Customer Reviews

Visual Basic 6 Developer's Handbook

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Sybex's "Access 97 Developer's Handbook" was so useful for me a year ago I bought this one for VB without even skimming it at the store. Previous reviewers are right that it's tilted a bit towards SQL Server 7, but that was OK with me since it was what I wanted to learn more of.

I've spent more time reading it than "Expert Guide to Visual Basic", also by Sybex, and would consider this one to be the more detailed of the two.

So many instruction books out there are a waste... Do this, do that, type this in, "Voila! You've made an ADO form!" without giving you the WHY of it all. (Especially those misleading "Learn VB in 21 Days" style books. What a joke...)

You will be keeping this one within arm's reach!

I bought this book at Costco, just because they were selling it cheap. But it ended up to be the most useful VB book I own. It bypasses the regular "place the textbox on the form" crap and takes you right to the good stuff. I used SQL Server 6.5 a lot and my company is considering upgrading to version 7.0, so the "What's new in 7.0" section was really helpful. Also the section on internet programming was a great find! Overall this is an excellent book, it's very concise and easy to read!

I have read about half of the book and it has have already answered more questions and given me more insight into Visual Basic than any other book I have read! The coverage of database connectivity and API calls is outstanding as is the section on Programming for the WEB. I found the writing style to be very easy to read. I recommend this book to all Visual Basic developers.

I read Petroutsos' mastering VB6 book (for the serious beginner to intermediate level programmer), which was also excellent, so I bought this one. This book helps you raise your skills to a fairly advanced level. The only caution is that the first 8 chapters on databases do tend to favor SQL Server, but even so, the information is very useful. All in all, this is a quality book (in a market full hopeless books). Highly recommended

This book is only of value to an advanced VB user.

I have gotten some good ideas from some of the example code. However it is troublesome in that one does not know when the book can be trusted.

Chapter 17 . Optimizing VB Applications has a section Simplify The Math (page 942)which has very poor examples as to how to optimize code. One example which employs the random number generator Rnd() is hideously in error in that it is not only a less than optimum way to avoid the use of the power ^ , but it uses Rnd() two times which uses two different random numbers when the task was to square a function which used one random number.

The book provides good examples for advanced users, but is of little value to people who are trying to learn Visual Basic.

Leo J. Landkamer programmer at large

A One-liner for this book: If you're in for Advanced Programming with Visual Basic 6, you just gotta have this book! The name proves for itself. This book is what a VB guru needs, and the CD-ROM included is nevertheless as useful as the book. For extensive coverage on API, Registry functions and more without pages full of technical jargon, go buy this book.

I'm a baby VB programmer and I found this book to be an excellent resource, even though it is rated as an Intermediate/Advanced book! This one deserves two thumbs up!

First let me note that I am not the author of this book so my unflattering review is the true one.

Second this book is pointless in two ways

1. Lousy coding where there is no point in examples and more - they are not what they suppose to be - makes me wonder do these guys have anything to teach anybody on developer level.

2. Explanations are nonpresent, code is thrown at you and the intention but not the explanation. One does not know where the project begins, what are the built in modules and what are the coded ones, at the end one doesn't know what is the project about.

Sad book.

I have bought several VB-books. Noon of them come close to this book. The book is very well structured, include excellent examples and have all examples on the CD. All the code I have been using works as it should. If you are an intermediate/advance VB-developer this is just the book you have been looking for.

This is a POORLY written book. The author(s) simply changed their old RDO book to ADO, and sold it as new for VB 6. Many of the samples will not work or compile, because they forgot to change connection/recordset from RDO to ADO.