Customer Reviews

Visual Basic 6 Interactive Course

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I gave this book three stars for two reasons:

1) The book does an excellent job of building the knowledge of a beginning user of VB from nothing to something without making too many "leaps".

2) This book, unfortunatly, has many errors that, if the student does not have any prior programing experience or someone with VB background handy, will cause you to beat your head against the wall!

I also was very disappointed to see that the website has been pulled by the new publisher. So much for getting certified!

I would strongly recommend that a new programer have a direct reference book like those from MS press handy to circumvent the errors. If you do this, you will find the book handy as an intro to VB, not to mention learning what NOT to do in your programing.

Are they kidding? This book is trash! Very frustrating. It stops you cold. There are so many errors it's simply unbelievable. What were the editors thinking when they gave the "go-ahead" to print it? It makes you wonder who these rave-reviewers really are!

This is absolutely the worst VB 6 book I have ever read. I am forced to use it for a VB 6 class I am taking. I wish we were using a different book. There are SO MANY ERRORS in this book that it is almost unusable (the CD is just as bad). Errors in the code examples. Errors in the regular text. Errors in the End of Lesson quizzes. My Professor has to send out a 5 page document every week with all the error corrections for the upcoming chapter, and even then he doesn't get them all. I really wonder if anyone that ever used Visual Basic 6 bothered to read this book before it was published.

I bought the book and was shocked to learn that the web site associtated with the book closed to new students...and will close to all.... The book is a waste of money if you are basing your decision on using it in conjunction with the web site.

This is a good reference, even for those with moderate VB experience. I bought it for the Ezone access/online classes, and was pleased at how the online coursework fit with the book.

HOWEVER..... Aparently, MacMillan/SAMs apparently bought the Waite books, or have phased them out, and without any regard for the people who paid 50 bucks for the book and were registered in the Ezone, the entire Ezone was pulled.

Good Job SAM's - you solved my choice of publisher for any future book purchases!

I'm just a beginner in every sense and even I found mistakes with this book. I also bought the Sams VB6 in 21Days, which I can actually understand. I thought this book would be more in depth than "21 Days" but was I wrong.

I didn't even bother with the online stuff since the book was such a mess. Where is the pride in the author or the editors?

Don't buy this book if you are a beginner you'll just get lost.

If there was a rating of 0 stars, I'd have picked that one.

The errors others have mentioned are no exaggeration! There were even errors in its errata, not to mention it was incomplete! I can see that whoever made the errata must've given up halfway through!

This book is a great DISSERVICE because I spent a lot of time figuring out what was going on! I hate to be blunt, but this book is...something hastily done just to get something on the shelves and to capture the hard-earned dollars of customers!

I can't believe the Waite Group would produce a book of such deplorable quality! I will remember this in all future purchases from this publisher, and of course, I will always have to check the feedbacks!

I wish I'd known about these reviews - I would have saved $$$! The first few chapters are the most crucial and it is here where the author excels at confusing the student. Very disorganized and fraught with typos. Stephen Prata (not the author of this book) and others made the Waite Group a success with their clear, simple, powerful and humorous teaching techniques. I was naive to assume this writer could do the same. Shame on you editors!

I bought this book and started the interactive course on the net. At the begining, everything is Ok... But then on, more and more errors appeared. I do not want to enumerate even one of the errors. Because the frequency of various errors is so annoying that I do NOT feel like to supply free correction information to the publisher. It is their own job to discover and correct the errors!! Potential buyers of this book please do not buy this book, or you will feel like being told an outrageous lie!!!

I purchased this book based upon the reviews on this web site. What a mistake!

I am at page 115 and have found 34 errors that are not on the errata sheet available on the publishers web site. I have even found errors on the errata sheet. Many errors are the inability of the author to be consistent in his code examples. He will define a value as "lblLengthSong1" and then immediately in the code example use "lblSong1" on the same page within inches of each other. Sorry these are different and cause the example to crash when you compile. I have even found the example used for the address book in Chapter 3, Lessons 4 and 5 to not only differ with each other but to differ with the source code provided on the CD- ROM. I am not talking about the additions put in by the lessons but the misspellings and misnameing of values and variables. Additionally, some of these errors in this book where not even corrected from the previous version of Visual Basic 5 Interactive Course but literally pasted as is into Visual Basic 6 Interactive Course. This is sheer laziness. I won't be submitting to the publisher all the errors that I have found. That is not my job. Competent editing is their job and I won't do it for free.

I admit that all books have errors and some troubleshooting is always good experience. However this book is clearly marked on the outside back cover as being for beginners to intermediate. The only thing this book will do is frustrate the beginner to the point of quitting and forgetting to learn VB at all or at least to move on to different books. The author has done great harm in getting individuals to accept VB as a programming language. If he is an example of what VB programmers publish who would want one in their shop?

If you are new to Visual Basic PLEASE start with another book. When you have some experience and knowledge of VB then perhaps you can get through this book.

I sincerely hope that Waite (now under MacMillian Publishing) will recall this book and fix it!!

Regards