and network development and authored the Visual Basic 5.0 and Internet Explorer Administration Kit certification tests for Transcender Corporation, the leader in certification preparation tools.
Tony Martin is a Principal Software Engineer at Best Software, Inc. He creates software development processes and architecture, oversees and manages software development projects, and writes all sorts of code in Visual Basic and C++. He also teaches in-house courses to other programmers who want to learn .NET and what it has to offer.

Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (May 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471425486
• ISBN-13: 978-0471425489
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,470,813 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good classroom in a book for newcomers, June 5, 2004

By 

J Bucknoff, PMP (Fort Lee, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: VB .NET in 60 Minutes a Day (Paperback)

This is a surprisingly useful book for newcomers to Visual Basic.NET. Buy it for the book, itself, not for the online presentation.

The book comes with an accompanying website with audio/visual presentation for each chapter consisting of a PowerPoint presentation along with audio. Warning: You can only view the presentation with a high speed broadband connection. Dial-up can only get the audio and sometimes not even the audio. The online presentations are fine, but the value comes from the book itself, not the online presentation.

I usually shy away from books with phrases like "In a weekend", "in 24 hours", "hour-a-day crash course" etc. You really can't learn a new programming language in a few hours. HOWEVER, THESE BOOKS ARE AN EXCEPTION. The authors don't try to convince you that you can expect to learn VB.NET in a weekend. If you do all the lessons (some of which may take a bit more than an hour) plus try to do a few original applications on your own, from scratch, you WILL get a very good foundation of the subjects being taught. It will take about 4 - 6 weeks to go through the entire book (not 24 hours or a weekend, like other books promise), based on 60 - 90 minutes a day 5 or 6 days a week.

I own both the VB.NET and the ASP.NET (which is also VB.NET based) books and recommended them to my students who wanted to learn VB.NET.

This books is designed for people who don't have the money or the time to attend a live, in-class course on the VB.NET. The authors anticipate, in advance, some of the questions you might ask to a live instructor if you were learning VB.NET in a classroom environment. According to the authors, they have taken their own experience as instructors and put that experience into the book. It works pretty well.

Two caveats:

(1) the book doesn't cover everything about .NET or about VB.NET or about the .NET Framework. It's provides a self-study, introductory course on VB.NET. If you complete the book, then you will be in good shape to take on some more advanced topics such as the details of ADO.NET (an entire subject in itself, check out Murach Publisher's Murach's VB.NET Database Programming with ADO.NET by Doug Lowe, Anne Prince - ISBN: 1890774197 for that) and ASP.NET (check out Wiley Publisher's ASP.NET in 60 Minutes a Day by Glenn Johnson, ISBN: 0-471-43023-4 for that or Mike Murach Publisher's Murach's ASP.NET Web Programming with VB.NET by Doug Lowe, Anne Prince ISBN: 1890774200 for that).

(2) The online presentations are only available to broadband subscribers. However, even without the videos, this would be a great introductory book for beginners who cannot take a classroom course on Web development using VB.NET and ASP.NET.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book let down by poor support, October 28, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: VB .NET in 60 Minutes a Day (Paperback)

Visual Basic.Net in 60 Minutes reads well from the beginning. The tutorial-style presentation is an excellent idea, with each chapter supported by an introductory streaming video presentation by Bruce Barstow, hosted on Wiley's web site. The only problem is that the video intros don't work after chapter 3 which is a real let-down. Wiley's "Technical Support" has, as yet, produced no response, despite repeated emails plus a not inexpensive international phone call to have this issue rectified.

In summary, an excellent read for a programmer with some VB experience moving across to this VERY different world of VB.NET, but will disappoint anyone intending to use the advertised on-line lectures until (if/when??) Wiley get their act together & get these videos working beyond chapter 3!