Customer Reviews

The Visual Basic .NET Programming Language

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this book.

I've been programming in VB for ages, well, the better part of ten years anyway. I've also been in VB.NET since the early betas, and I'm passionate about where the language is today and where it is going. I also think I know my way around the language pretty well.

So, I picked up this book mostly to see if I wanted to recommend it to beginning or intermediate programmers. What a surprise when I found myself learning, or at other times remembering forgotten details of the langauge. Paul has a great style, and hits the right level of detail and history. It isn't overwhelming, but he isn't afraid to get deep into the gritty details either.

This book is all VB.NET. It talks about the framework where the framework matters to VB. He talks about history when it helps explain something about the way VB is built. Beginner's may want to read it yearly for a while, and I doubt there is any VB programmer who could read this book without learning from it. For me, that combination in a readable format is as good as it gets.

Being a seasoned VB programmer I've learnt a lot about the language from some very smart people over the years - including people on the VB Team itself - and I was therefore keen to get my hands on Paul Vick's latest book to learn some further insights from one of the lead architects of the language.

The book itself is a brisk walk - coming in at a touch under 400 pages (which includes many reference-only pages) - but is crammed with useful nuggets about the language and how to put it to use. I read the book in a little under a week while travelling to and from work; at the end of each journey I was usually racing for my computer so that I could whip up some demo's of the things which I had read. In fact most times after reading a couple of paragraphs I was left thinking to myself: "So does that mean? ....".

Some of my favourite sections were:

Boxing and Unboxing - some of the clearest examples that I've ever read on the topic
Array Co-variance - very good; some of this was certainly new to me
Events and Delegates - a good mixture of high-level versus under the covers material
Statements - it's always good to learn new things about these
The book is structured in such a manner that it starts out easy and ends up with expert-level stuff. The stuff which taught me the most came near the end of the book with several chapters devoted to the advanced topics surrounding Object Oriented concepts, but I must admit that I learnt *at least* one new thing per Chapter.

This book will serve 2 purposes for me now that I've scanned it for a first time. Firstly it will serve as my main reference for all of those things which I never can seem to remember first time such as: Fundamental DataType storage size; comparing things other than non-equality in Select...Case statements; passing ByRef vs ByVal and where it *does* matter; in depth behaviour of Shadows, Overrides and Overloads modifiers; How to call Win32 api's using Declare statements. Secondly, this book will become my digest of all those little language quirks which I have built up in my head over the years.

Lastly, after reading chapters and sharing some of this stuff with my co-workers it would undoubtedly invoke many colorful conversations about programming adventures from the near and distant past.

All-in-all this book left me with a lot!

This is distilled expertise on Visual Basic .NET - concise, complete, and correct. Anyone from beginner to pro will learn new things about VB concepts and syntax.

I use this book when I teach introductory Visual Basic .NET. It is the best way for a student to zero in on a single topic. They can find a brief but complete exposition, and an example that strips away all irrelevancies to illustrate the concept at hand.

But I also learned some things that I didn't know from this book, and that's after 4+ years working on VB.NET (back into the betas) and writing several books of my own.

Don't buy this book to learn how to build complete applications, or to learn a lot about the .NET Framework. There are other books for those needs. But if you live in the world of Visual Basic, this book is an essential resource.

Ok, I probably sound like AW Press' personal cheerleader, but they really did it again. I though Ted Pattison's Building Applications and Components with Visual Basic .NET was probably the best VB book I had read (although there are a lot of contenders for that title) but Vick, plain and simply, is the man. The whole book is about 410 pages with Indexs, TOC etc. Not a 'large' book compared to many of the other titles, but this book is concise and to the point its writing style is second only to technical content. The first chapter was 40 pages and dedicated to your obligatory "this is what .NET is" stuff, but he covers a lot of material in a short amount of space. He does this by picking very good examples and showing them very well. The next few chapters build upon what chapter one, discussing Value/Reference types, comparison operators and your standard fare. However, one of the differences between this book and most of the others is his discussion of gotcha's. He doesn't call them 'gotchas' but he calls your attention to them with "Notes" and so far, I haven't seen one Note that wasn't well placed and enlightening. Even if I already knew what he was discussing, he reinforces the principles and will definitely save you some time in your learning curve.

Chapter 7 discusses exceptions and although it's brief and only 10 pages, it's probably the best discussion I've come across next to Jeffrey Richter's Applied .NET Framework Programming. Surprisingly enough, he spends a decent portion of it on unstructured error handling and gives it fair treatment (although the conclusion he draws is the only reasonable one...don't use it).

From there he goes onto subjects like Properties (which was pure gold), delegates (also superb), Inheritance and most other OOP stuff.

All in all, there's not much in here that I had never come across but he has a great way of conveying it to you and reinforcing why you should do things. Most chapters have some side bars for "Advanced" issues, "Design" issues and "Style" issues. I wish every VB6 programmer moving to .NET would read this and live it...there'd be a lot better code out there.

I've been anxiously expecting this book b/c I knew Vick would do a killer job. And he exceeded my expectations.

I'm often asked to give recommendations on .NET books (other than my own) and this one will certainly now join the list. If you're a VB 6 developer making the transition to .NET this is a reference book you'll consult often as you delve into VB .NET. This book is definitely a reference book and so you'll thumb through it when looking for specifics such as array handling, operators, attributes. However, appendix B on transitioning from COM to the CLR is one you'll want to read in one sitting as it covers all the bases very well.

Generally the code snippets are all self-contained (which I like in a reference book) and are the simplest snippet you can think of for the situation which lets you get to the core of the concept without having to unpack any other baggage. Diagrams are used sparingly although when used are very effective. For example, the one used to explain boxing and unboxing and how the managed heap looks in chapter 13 works very well. The other aspect of the book I really liked is the use of sidebars and notes in the text. Vick uses an Advanced heading on the sidebar to go a little deeper in explaining the whys behind one of his code snippets or how the CLR handles the language constructs behind the scenes. Although marked as Advanced, beginning readers will find these invaluable as they learn how the CLR implements their VB .NET instructions. Vick also includes a Compatbility heading on sidebars that explain how newer syntax or behavior relates to syntax or behavior that VB 6 developers would be familiar with. This also helps to bridge the gap.

All in all, this is a book I'd recommend to any devleoper moving to VB .NET from the VB 6 world and a good reference to have on your shelf.

Loved the book when I read it many years ago. In fact, I think it's one of the best books in its genre. Unfortunately somewhat outdated now. How about an updated re-release of the book Mr Vick?

This book is one of the best Visual Basic references I have read.

I try this to be as honest as I can.


The Good:
You see less talk and more how VB.NET works.
The sample codes are usually good and clear.

Book tries to cover many topics on VB.NET.


The Bad:

The book is more like a reference book,
Lots of topics are explained in less than half a page.
The examples given for the topic is not enough.

Even though the book covers VB, there is nothing visual,
It DOES NOT COVER FORMS. Which is an integral part of VB.
Handling and transferring data between forms is one of most confusing topics for VB6 and those who learn VB.NET. So even if you read this book 100 times, you most likely won't be able to make a standard VB.NET program which has more than one form.

It also does not cover VB.NET controls.

The proper Title for this book should be:

"Writing Console applications with VB.NET."

Also please note that this book is not for beginners. It does assume that you have some advanced programming knowledge.

Examples are pointers, classes.

There are better books out there for learning VB.NET. I do recommend this only as a reference for experienced VB.NET programmers.

---------------------------

This is my additional feedback after I put more time into this book.

This book Does not deserve even 2 stars but only one.
Keep away from this book!