Customer Reviews

Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart

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

 

 

This is a solid and practical walkthrough of developing projects for VB.NET. It's not a reference, it certainly couldn't be in it's scant 200 pages. It teaches both the language and the framework by using example projects and walking through how they are built with a combination of code, illustrations and screenshots. The writing is good, if a bit terse.

If you are a VB beginner and you are looking for a step by step walkthrough, avoid the mega super bible 1,000 page tomes, and try something like this book in combination with a refernce book on the language and another on the framework. Though you could probably skip the framework one and just use the MSDN.

Technically speaking, there is nothing wrong with this book. This title is aimed at giving VB6 users a whirlwind tour of the VB2005 environment, highlighting additions, deletions, and changes. If you don't have a VB6 background, this read isn't for you. The overview starts with a look at the new Visual Studio environment, showing you some of the toolbar objects with and without data binding. The next few chapters show off some of the newer statements and functions to VB, a peek into the .NET framework and classes, and object oriented programming in the VB world. The last goal of this book is to apply the covered areas in the development of an application.

As I said, there is nothing wrong with this title. My biggest issue is that for the first half, it reads like an advertising brochure for the VB2005 platform - and the author does an excellent job at selling the product. The second half (where you develop an application), is very step by step, covering just what you need to know to write the application - nothing more. At 188 pages, the book is too small to be a reference or even a learner's textbook. Although you are made aware of VB2005 elements, and even get to see them in action, you are not going to finish this book and be much further down the VB6 to VB.NET conversion road. VB.NET is only superficially like VB6, and when you are done with this book, if you liked what you saw, you will need to purchase another title aimed at actually teaching you the .NET platform.

This book is a great guide for all seasoned Visual Basic 6 developers who want to get a nice taste of what to expect out of Visual Basic 2005. For those individuals who are strictly used to using Visual Basic 6, you will not be scared off by the author's analysis of the new features in 2005 such as things like the nice addition My Namespace. For people that have already made the switch to the Visual Basic.NET and were upset to see Edit and Continue vanish, you will be happy to see it's return in VB2005.

This book is a nice guide even for individuals who are not familiar with Visual Basic, as Wei-Meng Lee gives a nice overview of things like a Stack and what Intellisense is in Visual Basic.

For the low price of this book I think this is a great pickup for all people that use Visual Basic on a daily basis or want to learn more about the most popular RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool on the planet. Like the author's book "ASP.NET 2.0 : A Developer's Notebook", Mr. Lee gives the reader a nice overview of what to expect in VB2005 and he does so in a concise, clear manner. If you want to get a head start on what makes VB 2005 the best Visual Basic yet, you won't be disappointed in this book.

**** RECOMMENDED

This is a great first book in VB 2005. Easy to follow tutorial will help you get up and running in no time.

I found this to be a good short tutorial. I think many will be pleased with the Visual Studio 2005 editions....

This book is like sitting in one of those two-day seminars where they have a couple of examples that show things that they want to get across and as long as you are willing to stay on the guided tour, they work well. There are some nice nuggets in this book. My favorite is that Wei-Meng chose to go into the Amazon Web Services in one example. Learning about this was worth the price of admission.

On the other hand, I got so sick of hearing about how VB was doing all the "heavy lifting" and such. These are terms that I would expect to hear from some rah rah salesperson, not a serious author trying to teach something. I know MS is the king and there are no serious other options in Basic with Windows, so why drive the point home with a pick axe?

I also wonder about a book that is supposed to be for experienced programmers, but tells you what an integer variable is.

I'm glad the book was cheap. I did get an adequate sense of direction from the book. I would wait to buy reference books since VB 2008 is coming out now. the VB2005 books will get cheap and I will get 2008.

This book is aimed squarely at seasoned VB6 programmers and covers the new features in VB2005 reasonably well. The code is available at the O'Reilly web site, although I often timeout accessing downloads there. Annoyingly a lot of the links aren't online, so you have to type in URLs like one at Microsft that includes the text "/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=06616212-0356-46a0-8da2-eebc53a68034&displaylang=en" to access essential downloads needed to work through the examples. The book also appears to have originated as a project aimed at people converting to VB.Net so there are odd inconsistencies you need to figure out. Although it says it is suitable for the Express Edition of VB2005, it is really aimed more squarely at purchasers of Visual Studio 2005.

That the book has frogs on the front is quite appropriate since you will find yourself jumping around a lot. Figures are frequently on different pages to the text where they are referred and things you might have wanted to sort out before a chapter are raised later on.

I don't want to carp too much. Given the wealth of stuff still around about VB6 anything for VB2005 is to be welcomed. The author is clearly technically competent, if not the most fluent writer around.

A final point, if you think this book will help you port your apps from VB6 to VB2005 it only provides some broad guidelines. In virtually any instance migration is far from being a trivial activity and one that you are invariably better off avoiding. The book will help you migrate your skills, but you are probably better of re-writing your apps.