Customer Reviews

Visual Basic .NET Threading Handbook

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

 

 

Currently this is the only .NET book that addresses Threading and nothing else. Furthermore, it targets VB developers and as such, it is bound to be a success (although apart from the code listings there isn't much VB-specific about it). It deserves the handbook title as it comes in 240 smaller than A4 pages and I think it is good value for money. It must be said that there isn't much in the Threading namespace that isn't covered in the book, although not all classes/methods get the same coverage and the book could have been even smaller in my opinion.

It is divided in 7 chapters. The first chapter is a good introduction to threading but a lot more could be said on AppDomains. The second & third chapters are the core of the book introducing the threading namespace, the Thread class along with almost all of its methods and the synchronization techniques available (Monitor, ReadWriterLock, Manual and AutoResetEvent, Mutex and Interlocked). This is all good stuff and if it weren't for the very basic examples, it would be excellent.

Chapter 4 is titled Design Patterns but don't get your hopes high. Not only it does not include design patterns (according to the common definition of the term) but it discusses the STA & MTA threading models in such a way that the reader may be left confused. This includes factual errors and bad grammar. It then usefully introduces 3 threading models (Main & Worker, Peer, and Pipeline models) but they are really let down by the respective accompanying examples. The (many) authors have tried to describe a single code example by retrofitting the 3 models to it each time; they should have introduced a different example per threading model as applicable.

Chapter 5 describes the Thread Pool and makes good reading. I was looking forward to the 6th chapter on debugging/tracing threads but there was only a generic description of debugging for VS.NET, which in my opinion, could have been omitted altogether. The book ends with a complete example that uses the classes from the Net namespace.

Besides any criticism you find above and the 3 star rating that reflects the quality of the work, I do recommend this book to .NET developers who are new to threading.

I didn't know anything about threading. I had heard about it, but didn't know anything about it. This book started off very good and described what threading was, how it's used in the new version of Visual Basic, when to use it, and how to use it.

The book is very good. Especially the Synchronization and the Scalability chapters. Chapter 1 is fine, but the code in chapter 1 is not edited properly. The editors haven't done a good job in correcting gramatical errors. But, I recommend this book if you want to learn threading in .Net. This book has some good end-to-end examples that show the importance of threading.

The book is good and I recommend it for every serious .Net developer. No other .Net book covers threading in detail as this book. I learnt a lot about threading in this book. Especially Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 are detailed and helpful. The samples are very helpfulto getting started with Threading. Threading in .Net is not as easy as it is in Java. It is much intense.

I like the concept of the handbook series, and this particular book certainly provides a lot of good information. However, I would have expected this book to give me a good overview over all threading aspects and provide at least a starting point for further investigation.

While I recognize the fact that a book of this size can't cover everything, I was still disappointed about coverage of fairly basic subjects, such as making Windows Forms thread-safe. I am also disappointed in the coverage about the thread-pool for instance.

Overall, a nice book, but there are a number of books that have a single chapter devoted to threading, yet cover more ground in that area...

My specialty has been as a VBA (Excel/Access) and SQL Server database developer, but I have been edging into .NET work over the past year or two. Although there are some legitimate gripes about this book, in general I've found it to be an illuminating resource. Threading is essential to .NET programming, and the general concepts here have helped me to understand the projects I've been involved with, in both C# and VB. I can say sincerely, that the overview in this book is unmatched by material read on the internet, both in depth and quality.

the people who gave this book 3 starts are very close
The books does demonstrate the basics very well,
but when it comes to the interesting pieces the
download examples were missing

I didn't know anything about threading. I had heard about it, but didn't know anything about it. This book started off very good and described what threading was, how it's used in the new version of Visual Basic, when to use it, and how to use it.

This book is worth the price. Though the editors have not done their job well, the content is rich, especially the Synchronization and the Scalability topics. The end-to-end examples are also helpful.

This book was sold by Wrox to APress. The code download is available directly from APress at http://support.apress.com.