Visual Basic 2010 Unleashed [Paperback]

Alessandro Del Sole (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0672331004 | ISBN-13: 978-0672331008 | Edition: 1

Foreword by Beth Massi
Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Visual Studio

 

Visual Basic 2010 Unleashed is the most comprehensive, practical reference to modern object-oriented programming with Visual Basic 2010. Written by Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, a long-time leader of the global VB community, this book illuminates the core of the VB language and demonstrates its effective use in a wide variety of programming scenarios.

 

Del Sole covers both Visual Basic 2010 Professional Edition for professional developers and the Express Edition for hobbyists, novices, and students. Writing for VB programmers at all levels of experience, he walks through using VB 2010 for data access, user interface development, networking, communication, and many other tasks. For those moving from structured languages–including VB 6–he offers detailed guidance on building effective object-oriented code. He also demonstrates how to make the most of Microsoft’s underlying .NET platform to write more robust and powerful software.

 

This book’s broad coverage includes advanced features such as generics and collections; a thorough introduction to the Visual Studio 2010 IDE and Visual Studio Team System; a full section on data access with ADO.NET and LINQ; practical overviews of WPF and WCF; coverage of web and cloud development with Silverlight and Azure; and advanced topics such as multithreading, testing, and deployment.

 

• Understand the Visual Studio 2010 IDE, .NET Framework 4.0, and the anatomy of a VB 2010 application
• Debug VB applications and implement error handling and exceptions
• Build efficient object-oriented software with classes, objects, namespaces, and inheritance
• Work with advanced object-oriented features, including interfaces, generics, delegates, events, and collections
• Organize, create, and improve classes with the Visual Studio Class Designer
• Access data with LINQ–including LINQ to Objects, SQL, DataSets, Entities, XML, and Parallel LINQ
• Build modern Windows applications with WPF controls, brushes, styles, and templates
• Develop web-centric applications using ASP.NET, Silverlight, and Windows Azure Services cloud computing
• Create and consume WCF services and WCF Data Services
• Use advanced .NET 4.0 platform capabilities, including assemblies, multithreading, parallel programming, P/Invoke, and COM interoperability
• Perform advanced compilations with MSBuild
• Localize and globalize VB 2010 client applications

 

Alessandro Del Sole, Microsoft MVP for Visual Basic, is well-known throughout the global VB community. He is community leader on the Italian VB Tips and Tricks website that serves more than 41,000 developers and a frequent contributor and blogger at MSDN’s Visual Basic Developer Center. He is the author of three books about .NET development with Visual Basic.

 

ON THE WEB:

Download all examples and source code presented in this book from informit.com/title/9780672331008

 

Category: Microsoft Programming

Covers: Visual Basic 2010

User Level: Intermediate

 

 

 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alessandro Del Sole, Microsoft MVP for Visual Basic, is well-known

throughout the global VB community. He is community leader on the

Italian VB Tips and Tricks website that serves more than 41,000

developers and a frequent contributor and blogger at MSDN’s Visual

Basic Developer Center. He is the author of three books about .NET

development with Visual Basic.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1272 pages
• Publisher: Sams Publishing; 1 edition (May 17, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672331004
• ISBN-13: 978-0672331008
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 2 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #529,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hi guys, I'm Alessandro Del Sole from Italy. I'm a Microsoft MVP for Visual Basic since 2008, I'm the community leader for the Italian "Visual Basic Tips & Tricks" user group which is the family for more than 44500 VB developers. Also, I co-founded the Italian "WPF Tips & Tricks" and "LightSwitch Tips & Tricks" UGs. Programming is absolutely my main passion and is fun. I love VB and, more generally, the .NET Framework. WPF is the technology I'm most involved in and LightSwitch is the environment that I also use a lot. I enjoy writing technical articles, recording webcasts and instructional videos and writing some free dev tools. I'm a frequent contributor on the Visual Basic Developer Center on MSDN and recently we published an article series on programming Windows 7 with WPF 4 and VB 2010. I also regularly speak at technical events in Italy on Microsoft technologies.

I have been voted Visual Basic MVP Of The Year for 2009, 2010, 2011.

I love the sea and playing my electric guitar. If you like Queen's music, then we are friends :-)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A review from a C# guy January 13, 2011

By Glenn Witerski

Format:Paperback

Let me start by saying that I am Software Architect with over 30 years in the business, and have been through the entire MS suite. MASM, Visual Studio 6, Interdev, VS2003, VS2005, VS2008, VS2010 as well as the mobile side of the MS house - WindowsCE/Platform builder from version 2.11 to Version 5.0. For the most part I use C# as my primary programming language and do the WPF WCF Silverlight EF "thing" on a daily basis. Most of the books I read do a fairly good job on one or two topics, so you're forced to buy multiple books from different authors to cover all the material that you need. Sigh.

