Customer Reviews

Visual Basic® 2005 for Programmers (2nd Edition)

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

 

 

As a seasoned Access developer, I was really excited at the launch of .NET in 2001 as I wanted to make the jump to developing VB/SQL applications. But alas, every time I made an attempt to develop a VB.NET application using Visual Studio 2002/2003, I would end up with a ton of errors that I couldn't fix, and I would always go back to Access because it was so much easier. The books around at the time were also difficult to understand.

Then I went to a developer conference in 2005 and saw the latest versions of VB.NET, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, and I thought Finally!! - Microsoft have made developing VB/SQL applications as simple as Access Database applications. So I wanted to find a book that covered all the cool features of VB.NET 2.0, as well as a discussion of OOP and UML. And just recently I discovered this awesome book by the Deitels.

This book is the perfect introduction to VB.NET 2.0 - for someone who has programmed, but not necessarily VB6. It doesn't discuss differences between VB6/VB.NET 1.1 and VB.NET 2.0, as most other books seem to waste space doing. Rather than have separate chapters for OOP/UML, it combines discussion of OOP/UML within the context of VB.NET concepts such as classes and inheritance, which by the way are exquisitely explained in a simple, readable format with relevant examples.

While the ATM case study, that is gradually built up throughout the book, is excellent, I just wish they had taken it one step further and discussed the design of the "Bank Database", and the relationship between the database design and the classes. Since nearly every business application built these days involves a database backend, this would have been worthwhile discussion.

It still somewhat amazes me that Visual Basic has stood the test of time like it has. It keeps getting updates and facelifts, and continues to "play well" in today's environment. If you need a comprehensive guide to the language and the programming environment, I think you would be well-served by the book Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers (2nd Edition) by Paul J. Deitel and Harvey M. Deitel. Not much seems to be missing, and there are a few features that would cause me to highly recommend it to the Visual Basic crowd...

Contents: Introduction to .NET, Visual Basic and Object Technology; Introduction to the Visual Basic Express 2005 IDE; Introduction to Visual Basic Programming; Introduction to Classes and Objects; Control Statements Part 1; Control Statements Part 2; Methods - A Deeper Look; Arrays; Classes and Objects - A Deeper Look; Object-Oriented Programming - Inheritance; Object-Oriented Programming - Polymorphism; Exception Handling; Graphical User Interface Concepts Part 1; Graphical User Interface Concepts Part 2; Multithreading; Strings, Characters and Regular Expressions; Graphics and Multimedia; Files and Streams; Extensible Markup Language (XML); Database, SQL and ADO.NET; ASP.NET 2.0, Web Forms and Web Controls; Web Services; Networking - Streams-Based Sockets and Datagrams; Data Structures; Generics; Collections; Operator Precedence Chart; Number Systems; Using the Visual Studio 2005 Debugger; ASCII Character Set; Unicode; Introduction to XML Part 1; Introduction to XML Part 2; XHTML Special Characters; XHTML Colors; ATM Case Study Code; UML 2 - Additional Diagram Types; Primitive Types; Index

As I said, there's not a lot that's missing here... :)

The authors forego the hand-holding tutorial approach and target the professional programmer who already knows the basics of how programming works. As such, the book dives into documenting the different features of the language and provide a large amount of example code that demonstrates the features being discussed. It's also written in such a way that it can serve as an ongoing reference manual when you're up and running with the language. It's impossible to know everything about every last feature, so you can go back and check into areas where you're still a little fuzzy...

As I mentioned earlier, there are a few features here that really make me like this book. For one, it introduces UML diagrams and real object-oriented concepts. All too often the Visual Basic programmers I've met are self-taught individuals who can sling code but don't understand the larger industry concepts. Using UML here helps to bring them up to speed with the rest of the world. There are also a number of "call-out" tips in the book that are grouped around good programming practices, common programming errors, error prevention, look-and-feel observations, performance, portability, and software engineering. These gems, by being separated out of the text, are highly noticeable and extremely valuable to help you write better code. The authors also focus on the Visual Studio Express packages for the IDE. These Express versions are free, so you don't have to buy this book and then fork over $500 for more software. You pretty much have a complete, self-contained learning package right here.

I have my hands full with a number of other technology learning goals right now, and Visual Basic isn't on that list. But if it was, this would be the book I'd want in front of me...

I like this Deitel book over VB 2008 How to Program because it does not do too much spoon feeding, and the reason I purchased this is because of the ATM Case Study, nothing more. I'm trying to find books that deals with projects, not code-snippets only, so this book is just right, together with Dan Clark's book, and Julia Case Bradley's.

I gave it 4 stars only because of it's bulkiness, could have do away with a lot of space-consuming topics that the author tried to cover but with little success in my opinion, like ASP, etc, which a lot of books are centered on. Also, these books are too pricey, so better to just wait for a year or two after publication when prices have already dropped.

Well it took me more than an hour in a bookshop to put all the available books in front of me and compare them. Finally, I picked this one. At the time the main reason was the comprehensive coverage of the book on different aspect of the VB programming.
Now, I am reading chapter 22. So I guess I have a fairly solid understanding of the book. So , here it is:
- As I mentioned the coverage of different subjects is great.
- Great book to learn OOP in VB.
- You will find the pace a bit slow and it takes time to get somewhere to write serious programs. The reason could be the explanatory attitude of the author. For me that was exactly what I needed. A slow pace which explains things in details.
- The examples are well explained and you wont find any error in them.
- When you reach the more advanced chapters like Filing,XML,ADO, ASP , although it gives you a very good brief of the subject, you feel that it was incomplete. Which is fair enough. Each of those subjects may need a separate book for themselves.

In conclusion, this is a highly recommended book for someone who wants to properly start learning VB.

This is an excellent book on VB. If you are already a programmer or want to learn programming, this is the right book. It will give you an overview on programming concepts and deep details on programming with VB.

I am an engineer that has been learning c# and VB to build some applications to help our department automate our processes and turned to the Deitel books for instruction. The Deitel series books are excellent. If you had to get only one reference book, I would suggest getting one of theirs. The "How To" books are textbooks and the "for programmers" books basically leave out the self tests and chapter questions. I have both the C# How to and the VB.net Programmers books along with a couple more brand X books. If you are looking for an excellent reference, get the Deitel "for programmers" book. It's a lot cheaper and will still have the information you are looking for.