Customer Reviews

Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

MacDonald describes what amounts to an apologia from Microsoft for VB2005. Though he does not couch it in those terms, and Microsoft would certainly not put it that way, that is how it could be regarded by a frustrated Visual Basic 6 programmer. When VB.NET was released, the attraction to programmers was the access it gave to the entire .NET platform. But many VB6 programmers found that a massive incompatibility emerged. Plus, VB6 was a very mature product, with many optimised features that were lacking in the migration.

The good news in the book is how Microsoft has striven to answer many of these issues. More generally, the book describes refinements that should make your life easier. Not just in VB. A lot of the text delves into ASP.NET. Which is a corollary expertise you should cultivate. I think the title should make some reference to ASP.NET, so extensive is its discussion.

Purely as one improvement, there is now a Web Site Administration Tool that lets you configure your ASP.NET web parameters. In the past, you had to hand edit the XML file. Very error prone. Overall, the book is like this. Talks about numerous improvements.

Time-saving tips for software developers and Visual Basic users also reside in Matthew MacDonald's Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook productivity is the emphasis here, with tips on restoring the missing features such as compile-and-run which were active in the previous version of Visual Basic. Learn new language features, deploy smart client networks, and use new forms controls in a workbook packed with examples.

Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook
by Matthew MacDonald
Published by O'Reilly Press
ISBN 0-596-00726-4

Reviewed by Andre Beier / Huntug member

This is a great book for the advanced VB.Net programmer who does not have the time to explore every single detail about the changes/improvements of the new release of VB.NET but rather needs to get a quick overview of what's coming up.

The book is divided into the following chapters:

*Visual Studio

*The Visual Basic Language

*Windows Applications

*Web Applications

*Files, Databases, and XML

*.NET 2.0 Platform Services

Each chapter has several sections that give a brief explanation of a new feature and a hands-on lab. The book is easy and fun to read.

Even though the title of the book is VB.NET 2005, it also has a chapter about Windows Applications and one about Web Applications. If you are only developing Web Apps, parts of the book might not be that interesting for you (maybe ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer's Notebook by Wei-Meng Lee, Published by O'Reilly Press, ISBN 0596008120 might be a better pick).

I would give it a perfect rating if there were not a couple of errors in the source code (I tried the labs with Visual Studio.Net 2005 Beta 2). One can argue whether it is the authors fault or not, since the final version of the .NET 2.0 framework has not been released yet and changes are quite possible, however, if you have to spend time trouble shooting the source code, what is the point in having a book that gives you a quick dive into a new technology? Therefore I can only give it 4 out of 5 stars.

This book's format is a perfect fit for the way I approach new applications: I can't get excited about new features until I see some practical use for them. By "chunking" his description of the new features in VB.NET 2005 into easy-to-digest snapshots with just enough code to illustrate the feature, McDonald made it easy for me to see which new features would apply immediately to the kinds of applications I'm building with VB.NET.

In case you're curious, my favorites so far are code snippets, generics, TryCast, and user settings. With the hints McDonald provided, I was able to write my first code snippet on the same plane ride where I read the first third of the book.

This book nicely captures a balance between ultra-condensed "Nutshell" books and the mighty 1,000 page+ tomes. It is aimed at experienced VB developers switching from Visual Studio 2003/CRL 1.1 to Visual Studio 2005/CLR 2.0. It has nice concise examples with great explanations.

This book is not an introduction to Visual Basic. If you're just getting into .Net I'd recommend looking for another book--at least at first. But, if you've been coding awhile and are looking to migrate to the latest version, I highly recommend this volume.

On the back cover the book says that it is designed to help experienced .Net 2003 developers move up to 2005. From that point of view I think it is excellent. In one evening I had a good overview of what has changed and the features that I am likely to use. Because it focuses on developers familiar with previous versions, you do not have to wade through pages of things you already know in order to find a few nuggets.

This is an excellent book for people moving from VB 2003 to VB 2005. It just gives an overview of what has changed, pointing out the issues and limitations in 2003 and the improvements to these issues in 2005. It presumes you are already familiar with VB 2003, so this is not a primer. It's a quick read, and had me constantly saying "Thank goodness - they've done something about that". All the examples are straightforward. Writing style is very straightforward. Every topic has where to go for further help.

The VB 2005 Developer's Notebook is just chock-full of very useful and immediately usable information, much of which is not readily available elsewhere. For example, I recently made use of the section on adding images and controls to the datagridview. There's also a very useful intro to using the new factory model to write database-agnostic code.

The examples are not complex, and chances are that after MacDonald gets you started in the right direction, you'll need to find more detailed information from the SDK or other source as you build a more complex real-world app. But, the value in seeing in a concise and easily accessible example how you might tackle some problem makes this book well worth the price.

I found that Visual Basic 2005 "A Developer's Notebook" was a quick and informative read. While many topics only scratched the surface, that's exactly why the book was written, to get the VB.Net developer up to speed on changes and enhancements to both the language and environment. Good Job!

My problem with this book is that I don't know how to pitch it to people. It's not complete enough to be a whole work on advanced VB. But it does have a lot of valuable information and insight on both desktop and web application development in VB.

There are some cool things in here; custom data binding, toolstrip hacks, embedding web pages, use of XPath and more. At the end of the day, if there is something in the table of contents that perks your interest, get the book.