Customer Reviews

Visual Basic 6

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have started to explore how to create my own pc/mac video games. The first thing I needed, and it was tough becuase I'm 12, was a good programming language that I could understand and that some of my friends could understand. I chose Visual Basic (VB). Then I needed a good book that to teach me the language. My only problem with learning programming languages is the vocabulary the books use. As I said, I'm only 12. And I chose Visual Basic 6: Visual QuickStart Guide. This book not only teaches the basics, but it goes through the exact steps so I could clearly understand it. It comes with lots of screen shots of Visual Basic 6 (the program/compiler). And now I can see how easy it is to work with VB 6. I soon hope to make an interesting game with loads of cool sprites (graphics)!

This book is for the beginner or experienced programmer who wants to use Visual Basic and learn it quickly and sufficiently to develop a complete Windows deliverable system. I have just finished reading this book and am extremely surprised and pleased with its content, easy going style and reasonable price. I have been programming in BASIC since 1967. After QuickBasic I switched over to the PROGRESS data bases in 1995 for large multi-user business systems. Now I am going back with BASIC and this book has brought me up to speed in 4 days! This book covers screens including designing and accepting user input. All the cute visual aspects of Windows, how to use the standard Windows dialog boxes(Open File, Save File, Font, Color, etc.), are all covered quickly and thoroughly. I found these areas to be of particular value to me: Windows dialog boxes, OLE links, timer ( for animation ), menus, and using the standard databases ( Access, ODBC, Excel ...) and especially the Compilation and Distribution Programs which are really EASY ! Other books cover the printing aspects better, but if you are starting with Visual Basic buy this book, a Reference Manual and a book that covers the printing aspects. As everyone says, no one book will cover everything you need, but this one covered 95% for me. There's no CD-ROM, but that is not essential. Enjoy Windows with Visual Basic, it's easier than I thought it would be.

I found this book to be extremely helpful as a novice in the world of Visual Basic. Mr Davis's use of graphics took a great deal of the guess work away and demonstrated what the forms and properties should look like.

This is a great book for beginners. His explanations are clear and concise. The source code downloads were excellent and allowed the user to compare their projects and judge your progress. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about Visual Basic.

If you want to sit down and quickly get an understanding of Visual Basic, this is the book.

It favors readers who have limited programming experience, but it is not too simplistic. Readers who are experienced in other languages will find that they can just move through it a bit more quickly.

You start writing Visual Basic code on the first pages, and subsequent exercises build on what you have learned. As you go through the chapters, it provides enough clues to help beginners remember to change the name of new forms they create without boring more experienced programmers with endless step by step repetitions of how to start a new form!

Having ready many "How to..." books on Oracle, Access, Linux, WindowsNT, etc. I had become pretty frustrated about how much the books cost and how little I learned (largely because they were too poorly written to stick with them for even a couple of days). This book is a great value, and you really can learn how to program in Visual Basic from it!

This book is for the novice / beginner with basic computer skills and no real programming experience. The visual approach to teaching used by the author (particularly the extensive illustrations, graphics, and code examples) provide an easy, structured approach to learning. The book assumes that you have a connection to the Web to download code - no CD is included. If you are just trying to "get your feet wet" and find out about what can be done with Visual Basic, this is the book for you.

For me, the main limitation of this book is that it is intended for the beginner and treats most topics superficially. It is not a particularly good reference text. I was trying to author a simple medical calculator, and ended up purchasing a more extensive book (Visual Basic 6.0 by Halvorson) because the information was not extensive enough in this book. If you 1) want to create a full-fledged program that could be used at work or home, 2) have experience programming macros, or 3) otherwise are beyond the "beginner" category, I would buy something else.

I needed to get a jump-start on Visual Basic. I bought several books about Visual Basic. Some of these are most forgettable. This book however takes you by the hand and walks you through the basics. A well conceived book. I know how to program. However Object-Oriented programming is new to me. For those making the transition, this should be Volume I.

I found this book extremely helpful in getting started with Visual basic. The step by step approach and clear colour illustrations made it easy to read. The book has a very low price tag making it good value for money. This is the best I have found to date.

I've bought other VB books that are more detailed, but they are often tedious for beginners. This book perfectly balances ease of use with enough explanations for you to understand what you are doing as you learn by hands on example. The best way to learn VB is by doing it hands on. This book has tons of exercises so youre not just learning the fundamentals of VB programming, but you are seeing it all in action, building small mini-programs as you go along. Very easy to use, well explained, great graphics on almost every psge. If you desire to really be a master programmer, of course you will need a more detailed reference book afterward, and lots of hands on practicing to keep your skills sharp. But there are many books out there for that after youre done with this one. By the time you finish this book it will give you a real sense of what it feels like to construct programs in Visual Basic, and you'll be ready to take your learning experience to the next level. If I could give this book 6 stars, I would. Good luck to you all

A good book for the beginner. I can read in less than 5 days. It covers perfectly most of the basic visual controls: button, dialog, menu, combo list, text box, timer, data control, status bar, MDI, SDI, set up control, environment ... The codes in the examples are short and simple, but they are good enough for your learning. If you have experience with other programming languages in a less friendly environment like unix, then this book is a quick way to catch the main idea of this language by learning the GUI quick.
It mentions no OOP, ADO and has no cdrom, you should look in other books. In fact, this book covers all the main concepts that you will learn in the introduction course of vb at the college, except it will take you 15 weeks and you can do a little more coding. If you have some programming experience and need a quick learn the controls of vb, this is the book for you. You will not regret for < [money]. Other books will be the next. This book will not make you sick by the size and lengthy words. I wish I can find some similar for visual c++. Thank for any hint!

As a rule, Peachpit books are excellent learning tools. This is the exception that proves that rule.

I have learned to program in BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, Prolog, xBase, and Perl. Every so often, I decide to try again to master enough VB, VBA, and MS Macro language to actually use these tools. Invariably the attempt dissolves in frustration. As a rule, if I need to batch process an MS document, I export to text and manage things with Perl. That's how bad they are.

The Visual Basic mystique is the programmer/nerd variant of the overall MS Mystique: Skill and learning don't matter as long as you have the right tools; content doesn't matter as long as it looks MSsy. My experience with Visual Basic books is that the beginners' books generally spend the bulk of the text pretending to tell you how to create "interfaces"? What's wrong with that?

Well, imagine wanting to write a novel, and the beginners' books spend most of their time telling you how to create the dustjacket. Not only is it a waste of your time, but it can be a stultifying waste of your time. A paragraph on what the author means by "brown." Another on the importance of spelling the words on the dustjacket (ESPECIALLY THE TITLE!!!) correctly. Fifty pages on choosing a font, another 20 on where to position your name.... Not only does it never tell you how to write a novel, but the information on creating the dustjacket is painfully oblivious to the fact that great dustjackets are created by minds, not tools.

I read the first 80 pages of this book in about one hour. Half way through, and all I had learned to do was create a "window" with some buttons on it (oh, and icons! Can't manage without icons!). I glanced through the rest of the book, and saw nothing that suggested things would get any better. Ordinarily, I would not review a book I didn't finish, but frankly my failure to finish IS the review.

And this warning to novice programmers: designing an interface is not programming. Even more sad: Designing an interface requires knowledge and technique, not just tools. VB is yet another MS Snowjob, as pernicious as their claim that owning a word processor (but not just any word processor) makes you a writer.

DO NOT "learn to program" by learning Visual Basic. If you want to know why, this book is the answer. When you are finished, you will know how to make generic windows. The real programmers will be eating your lunch.