I typically buy and read 1 new programming book a month to keep up with the newest technology and features. Since I do some VB.Net programming I figured I would have a look at this book to see what's new. Based on its title, I was expecting just the usual programming basics in a VB paradigm- Classes, Inheritance, Polymorphism, yada yada, yada. Same old dribble. I was pleasantly surprised. The chapters regarding Linq (including PLinq), Tasks, WCF, Parallel Programming, Building and deploying applications to Azure were well thought out and lucid. There are also chapters on writing apps for WPF, Silverlight, and of course the class Winform stuff. All great! Even as a C# coder, I found all of this stuff extremely useful.

I downloaded the code samples that accompany this book. All of the chapters (including the chapters you have to download separately) have code samples as part of fully blown solutions. I took a random look at 10 chapters and made sure the solutions would load, and the code would compile and run. The author gets an A+ here! Everything worked with no problems. Solutions loaded, code compiled without errors and actually ran. How refreshing!

So now for general comments:
Some of the features and code in this book require the user to have something more than VS2010 Express. VS2010 is a little pricey, especially the Ultimate version.

I am not sure why the last 4 chapters (see the book index "Part X') are not published as part of the book. Maybe they were not ready when this book went to press? They have to be downloaded separately. These chapters are
Advanced IDE Features
Introducing the Visual Studio Extensibility
Advanced Analysis Tools
Testing Code with Unit Tests, Test-Driven Development, and Code Contracts
All of these chapters are worth reading.

This book does such an outstanding job covering topics other than the normal language syntax, that a section on Team Foundation Server(TFS) would make this book complete.

Even if VB.Net is not your primary language, this book still has something for anyone working in .NET. It's a keeper.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars for all vb developer October 15, 2010

By Antonio "tdj" Catucci

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I think this is a great book for all VB developers, both beginners and expert. The author covers all the aspects of VB language, from the basics to the advanced features such as Lamda expressions, extensions, covariance and contra variance and Parallel Programming. Very usefull are the arguments about the Data Access, WPF programming, Azure, Interop (usefull especially for VB6 developers) that helps to start building applications using these technologies.
The only "flaw" that I could found is: too many arguments :) (Personally I would have avoided the asp.net chapters, but only because I'm a web developer of course!).
Overall it's a great book!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must! January 19, 2011

By Xiaofeng Zhao

Format:Paperback

Long time ago in the past, inside the shrink wrapped box of software development tools comes with well written, voluminous printed documents. In addition to a reference manual, it usually include a well written users guide that guide the user through the process of learning the bolts and nuts of the tool. This time has long gone. Today, a typical software tool is delivered in a single DVD, supported by online documentation typically written by the developers, often poorly written and many times incomplete. On the other hand, with the modern IDE providing sophisticated IntelliSense, developer's found they can start making something to work very quickly. That gives a lot of developer a false sense of confidence in their programming skill. In the process of filling a software developer position, I found an alarming proportion of candidates unable to provide a good explanation to the very basic questions such as "differences between reference types and value types".

This is when books like "Visual Basic 2010 Unleashed" come in to fill the void. It serves the purpose of the "Software User's Guide" used to serve. It is as much about .NET platform 4.0 and Visual Stuido 2010 as it is about the Visual Basic Language. I am a software engineer and architect very experience in C++ and also have been programming with .NET using different languages. I still found this book very useful in two aspects: first, this book covers all aspects of VB and .NET so I can use it to be introduced to newer technologies, such as LINQ and XPS which I never good chance to learn. Secondly, As I went through the chapters of this book, I was able to pick up bits and pieces of information and helpful hints even in the area that I'm familiar with. For example, I've been using Visual Studio 2010 for months and having been missed out the nifty new "Generate From Usage" tool all the time until I learned it reading this book.

The author skillfully explains his topic in a easy to understand language and well though out examples. It goes beyond telling how things work but also explain why, and in many cases with a historical perspective. Both experienced and new developers should be able to benefit from this book.

Finally, given that .NET is such a huge system, this book is not able to cover all the advances features in detail. Instead, this book teaches you enough of the concept so you know how and where to find answer to your specific problem. This is also not a text book that teaches one how to program. If you're looking for a text book to learn to program, this may not be your best option!