Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I hate to be the person to ruin the perfect score that this book has acquired, but I simply in good conscience cannot give a five star rating due to some flaws in the methods used to teach VB 2005.
In all fairness however, there exists no single programming book that will be able to suit every individual, at least in my opinion. For some this book could easily be 5 stars, for others much less. I think that much of this is based on the reader's perspective, experience, preferred learning style, and goals.
First the good; the book is very well written. The style that the author uses is clear and concise. The book is an easy read in the sense that it doesn't feel like you're reading a textbook, or rather, a lab report on some obscure organic chemistry finding from 1970. Instead of throwing numbers, statistics, or tables requiring massive amounts of raw memorization, the book allows the reader to jump around and reference the parts that are relevant to their "here and now" issues. The book can be read straight through, or used as a reference, and in either case the introduction and application of the .net backbone is well advocated and mostly easy to understand.
Furthermore, the code examples work and provide for very good, usable programs that the user could build upon should they desire. Rather than just providing for simple programs that are useless, the book demonstrates viable, functional programs which is something that many programming books fail to do. Also, there is a lot of explanation given as to the relevance of class libraries and dll's, and how they tie into a project.
Unfortunately, there are some critical flaws that many will notice if they take the time to really evaluate the techniques this book uses. To start with, this book is not for beginning programmers that lack experience. The author assumes that the reader already knows quite a bit about VB and more specifically, about .net when providing very brief explanations or examples. If the reader has never touched programming before, this book would be a waste of time, and I find it odd that a dummies book would be allowed to require a non-dummy. Fortunately for me, I have done quite a bit of coding in VB 6.0 so most of the time I was familiar with the references the author would make when he used programming lingo that lacked explanation.
Moving on, the teaching method of this book is a big no-no in my opinion. Rather than explain what every command is doing in a program, the book basically says, "here's how you make a program that does "X"", and then the reader is spoon fed a big block of code, often with only one or two commands or lines within the code explained. Making a person a programmer this does not do, rather just copying code from a book that fails to explain the dynamics behind the code resembles data entry more than coding. Anybody can just copy blocks of code and make a windows program in VB, or any other language for that matter, and most people that teach VB strongly suggest against just spoon-feeding code to people and solving their problems for them.
Coming from VB 6.0, I was mostly interested in getting behind the .net framework and utilizing this added power to create much more serious programs. Unfortunately, little advice is given to the 6.0 programmer, and most of the specific .net commands (especially the new ones in 2005) are not presented in a way that the user can utilize that suits their own style, rather we're given a gigantic line of .net specific code and told, "this does that". Rather than explaining how or why each specific property comes into play to produce a result, we're just given a big line or a big block of code and are supposed to just trust that it helps to perform a function that contributes to the results of the final project. The problem this creates is that many people will be likely to write out code because they just happen to know that it performs a certain function, but they don't know WHY it performs this function, and therefore will lack the ability to create custom code to suit their needs.
If I don't know why a command, command property, or event does what it does, then all I can do is memorize lines of code from other people, and mish mash them together to make my own programs.
In any case, this book is probably better suited to the individual that is taking VB 2005 classes and needs another perspective, another reference to aid them. As a standalone product however, I feel that it is lacking somewhat. On the other hand, if you're not receiving any instruction, want an easy read, and have no problem with being spoon-fed code just to see its end result, then look no further.
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Visual Basic is Microsoft's premier programming language, used by more than three million developers and in 50 million Windows applications
Programming pro and veteran Wrox author Bill Sempf has thoroughly overhauled the book's organization and content, making it even more accessible to programming beginners
Highlights new VB features and functions, including important advances in compatibility with older VB versions
Offers plain-English explanations of variables, constants, loops, VB syntax, forms, controls, objects, and other fundamentals
The CD-ROM includes all source code and third-party software tools
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